Not It

Hey, Y'all,

Hope you had a blessed Easter Weekend, rich in time with family and friends. Brings to mind memories of playing my trumpet as a kid in an Episcopal church in Miami (my first paying gig--sweet!) and how they would greet one another before (and say farewell after) the service with the give-and-response, "He is risen!" "He is risen indeed!" True, and for proof of that transcendent truth you almost don't need the empty tomb--His presence in our hearts and minds speaks volumes; Christ is risen indeed.

Here are some thoughts of Yancey's on humility and prayer...

In words that apply directly to prayer, Peter says, "'God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.' Humble yourselves, therefore, under God's mighty hand, that He may lift you up in due time. Cast all your anxiety on Him because He cares for you." Note the progression: humility, the step down, makes possible God's lifting us up. By trying to be strong I in fact block God's power on my behalf...

As theologian Daniel Hawk puts it, "The basic human problem is that everyone believes that 'there is a God--and I am it.'" We need a strong corrective, and for me prayer offers that very corrective. Why value humility in our approach to God? Because it accurately reflects the truth. Most of what I am--my nationality and mother tongue, my race and my intelligence, the century in which I was born and the fact that I am alive and relatively healthy--I had little or no control over. On a larger scale, I cannot affect the rotation of our planet, nor the orbit that maintains a proper distance from the sun so that we neither freeze nor roast, nor the gravitational forces that somehow keep our spinning galaxy in exquisite balance with innumerable others.

There is a God, and I am not it.

You've been prayed for today...