A thousand options arise, and it's hard to choose. But you know, every year your answer could change. For me it certainly has. And this year I pick "humbling".
Yes, humbling.
Yes I know. I didn't pick the usual - joyful, loving, family-focused, generous. It's not the flip-side either - painful, difficult, lonely or grief-filled. I think most people swing one of those two ways.
But me in 2014? I pick humbling.
You see, even though I've sung "Hark the Herald Angels" a thousand times, this year I can't get one line out of my head: "Mild he lay his glory by." His glory. His power, His beauty. His ability to never need food, shelter, water or sleep. His perfect self with no struggle against temptation, no need for people and none of the limits prone to humanity.
Mildly, with ease, Jesus laid all of that beside. And He came to us at Christmas. He had every reason in the world to stay in heaven and be limitless for eternity. But He didn't. This blows my mind.
And it causes me this Christmas to reflect on all I think I am, all I think I know and all I think I deserve. Because I realize Jesus never gave those excuses to God.
And He calls us to do the same.
To be put in our place. To walk humbly. To live gratefully. To bear heartache, struggles, others' disapproval, even persecution. To stop people-pleasing and sounding good from a human standpoint that we might get out of the way to be vessels of God. To stop taking credit, flaunting our opinions and being cynics of God's Word - critical of anything He's said that we don't like.
This is definitely something I'm learning these days. And maybe this is His goal of refinement in my life these past years.
I came blazing out of college. Ready to roll up my sleeves and save the world. Got punched in the gut a few times by the reality of people's lives and what it's like to love and serve and give only to have people walk away from God. Or use Him (or me) for what they need and then gone.
And that sucks. Let's be honest.
I don't feel like I'm saving the world one bit. But wow. God is. He's much bigger and greater than I ever imagined, and I love and need Him now more than ever.
Maybe that, in and of itself, is God's purpose for me anyway.
He doesn't care how many come to English or Bible studies or F.I.S.H. dinners. He isn't concerned about numbers, programs and performance. Ministry is His tool to mold, refine and shape me. Ministry is His way to humble me. Ministry is His way to strip me of myself that I might fully depend on Him.
Mild Jesus lay His glory by. Rather than parading His rights, He submitted to God's ways, became lower and re-set the course of history for time and eternity.
If we are to be His hands and feet, Church, then we must follow His way and His way is humility. Let us be humbled this time of year. Let us be grateful. Let us be humbly grateful and stop telling God how busy and stressed we are (even in the name of good things), that He might show us who He is making us to be. Let us lay all we think we are aside that we might fully depend on Him.
