Printer-friendly  |  Email to a friend

Lenten devotions 2008

MARCH 13 - OBEDIENCE IN IMPERFECTION
By James Weber, a senior communication major from Reading, Pa.

SCRIPTURE: Philippians 2:5-11 (NRSV)
Scroll down for complete Scripture.

----------

DEVOTIONAL:
It's good to be reminded of our humanity. We're human, we make mistakes. (What? Really? No...)

So I'm sitting here, watching the TV show “America's Best Dance Crew.” It's down to six crews, each vying for that lofty title (to be given to another crew next season). Some crews are incredibly tight, performing their isolations and moves almost exactly together; others, not so much.

But here's the thing, I like the ones that are raw, not robotic. The ones that know they aren't perfect and can accept that. The ones that have not tried to be perfect, but have realized that they are human.

Today's passage shows that perfection is not the goal. Rather, it's obedience.

Great. Obedience. That's nice and specific. So how does that play out in real life?

Luckily, this passage gives at least one real thing to do in obedience: service.

While we work on the vertical aspect of our spirit -- our relationship with God -- we can not forget the horizontal aspect of our spiritual life. We must become servants, and serve our fellow humans.

But along with our service, we need to be humble. We need to help the broken, because we ourselves are broken. We must bring freedom to captives, because we are held captive. We must comfort the mourners, because we are in mourning. We work against oppression, because we are oppressed. In doing so, we become more of the person God intended us to be.

I can only serve others in obedience by realizing my own humanity, that I am a broken person. In the same way, Jesus came as a human, a servant, with humility.

Let our attitude be the same as that of Christ Jesus.

----------

SCRIPTURE: Philippians 2:5-11 (NRSV)
Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,
who, though he was in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God
as something to be exploited,
but emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave,
being born in human likeness.

And being found in human form,
he humbled himself
and became obedient to the point of death --
even death on a cross.

Therefore God also highly exalted him
 and gave him the name
that is above every name,
so that at the name of Jesus
every knee should bend,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue should confess
that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.

Posted at 12:01 #