Pride

 A human being is a funny thing. One moment I am mud in my own eyes, a failure with no prospects or future, the next I am one of the greatest minds of my generation, brilliant, witty, poised, talented and gifted.  Opposites, or just different faces of the same coin?  I was amazed to realize that when I think I am worthless, and how could God possible love someone like me, it is pride speaking.  Think about it.  Am I really such an awful example of God’s creation that even he couldn’t love me?  Pride.  I have heard people say things like “God could never forgive someone like me” – pride.  What have they done that puts them in a position that the sacrifice Jesus made on the cross couldn’t cover them? Of course when I think things like “man I am such a great carpenter, or wow, I get this Christianity thing” those are easy to identify as pride.  Pride is so sneaky, I can become proud of not being proud. What to do, what to do?

 I am sitting on my deck enjoying the sunshine.  I close my eyes and listen.  A barn swallow sits on my fence and brags about it’s new nest and clutch of eggs, crickets steadily make themselves known, gophers sing out warnings about some overhead threat, small dogs declare their territory, children giggle and play, and the leaves of the trees rustle together.  The beautiful, all too short summer sunshine warms my face.  Just think that our personal star that we call the sun is simply the correct distance from our earth. Any closer and we roast, further away and we freeze.  Everything works so very well. From the incredible miracle that is my body to the mother robin feeding her young under my neighbour’s deck.  Everything is beautiful and made so well! They are the everyday miracles that shout the glory of our amazing God! The one who created all of this loves me! Passionately, extravagantly, unceasingly, he loves me! How is it possible that the artist who paints the sky with his splendour love me so much? How is it possible that the God who breathed the universe into being, the unimaginably vast unending universe, is aware of an ant like me? But he is….he will never leave me or forsake me, never forget my name, never forget when I suffer, this great and mighty, awesome, powerful God says he holds my tears in a jar.  

So I open my eyes to the miracles all around me, and I see them proclaim the glory of our God.  All I can do is bring all that I am and offer myself to him. It is the only thing I have to give.  Everything else is filthy rags next to the majesty of God.  I feel his love and I am amazed and humbled by it. It is time to leave my pride behind. At least for today. Tomorrow I may have to do it again, but this God, enthroned in majesty and power, he will not turn me away or refuse me.  He might even reveal a little more of himself to me.  Now if I could figure out how Mosquitos the size of pterodactyls glorify him.