Daily Devotional for June 28, 2015

Philippians 2:5-8
Think of yourselves the way Christ Jesus thought of himself. He had equal status with God but didn’t think so much of himself that he had to cling to the advantages of that status no matter what. Not at all. When the time came, he set aside the privileges of deity and took on the status of a slave, became human! Having become human, he stayed human. It was an incredibly humbling process. He didn’t claim special privileges. Instead, he lived a selfless, obedient life and then died a selfless, obedient death—and the worst kind of death at that—a crucifixion.

Scripture quotations from The Message. © 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002 by Eugene Peterson.  Used by permission of NavPress, Colorado Springs, CO.  All rights reserved.
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A post is circulating on social media about a woman who moved into a neighborhood and began to hang out her laundry each morning.  The next-door neighbor noted that the laundry was dirty, and she remarked to her husband with great condescension that this woman ought to know better than to hang out dirty laundry.  Then one morning she got up, and the woman was hanging out her laundry – and it appeared to be clean.  The critical neighbor wondered aloud who had spoken to the woman about her wash, and the husband said, “Oh I just got up early and cleaned our windows this morning.”  The point was that how we see things depends upon the cleanliness of our “windows.”

In light of this scripture passage, I think we ought to ask ourselves, “Who do we think we are?!”  We have this perfect example in the life of Jesus Christ…the King of Kings who humbled Himself, lived 100% as a human being (and all that this implies), and then suffered a death worse than that of a common criminal.  The Son of God…the Savior of the World…the One who could have whispered to His Father and stopped everything…became a mere man, subservient to God in all things.  And still, His primary commandment to each of us is to love others, because that’s what He did.  And boy, did Jesus demonstrate how to love!

I don’t know about you, but I'm pretty sure that I’m due a “window cleaning!”  I would suspect that many – if not all – of us need to dial it down a notch…to think a little less of ourselves than we do.  It’s time to humble ourselves before God and recognize that we are not His equal…to learn from the One who truly was…and yet, He humbled himself to become a servant and the subject of ridicule, persecution, and the most humiliating and torturous death imaginable.

It is most likely that God is not ever going to ask us to truly suffer for Him – most certainly not anything like what happened to Jesus.  All He wants us to do is to humbly serve wherever and whenever He sends us…and to love one another.  And that means we need to “keep our windows clean.”  We can do this…can’t we?!  I’ll grab the bucket…you get the squeegee.

©2015 Debbie Robus