Humility: What I Think I Heard

Our refrigerator rumbles and rattles, and when I leave some ice cream glassware up there to be put away by someone whose back isn't yanking vertebrae out of alignment, their clinking mingles with the cacophony.

The fridge is so loud, I've considered borrowing a gadget to measure how many decibels it emits. I suspect it is contributing to early hearing loss in our home. I may pass out ear plugs at breakfast.

So on the rare occasions when it stops, the silence is shocking. Only when that aging motor rests, do I remember how quiet the world can be.

Right now, for example, it's off. The room is calm. The glassware is still. I hear the soft whir of a fan turn on for three seconds every minute or so on my computer. An understated furnace fan runs continuously in the background. Somewhere in the neighborhood, I hear pounding. Probably a roofer, repairing somebody's hail damage. Through closed windows, I can hear the dog's tags jingle as the oversized goof flops and flails on his back, gangly legs scissoring the air.

Silence is good. I can listen.

I'm hoping to hear more than the roofer's distant pounding, or my dog's proof of rabies vaccination tinging against his ID tag. I'm hoping to hear something profoud, and I think it can only happen in some degree of silence, away from television's messages, the radio, even the opinions of friends. And only when the fridge motor turns off.

In silence, I open up my Bible. In silence, I study and hope to hear something true. If possible, if appropriate, I hope to discover something that will help me at a personal level.

A friend of mine pointed me to Philippians 2:5-11.

Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus:

Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God
something to be grasped,
but made himself nothing,
taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
and became obedient to death--even death on a cross!
Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
and gave him the name that is above every name,
that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.

My friend said that she hesitated suggesting it to me, because she was thinking it didn't seem very Christmas-y. Upon further reflection, however, she concluded that it seemed to capture the essence of Christmas: that Christ Jesus, being in very nature God, made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. He became a baby. Vulnerable. Human likeness. He became humble.

It's in a passage about humility.

Our attitude is to be the same as Christ Jesus.

Humility toward each other. Considering others better than ourselves. Each of us should look not only to our own interests, but also to the interests of others. That's all in the preceding verses.

I keep thinking about those stories of people scrambling over and trampling each other for the TMX Elmo or the Playstation 3 or whatever it was that was new this year. All for Christmas. I think about how few of my concerns are about how humble I am.

This is what I heard.

Then the fridge motor lurched on again and I lost my train of thought.