strength of journey
Mar.18,2012
“Donothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mindregard one another as more important than yourselves” Philippians 2:3NASB
Kids are great! Things that we take for granted areoccasions for awe and wonder for them. And their perspectives are oftenconvictingly right on.
Take, for instance, the little girl wholoved watching the planes that took off from a nearby airport as sheplayed in her backyard. From her point of view, planes literally gotsmaller and smaller the farther they flew away. Which explains thestrange thing she said to her dad after he decided to take her on abusiness trip. Soon after taking off, she turned to her dad and said,“Daddy, are we small yet?”
That’s a really important—andchallenging—question to ask ourselves. There is something about us thatdoesn’t like feeling small. It starts early. Any kid worth his saltwill gladly throw up his arms and do the “so big!” routine when you askhim, “How big are you?” We may stop throwing up our arms, but we neverreally grow out of wanting to be “so big” in other people’s eyes. It’samazing how quickly life gets to be all about who’s got the nicesthouse, the best job, the coolest car, the highest degree, the biggestdiamond, or the best office on the executive floor. We are quick todefend ourselves to keep ourselves looking good. We like to drawattention to our accomplishments and turn conversations to focus on us,and we find ourselves a little put out when we are not noticed orinvited to hang out with the “in” crowd.
For most of us, life is about anything but making ourselves small. We are the tall “I” in the middle of our universe.
And that’s a problem.
In Philippians2:3-11, Paul tells us that we need to stop living to advance ourselvesand our own interests and instead start considering others as moreimportant than ourselves. In fact, he says that we should do nothingfrom “empty conceit”—which literally means the puffing up of ournothingness. I love the graphic picture in that thought. No matter howbig you puff up a zero, it’s still a zero!
And then he points usto Jesus who didn’t consider his “big” standing in heaven a thing tohang on to, but rather He humbled himself to care for our interests bybecoming obedient to death on the cross. Think of that! Jesus thoughtof us and our needs as being more important than His own! He madehimself small that we by His abundant mercy might become big in theriches of His grace.
Let this mind be in you that was also in Christ Jesus!
Are you small yet?
