Thursday's reading is Philippians 2 vs 5-11
We talk about 'being humbled'. It's not something that we usually have any control over. Infoplease gives the meaning of humble as "to lower in condition, importance, or dignity; abase."
But Jesus humbled Himself. He lowered His own condition, took Himself out of the continual presence of God the Father,and became a man. Not an important man, not a king or a priest, or a teacher; he became a normal workman.
But that was not the end of the humiliation. He was then humbled still further when He was handed over for arrest, when the crowds called for His death, when He was executed with common criminals.
He gave up all His glory and lay in a borrowed tomb, somewhere for the body to rot. It wouldn't take long in that hot climate, the owner of the tomb could bank on the process being completed long before he needed it back.
But that is not the way it worked out. Jesus did not rot in the tomb. He was not forgotten as a criminal, he was not left on this planet. God raised Him back up to His right hand. And it is this exalted Jesus that we worship, the Jesus that was not ashamed to die a criminal's death so that we might live with the Father in heaven forever.
Tim
