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26 March 2011

Humility, Humiliation, and 40 Years of Wandering in Another Desert

I'm full of hope.  It's taken 40 years, but I've come full circle.

At about age 14, I read the Sermon on the Mount in the book of Matthew, chapters five, six, and seven.  A gift, completely outside my frame of reference, was given me in my adolescence.  Awestruck, excited, I left my bedroom to find my mother in the kitchen preparing dinner.  I felt compelled to share this personal revelation of Jesus Christ as Messiah with the nearest human being, and she was it.  Any reaction short of backward handsprings would have seemed to me inappropriately indifferent to the good news I had to offer, and of course my mother, stirring a pan of something at the stove, merely remarked, "That's nice, honey."  Nice???!!!  That's nice???!!!  Tell me I'm wrong, tell me I'm crazy, but don't say "That's nice."

I'd had a spiritual experience, although I could not have known or described it as such at the time.  The words of the Sermon impressed me as Truth transcending human imagination and wisdom.  I had read and heard the spoken Word, and I'd never be the same, although I'd stumble on the worries of life and various deceitful diversions for the next 40 years, wandering aimlessly in a literal (Sonoran) and figurative (vanity) desert.

There's a world,  you know.  There's a way to go, and the road to the life described by Jesus' words is narrow, but open to all.  It is the way of humility.

At 54, I am a man of modest means and education, with many defects of character and twisted emotions.  I have no special talents, and have no significant accomplishments.  Those things neither confer nor withhold humility, they are only facts, data about my history.  I gain tiny fragments of humility through the painful and ego-smashing process of humiliation.  Humiliation hurts, but it does not kill.  In the end, it is not my opinion of myself nor the opinions of others about me that matters.  It is only the Truth that matters, and the Truth is that I was created in the image of God in order to do his bidding.  Each new day is an opportunity to live inside each moment, and by faith to practice willingness and an open mind.