PARADOXICAL

The faith chronicles

Thursday, July 27, 2006

 

Cry of defeat


You have humbled me Lord, You have quashed me immensely. From my lofty perch You have brought me to the ground. From my exalted position, You have demoted me beyond belief. My great expectations You have extinguished just as greatly. My huge ego You have reduced to a splint. As you have written Lord, “The proud shall be humbled and the humble shall be exalted.” “Those who were first shall be last.”

I’ve been proud and am now humbled. I knew how it was to be first and now I feel the sting of being the last. I have foolishly placed my security on things that don’t last; eschewing the eternal like Your work and precepts and my salvation. I’ve been into self-worship. I have looked up to people who were intelligent, good-looking, popular or wealthy and based my own worth on these criteria. I forgot Lord that I’m nothing. Banish me from Your thought for just one second and I vanish altogether forever. I forgot that my only true security in this world is that I’m a child of God. I’ve been like Peter who had denied You three times, like Herod who feared the loss of men’s esteem but not Yours, and like Judas who broke bread with You only to sell You to Roman authorities for a paltry sum.

Now that I am humbled to dust, I no longer gloss over the things that Job went through. Like him, I learned how it is to wonder about my lot only to be left wondering still, to agonize and didn’t get consoled, to seek Your presence and only felt Your absence, to be left with only the wind to clutch at. But unlike Job, I tried to box with you. So here I am now crestfallen, spent.

But I know, Lord, that in the end, You will lift me up as You rescued Job from shame. You "called me to be faithful, not to be successful," and I obeyed. You told me that "sanctity does not consist in the esteem of men but only in striving not to offend You." Please tell me that You'll never allow defeat to those who choose to live their lives for You.

Thank You Lord for humbling me, for by doing so, I have nothing left in the world to boast about but You. By doing so, You have actually saved me.


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