humility

Today I sing the song of Mary

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​The Virgin in Prayer, Albrecht Dürer, 1518, via Wikimedia Commons
 
Today I look into my own heart
and all around me, and I sing the song of Mary.

My life praises the Lord my God,
  who is setting me free.
He has remembered me, in my humiliation and distress!
From now on, those who rejected and ignored me
  will see me and call me happy,
  because of the great things he is doing
  in my humble life.
His name is completely different from the other names in this world;
  from one generation to another
  he was on the side of the oppressed.
As on the day of the Exodus, he is stretching out
  his mighty arm to scatter the oppressors
  with all their evil plans.
He has brought down mighty kings
  from their thrones
  and he has lifted up the despised;
  and so he will do today.
He has filled the exploited with good things,
And sent the exploiters away with empty hands;
  and so he will do today.
His promise to our mothers and fathers remains new and fresh to this day.
Therefore the hope for liberation
  which is burning in me
  will not be extinguished.
He will remember me, here now and beyond the grave.

Zephania Kameeta, 1945- , Namibian Lutheran minister and political leader
Bread of Tomorrow: Praying with the World’s Poor

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Luke 1:46-49

 And Mary said:
“My soul glorifies the Lord
    and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
 for he has been mindful
    of the humble state of his servant.
From now on all generations will call me blessed,
    for the Mighty One has done great things for me—
    holy is his name.”
 
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How can you pray for God’s righteousness to reshape your neighborhood?

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receiving with humility

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photo by KATRIN BOLOVTSOVA via Pexels

 
What do we have heavenly Father,
    that we have not received from you?
Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above,
    coming down from the Father of lights.
And because everything we have is yours 
    – whether for body or soul –
    how can we be proud, boasting about things 
    that are not even our own?
And as you give, so you are also able to take away again.
And you will, when your gifts are abused, won’t you?
If we fail to acknowledge that you are the giver?
 
So take away all my arrogance and pride.
Instead, graft in true humility, 
    so I may know that you are the giver of all good things,
    and be thankful for them,
    and use them for your glory and the good of my neighbor.
Grant also that I may not glory in earthly creatures,
    but in you alone.
You bring mercy, equity, and righteousness on earth,
    and to you alone be all glory, amen.
 
Thomas Becon, 1511–1567, English Protestant reformer Norfolk
 
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Do not be deceived, my beloved brothers. 
Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, 
    coming down from the Father of lights, 
    with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change

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Prayer professing faith

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painting by Carl Heinrich Bloch, 1881 via Wikimedia Commons
 
 
God, Creator, you planned from the beginning –
    telling evil that the woman’s offspring would crush it.
You called to Abraham from his land on the margins to follow you. 
He and three more generations relied on you to live in a strange land. 
Later, you led the descendants of Israel out of Egypt, out of bondage. 
You led your people with judges like Deborah, 
    with kings like David whose family included migrants, 
    and with prophets like Daniel who lived as minorities in strange lands. 
In all these ways you remind us to focus our hope on your salvation 
    rather than in an earth-bound culture. 
And when it seemed that you were absent, you sent your Only Son.

Transgressing our sense of power, your Son was born as the baby of a virgin. 
Tempted in the ways we still are – riches, fame, and glory – 
    he chose a life of humble service, service to others even while he was betrayed. 
He drank the full cup of suffering. 
In his humiliation he was deprived of justice and tortured. 
Jesus suffered outside the city gate to make people holy through his own blood.

When he died, he crossed the border of hell. 
Three days later God raised him from the grave, exchanging death for life. 
He appeared to Mary, Mary Magdelen, Salome, and Joanna; 
    he walked with Celopas and another disciple on the road to Emmaus 
    to those on the margins. 
Then he appeared to Peter and the twelve, 
Christ, raised from the dead, presents us with salvation.
 
complied by Claudio Carvalhaes, professor of worship in New York City
 
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Then he opened their minds so they could understand the Scriptures. He told them, 
    “This is what is written: The Messiah will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, 
     and repentance for the forgiveness of sins will be preached in his name to all nations,
     beginning at Jerusalem.”
 

Glory to you who became lowly

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The Nativity by Giotto © José Luiz Bernardes Ribeiro / CC BY-SA 4.0

 
What mere human can declare the glory of the All-Life-Giver,
    who stepped down from majesty
    and humbled himself to become humanity?
 
You who lifted up humanity in your birth,
    lift up my weak mind
    to declare your birth and proclaim your grace.
 
How amazing is it that the Son dwelled completely in a body,
    that it was enough for him.
Your will was fully contained,
    yet your bounds reached wholly to the Father.
Blessed be he who, though without bounds,
    was bound!
 
Who can explain how,
    though you dwelled wholly in a body,
    you also dwelled wholly in all?
 
Your majesty is concealed from us,
    while your grace is revealed before us.
I will be silent, O Lord of majesty,
    and I will tell of your grace.
Your grace clung to you, 
    while it bowed you down to our worst.
 
Your grace made you a baby,
    and your grace made you a man.
Your grace straightened and enlarged your majesty.
Blessed is the might that became little . . .  and became great!
 
Glory to you who became lowly, 
    though your nature is lofty.
By your own will you became man,
    though you are God by nature.
Blessed be the glory which put on our image!
 
Your hope brought new hope
    when ours had broken down.
Blessed be the one who brought good news of hope!
 
Double was the happiness 
    of those who saw your birth and your day,
 yet also happy are those who have not seen,
    but who have believed.
Blessed is your happiness that added to us!
 
Ephrem the Syrian, c.306-373, Syrian hymn writer and theologian
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For in Christ lives all the fullness of God in a human body.

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A final meditation

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Sir Thomas More, via Wikimedia Commons
 
 
Give me grace, good Lord
To count the world as nothing,
To set my mind firmly on you
And not to hang on what people say;
To be content to be alone,
Not to long for worldly company,
Little by little to throw off the world completely
And rid my mind of all its business;
Not to long to hear of any worldly things;
Gladly to be thinking of you,
Pitifully to call for your help,
To depend on your comfort,
Busily to work to love you;
To know my own worthlessness and wretchedness,
To humble and abase myself under your mighty hand,
To lament my past sins,
To suffer adversity patiently, to purge them,
Gladly to bear my purgatory here,
To be joyful for troubles,
To walk the narrow way that leads to life,
To bear the Cross with Christ,
To keep the final hour in mind,
To have always before my eyes my death,
    which is always at hand,
To make death no stranger to me,
To foresee and consider the everlasting fire of hell,
To pray for pardon before the judge comes;
To keep continually in mind the passion 
    that Christ suffered for me,
For his benefits unceasingly to give him thanks;
To buy back the time that I have wasted before,
To refrain from futile chatter,
To reject idle frivolity,
To cut out unnecessary entertainments,
To count the loss of worldly possessions ,
    friends, liberty and life itself as absolutely nothing,
    for the winning of Christ;
To consider my worst enemies my best friends,
For Joseph’s brothers could never have done him
    as much good with their love and favor
    as they did with their malice and hatred.
 
Thomas More, 1478-1535, English statesman, beheaded by Henry VIII
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Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. 
Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. 
Be wretched and mourn and weep. 
Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. 
Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you.
 

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Decorate our homes with your goodness

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Highland Hospitality, John Frederick Lewis, via Wikimedia Commons
 
Lord, we want to invite you into our homes.
So we decorate them with giving to the needy, with prayers, with requests,
    and with vigils that focus increasingly on the needs of others.
There are the decorations of Christ the King.
 
We are not ashamed then of having a humble house,
    if it has this kind of furniture.
 
But the decorations that come from unstoppable greed
    are the enemy of Christ.
May those of us who are rich not pride ourselves 
    on having an expensive home.
Rather let us hide our faces, turn away from greed,
    and seek the other kind of decoration.
 
In so doing let us receive Christ in this life on earth,
    and there enjoy the eternal home,
by the grace and love you have for us in Jesus Christ,
    to whom be glory and might, world without end, amen.
 
John Chrysostom, c.349-407, Archbishop of Constantinople
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He said also to the man who had invited him, 
    “When you give a dinner or a banquet, 
        do not invite your friends or your brothers
         or your relatives or rich neighbors, 
    lest they also invite you in return and you be repaid. 
But when you give a feast, invite the poor, 
    the crippled, the lame, the blind, 
    and you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you. 
For you will be repaid at the resurrection of the just.”
 

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prayer for humility in light of future glory

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image, Alberto Fernandez Fernandez, CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons
 
 
Grant, Almighty God,
    since you have not only created me out of nothing,
  but intend to create me again in your only begotten Son;
    and since you have taken me from the lowest depths,
  so that you may raise me to the hope of your heavenly kingdom:
Grant, I pray,
   that I may not be proud or puffed up with conceit;
  but may embrace your favor with humility,
    and submit myself to you in simplicity,
  until at last I become a partaker of that glory
    your only begotten Son has acquired for me.
Amen.
 
John Calvin
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We all, with unveiled faces, 
    are looking as in a mirror at the glory of the Lord 
    and are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory;
 this is from the Lord who is the Spirit.
 

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loving Jesus, come into my soul

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image via pexels
 
O most gracious and loving Jesus,
    my Lord and my God,
    fountain of all grace.
  come into my soul with the fullness of your grace.
Jesus most patient, too long have I made you wait for me,
    yet come to me:  
        endure me a sinner, and make me, through your patience, 
        to endure all things, and to be patient with all.
Jesus most humble, make me through your humility so humble,
    that I may never lift up myself, 
    for anything against anyone, as to any one.
Jesus most loving, come with all your love into my soul,
    that I may love you with a burning love,
    and love each and everyone with your own love.
 
E.B. Pusey, 1800-1882, English churchman and leader of the Oxford Movement
 
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This is how God showed his love among us: 
He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. 
This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us 
    and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. 
Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 
No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, 
    God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.

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O Come Emmanuel

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Image from Art4TheGlryOfGod by Sharon under Creative Commons license
Our world carries the scars of the way we live, Jesus;
    the preferential treatment given
        to the few who are wealthy and powerful and famous
        leaves the rest ignored and neglected;
    the desperate quest for more
        leaves all of us feeling less, enjoying less;
    the self-protective aggression we embrace to feel safe
        leaves us and others wounded and frightened;
    the apathetic disregard for the suffering, the grieving, the dying   
        leaves us disconnected from our own humanity,
        from our ability to feel and to care.

We need our world turned upside down, Jesus;
   We need our self-importance and self-sufficiency to be undermined;
   We need a new way of being that is built on a whole new set of values:

        Humble the powerful
            and exalt the humble, we pray;
        Fill the hungry with good things,
            and keep the satisfied from taking even more;
        Give us the wisdom to let a Child lead us
            into a world of justice and love;
            into the joy of sacrifice and service and simplicity.
 
O come, Emmanuel, and ransom your captive people.
Amen.
 
John van de Laar,  South African Methodist worship minster
 
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A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse;
    from his roots a Branch will bear fruit.
The Spirit of the Lord will rest on him—
    the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding,
    the Spirit of counsel and of might,
    the Spirit of the knowledge and fear of the Lord—
and he will delight in the fear of the Lord.

He will not judge by what he sees with his eyes,
    or decide by what he hears with his ears;
 but with righteousness he will judge the needy,
    with justice he will give decisions for the poor of the earth.
He will strike the earth with the rod of his mouth;
    with the breath of his lips he will slay the wicked.
Righteousness will be his belt
    and faithfulness the sash around his waist.

The wolf will live with the lamb,
    the leopard will lie down with the goat,
 the calf and the lion and the yearling together;
    and a little child will lead them.
The cow will feed with the bear,
    their young will lie down together,
    and the lion will eat straw like the ox.
The infant will play near the cobra’s den,
    and the young child will put its hand into the viper’s nest.
They will neither harm nor destroy
    on all my holy mountain,
 for the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the Lord
    as the waters cover the sea.

 
 
 
 

to find our constant inspiration in you

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image / picryl
 
Servant Jesus,
    what love you showed to your disciples
        and what humility in your service.
    You are the Life of life, Son of God,
        yet you stooped down
        to take off the grimy sandals
        and to wash their dusty feet.
    With loving care you dried them with the towel
        make them fresh and cool.
    Since you, our Lord and Savior,
        did such lowly service for us,
        ought we not humbly to serve others also?
Lord God,
    it is not easy to walk in your way
        when we seek peace among the nations.
    We find there are many who hate peace
        and prefer to seek the victory in war.
    Even amongst our neighbors and friends
        are those who want to prepare for war.
    I am for peace;
        but when I speak, they are for war.
    In my distress I call to you, O Lord;
    give me the courage and the faith
        to speak for peace.
Spirit of God,
    you call your people to patient endurance
        that we might not fail in time of testing,
        that we might not grow weary in well-doing.
        that we should not abandon our first love.
    Help us to find our constant inspiration in you
        that the lamp may be kept burning
            as we witness by your grace.
 
John Johansen-Berg, 1935- , English Minister
 
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When he had washed their feet and put on his outer garments and resumed his place, he said to them, “Do you understand what I have done to you? You call me Teacher and Lord, and you are right, for so I am. If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have given you an example, that you also should do just as I have done to you.  Truly, truly, I say to you, a servant is not greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him.  If you know these things, blessed are you if you do them.

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