I don’t mean to brag, but I’ve got so much to be humble about! To
begin with, I ended that sentence with a preposition and my 7th-grade
English teacher did one more turn in his grave. Sorry, Mr. Gentry.
God, on the other, would not seem to have much about which to be
humble. All of the world’s great theistic traditions posit a God who is, well,
great. So for God to choose to be known in and through the life of a baby born
to an unwed mother in a backwater town in an outpost of an empire whose leader
claimed divine status for himself was surely an exercise in humility.
If we understood this it would turn our lives upside down.
Advent is a perfectly awful time to reflect on this because we have
no time to understand anything other than the imperatives of the season: get
the shopping done; deck the damn halls; plan ten special events at church; line
up travel; get Christmas cards out. The lists just get longer and longer as the
days get shorter.
I don’t mean to brag, but I have too much to do to take on humility
as a spiritual practice. Hm, there might just be something wrong with that.
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