The Death of Humility

It was there in the beginning. But somehow along the way, it was lost. Like the mysteriously disappearing sock in the dryer, you put them both in there, but somehow only one returns! My drawer holds many of those and why I don't just throw them in the trash continues bewilder me. Maybe I'm waiting for some sort of redemption from beyond the sock world? Perhaps one of them will come wandering home like a lost puppy?

The very nature of being "created beings" elicits a response of humility. How can the "pot" tell the "potter" what it's intended purpose will be? Total and unabated reliance and dependence upon God was what the first man and woman must have enjoyed. God made the earth and the heavens and everything found in and upon them. It was perfection created and personified in the glory of God's presence. The crowning jewel of God's creative nature came forth in the form of dust and breath. Man became a created being in the very image of God. They would walk together in the cool of day, until one day only one of them showed up for the walk.

Among all the creatures of the earth, there was none suitable enough to be man's partner for life. And from man's own side, God tore a place in Adam's flesh, took out a rib and fashioned an even more outstanding creature (from the guy's point of view anyway!). She was "bone of bone and flesh of flesh." Imagine man's exuberance in feeling the pain but finally realizing the gain! For this reason future men would (and continue to) leave their parents and be united to a wife and they will become one flesh.

Together they were in the Garden. Everything could have remained so good, so right... but happy endings are not easily found, even in the Garden of Eden. "Made in the image of God" apparently wasn't sufficient. Man and woman simply desired more... more knowledge and more wisdom... more "like God" and less dependence and reliance upon Him. The Serpent said, "You will not surely die," and to a certain degree the crafty snake was correct. While man and woman didn't physically cease to be, something definitive died that day. The spiritual breath ran out at the end of innocence and with it, humility in its tracks.

Humility plays itself out in utter dependence upon God. But things changed that day. The "pains of childbirth increased" (guys know nothing about that kind of pain -- though I've heard gall stones are a good role play) and the men assumed provider responsibilities for the family that are sometimes debated even to this day. The guys went to work... "painfully toiling" in order to eat, sweating from the brow and eventually "returning to the dust" minus the breathing part.

Hoping that other sock might be found, several "singles" lie in wait in my second dresser drawer. Redemption for those seems hopeless at this point (some I've had for years). The redemption of humility is a much more certain find. The One through whom all was Created came back in the form of "breathing dust" to show us the way back to humility. He was in very nature God, yet He didn't consider equality with God to be something He should hold onto. Instead, He considered Himself "nothing" and took the very nature of a servant and though He looked like any other "Adam," He did what most "Adam's" can't (or won't) do and became obedient to death, even death on the cross. In this act alone, He redeemed humility and showed the rest of us how it is done.

Because of this, we was lifted up by the only One who could lift Him up and was given the name that one day will be bowed to by every "Adam" and "Eve" who have ever lived. To the glory of the Father, the "death of humility" will become the "redemption of humility" and some day things will be like they were in the very beginning.

No more missing socks.

"Humble yourselves before the Lord,
and he will lift you up."
(James 4:10)