God could have stayed aloof. He could have chosen to remain a being who dispensed wisdom

and judgement from on high. But by choosing to enter into our experience—our small pleasures and

joys, our twisted ankles and scabs, our feeling of a good night’s sleep and need of friendship, our deep

sadness when we lose someone we care about—he chose Love.

Making sure we look good is a way of life that eventually becomes exhausting and brutal. This is a difficult, ugly thing to face but it’s real so let’s not pretend. We live in a world that values and celebrates people when they keep things looking good. We also live in a world that discards people when they don’t.

Humility is what enables us to say ‘yes’ to the local life we’ve been given, to the struggles and invitations right in front of us as ordinary or crazy as they may seem. When humility blossoms, we no longer want another life, we become at home with ourselves.

Before we get to a story about the world changing, we’re given stories about overlooked people who are invited into moments of frightening vulnerability and change.

Perhaps learning to welcome and allow the way I’m being shaped would be an act of faith carrying me into a future where, like the seed, I eventually grow and blossom into something completely beyond my imagination, something more like Jesus than I’m prepared to envision for myself.