humility (n.)
“Basically, humility is the attitude of one who stands constantly under the judgement of God. It is the attitude of one who is like soil. “Humility” comes from the Latin word “humus”: fertile ground. The fertile ground is there, unnoticed, taken for granted, always there to be trodden upon. It is silent, inconspicuous, dark, and yet always ready to receive any seed, ready to give it substance and life. The more lowly, the more fruitful, because it becomes really fertile when it accepts all the refuse of the earth. It is so low that nothing can soil it, abase it, humiliate it; it has accepted the last place and cannot go any lower. In that position nothing can shatter the soul’s serenity, its peace, and joy.”
Living Prayer, Anthony Bloom
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There is a tree that stands at exactly one half mile from our home. It was our first landmark on most all of our runs with the boys this summer. We’d stop to stretch, and the faster ones would get a little break and wait for the others of us (those of “us” most recently entitled “granny legs”…. cheeky little monkeys) to catch up. It was actually a tight cluster of three trees, trunks basically merged at the base. Then there was a windstorm at the end of summer and two thirds of the tree came down. It was such a sad sight, the bulk of those big, strong trunks lying flat on the ground, splintered and jagged at the base. Abased. The honeybees had fled their hive in a hollow of the trunk 10 feet up, and someone had already come to carve it out and harvest the sweet secret it held. We watched the branches and pieces of wood slowly be chopped up and removed over the following weeks. It felt odd to stop there again… it felt like the tree was just gone.
It’s been a hard season. Autumn is my favorite for its captivating beauty and the relief from the heat of summer, for the clarity with which it announces that change and season are beautiful, even if it means a season of cold, darkness, and death is included in the mix. I’m trying not to miss the joy of this particular time, but life has in many ways been a bit brutal. Part of it is just within myself.
I was running with the boys yesterday afternoon, preparing for the Evansville Rescue Mission’s Drumstick Dash on Saturday. We turned south and ran (some of us on granny legs) toward that tree, and deep in my soul it felt like a reflection of me. There it was, still standing tall, stark against a gorgeous early-evening sky. To one who hadn’t known it before it may have looked like a tall and handsome tree, sturdy and sheltering, a landmark. To me it looked like a skinny fragment of itself, an image of vulnerability and reduction. It wasn’t what it used to be. It’s almost painful to stop and all share one slender trunk to stretch against. It is a picture of loss and bears those feelings.
I believe there is value in my being vulnerable with you all, and so don’t shy from that. John told us explicitly of the tremendous value of walking in the light, and our Light has overcome all darkness; He is glorious even in the grave, so I am unafraid to find Him anywhere. In many ways the past several years have been a dramatic reduction. Let me be clear: it’s been my less-preferred type of reduction, where it is not in my desired way, timing, or idealized goal. Obviously the key word there was “my”.
I had tried reducing myself before, removing unwholesome food, excess stuff, wasteful entertainment habits (time the greatest victim), distractions from what is of eternal worth, toxic things in my home, laziness/apathy/ignorance, (inches from my waistline…). I have pursued Christ with fervency, walked with Him in growing intimacy for 19 years. I allowed Him to replace my set of passions for His, redirect my achievement goals from self-advancing ones to others-serving ones.
He is faithful, and He did all of that. I’ve never performed perfectly, but He loves and redeems perfectly, so there has been a beautiful story full of adventure and revelation and God’s power as it unfolds. He wrote into the little story of me a heart of worship, a love for His Word and for His image-bearers, a cross-cultural call to the unseen and voiceless. Things from Heaven, for Heaven-on-earth, things that I could never produce. Then He wrote in medicine, then a husband and two sons, and then adoption…
The bigger the assignment became, the more insufficient I became. I tried so hard to do it right, to be faithful to God, to join Jesus where He was in the hard places on earth, to parent traumatized children with evidence-based and Spirit-directed wisdom, to serve His people in crisis (or not) with excellence in the ER. I’d told Him at the beginning to spend me, to maximize His opportunity with my life. He did. He was worthy, and there was so much I loved about all He’d done in my life.
So in His “yes” to my offering, He spent me. Took my best and invested it in given-ness to others that He loved. Isn’t that the only way to live, after all? Spent on someone else? Isn’t that what Jesus did when He spent His time in flesh, given… to a mother, to shepherds, to kings, to disciples, to the blind and unclean, to cruel men? (Let me confirm the obvious: I still take more than I give. I still receive far more than I could deliver, despite my best earth-and-sin-defiled intentions, whether it be love, kindness, justice, food & shelter, dollars. The practice of receiving with humble and amazed gratitude the lavish gifts of God in balance with loving even my “Samaritan” neighbor as myself is a life-long journey of wrestling to learn what’s right and freely rejoicing in life continually lived on both sides of the coin.)
So the creating and giving God creates and gives us, too. Because we’re not isolated or autonomous, it is a constant way of being human. Our happy participation and surrender to His wisest strategy is our chief joy in life. Nothing really can compare to knowing the investment is made for something imperishable and eternally lovely and valuable. Obedience, regardless its earthly appearance, is of great worth and glory in God’s economy, which is the one that will stand when all of this is gone.
I say this feeling like that tree on the backside of the summer storm. It’s such a paradox that I can’t grasp even though I live. I wanted Him to use me: grow me big and strong and sturdy, to offer shelter and shade, landmark and encouragement, house the little things and provide sweet nourishment from hidden places to the world. Then He blew me down.
You could argue nature or nurture, but I think both play their role under the wise hand of a kind Father. Genetics, physical injuries, general life wear & tear… then absorbing children with a compiled 24 years of early trauma, sustained abuse, a high-stress job, poor self-care, isolation, and ultimately sinful bitterness and pride… finally blew me right down. I know major depression, PTSD, chronic pain (though mild compared to what I often treat) and fatigue, a new physical/mental/emotional weakness that leaves me feeling a sliver of what I thought God had made me to be still here in my mid-thirties.
But when I see what fell, I see so much contaminant. Self-sufficiency: that He would give me the strength and then I would use what He gave to do what He said, as I understood it. But it’s so easy to become prideful and self-reliant; so limiting to be constrained by my perception of strength. Entitlement: that obedience in one thing would protect me from temptation in another. That walking by supernatural faith would somehow save me from human frailty. That God’s promise of faithfulness would mean always seeing it, and that when suffering came it would be strategically brief (don’t you want to laugh out loud at that one?). I wasn’t expecting Him to crush me, to lay me down in the dark. For a long time. But it was necessary for so many reasons, and good for so many more.
It’s been a few years in this position, and I know it better now: I can’t help you, but I know Jesus will. He cut me down so He can actually do something in the space I take up, with the fleeting time He’s written me in. And I’ll give whatever paradoxically little-much He gives me, but having been ground up and mixed up in manure, I know it so much better now: my greater value is in being the soil, not the tree.
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Maybe, now in the darkening winter, you’re feeling the smallness and the cold, even the death of many joys. Maybe the weather reflects your soul some days, and you feel dormant, waiting for something. Rest your heart in Jesus. He is near, and so tender toward the weak. Our proper response to everything, even our own sin or brokenness, is to draw near and worship. To be nothing so that He can be everything is precisely how it belongs. He is Life, so our open invitation to Him will always bring Life, even as we wait to understand it.
Let us not trouble ourselves about the cause of our earthliness, except that we know it to be some unrighteousness in us, but go at once to Life… God is all right – why should we mind standing in the dark for a minute outside His window? Of course we miss the “inness”, but there is a bliss of its own in waiting…. Let us think to ourselves, or say to our friend, “God is; Jesus is alive. Nothing can be going wrong, however it may look so to hearts unfinished in childness.” -George McDonald
Praise the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. According to His great mercy, He has given us a new birth into a living hope, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that is imperishable, uncorrupted, and unfading, kept in heaven for you. You are being protected by God’s power through faith for a salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time. You rejoice in this, though now for a short time you have had to struggle in various trials so that the genuineness of your faith – more valuable than gold, which perishes though refined by fire – may result in praise, glory, and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. You love Him, though you have not seen Him. And though not seeing Him now, you believe in Him and rejoice with inexpressible and glorious joy, because you are receiving the goal of your faith, the salvation of your souls.
1 Peter 1:3-9
