Luke 10:21-24 The Poor And Humble

Luke 10:21-24  The Poor And Humble

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Jesus rejoiced in the Holy Spirit and said, “I give you praise, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, for although you have hidden these things from the wise and the learned you have revealed them to the childlike.  …Turning to the disciples in private he said, “Blessed are the eyes that see what you see.”

Once in a while I enjoy reading up on the latest and the greatest in the world of science.  Yesterday, I read the following:  “NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft, launched in 1977 and now the most distant human-made object from the sun, at about 11 billion miles, has entered a new region at the edge of the solar system it is close to exiting forever.” 

Eleven billion miles in over 30 years!  That’s impressive.  But it’s not as impressive as going from non-existing to existing.  If you think I’m crazy, then you must have forgotten what it was like to see your baby daughter or son for the very first time.  Have you forgotten what it was like before they came to be?

But as impressive as they are, the Lord’s travels are by far more impressive than any of these things. 

Christ came from heaven to earth to be with us!  He literally went from eternity to time to be with us.  To me, the fact that He did it is much more impressive than how he did it.  I’m not interested in knowing how He did it.  I want to understand why He did it.  I want to learn from Him.

Why did the Lord do it?  By all accounts, it was to restore a broken relationship.  What does it take to move heaven and earth?  By the looks of it, it takes great humility.  No wonder why the Lord arrived to us as a child; but not only a child, a very poor child, a child born in a stable.

Secularists will say that He was born poor.  Believers will say he chose to be poor.  Which one is it?  It doesn’t matter.  What matters most is what He did with His poverty.  He did nothing.  He didn’t take advantage of it.  He wasn’t discouraged by it. 

Maybe He knew, before any of us, that one day our children would grow fatter than ever because they were richer than ever; or grow comfortably numb because they had more than they ever needed.  And so maybe He wanted to teach us, the “talented” and “gifted” of this world, that it will never be what you have that makes you who you are, but how you love that makes you who you are:  a gift.

Human dignity does not ascend to us from anything that is inferior to us - like clothes, money, friends, likes, followers, palaces, glass slippers or female servants.  Rather, human dignity descends to us from what is above us:  God.   Have you forgotten? 

God restored man’s dignity (worth) when He sent (and gave) His only Son to us.  Yes, with a child asleep in a manger, in a town called Bethlehem, and during a cold silent night, the child Jesus, without uttering a single word, delivered a simple message to all of us from His Father.  He said with his presence:  “You are worth it.”   

Advent is that time of year to remember this.

When you love someone, you are more than willing to go the extra mile, to do whatever it takes, to go to great lengths to fix a problem.  Our Lord and Savior went above and beyond the imaginable to fix our relationship with Him.  He moved Heaven to earth.   

Advent is that time of year for us to go to great lengths, to go the extra mile and to do whatever it takes to fix our relationship with the Lord. 

God moved Heaven.  Now it’s our turn to move earth.