Glory Laid By

The carols are so familiar, I'd miss the oomph if I wasn't careful.

On Sunday, it was "Hark the Herald Angels Sing," and the phrase "Mild, He lays His glory by."

It's such an outrageous part of the story, really. That God, very God, the same God that spoke everything into being, the same God that is all-powerful, all-knowing, present everywhere, would chose, in this way, to stuff Himself into time and space, and come down to us...as a baby!

Not as a mighty warrior, or stately king. Not as a superstar or political leader or any other iteration of power.

But as a baby. Helpless. Mild.

I don't have to go too far to bump into the wonder of this. All it takes for me is for someone to, oh say dismiss my Master's degree because it didn't come from the 'right' school. Or call me the 'token woman' on a leadership team. Or mistake me for the secretary when I was the pastor. Or, let's face it, given the right circumstances, I can be less than "mild" if someone cuts me off in traffic.

You might have your own list. The common denominator in all of it is that somehow we feel our 'importance' has been demeaned, or our 'rights' have not been respected, and how dare they?

Mild, He lays His glory by.

In what is considered to likely be one of the first hymns of the early Church, we find these oomph-filled words.

"Who being in very nature God
did not consider equality with God
something to be used to His own advantage.
Rather, He made Himself nothing
by taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness."
Philippians 2:6-7

Mild, He lays His glory by.

So now I've gone and done it. Pretty sure the day is going to be filled with opportunities to lay any little bits of glory by.

Okay, bring it on.
Let's see where the mildness takes me.

When You're Having a Bad Hair Day But You Really Don't Care Because You've Only Just Turned One

I highly doubt my Dad would ever have signed up for Facebook, had it been a thing back then. But he sure did take a lot of pictures of his kids. I was the first, so, you know how that goes. Sorry all you second, third and other later born folks with scarcer photographic histories of your childhood.

This is circa July 1958, taken at Fair Havens Campground near Beaverton, Ontario.

Bath time. The cooking pot off to the side was used to pour the water over my head causing the bad-faux-mohawk look. And while part of me hopes my Mom was there saying, "Oh Art, let me fix her hair a little before you take the picture," there's something to be said about being young enough not to care.

Which brings me back to Facebook.

Perhaps it's ironic that I'm the one now posting this less-than-cute picture of myself as a baby. Or maybe a little on purpose. Because truth is we all sort of try to 'fix our hair a little' when presenting ourselves to the world. We can't seem to help it.

To help prove my point: What's the first thing you do when the camera comes on for a Zoom meeting?

Of course there's something to be said for proper grooming, and appropriate clothing, and even knowing the 'TMI' quotient for any particular audience. There's wisdom in knowing how much of ourselves we show to the various levels of relational intimacy circles every one of us has in our lives.

Yes.

And.

Truth is we all have bad hair days.

I'm not advocating for open disclosure of personal matters on social media. In fact, I think there are dangers and indiscretions in doing so. But I do hope two things.

One is that we can continue to grow towards finding it less and less necessary to manage our image as we find more and more identity in being cherished treasures of God.

The second is that we all do have those people in our lives with whom we can be truly ourselves, no secrets, no judgements. The people with whom we can be having a "bad hair day" and we honestly don't care, because we know we are loved unconditionally. And I guess the part B to this second one is that maybe we can be that for someone else.

I hope so.

Okay, but, in this picture, I'm a little bit cute, right?

Stay real friends.
Happy Wednesday.