This is a continuation of yesterday’s partial posting of Chip Stam’s Worship Quote of the Week for this week. Visit Chip’s site for more Xmas*-related offerings.
PHILIPPIANS 2:1-8 (NIV)
If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any fellowship with the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and purpose. Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.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!
HOLD FAST TO THE HUMILITY OF GOD (Augustine)
All that springs from the humility of this sublime moment [the birthday of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ] is grasped by the faith of Christians, while far from the comprehension of the godless; since God “has hidden these things from the wise and the prudent, and revealed them to the little ones” (Luke 10:21).
So let the humble hold fast to the humility of God, so that this wonderful support may, like a beast of burden, lighten the burden of their weakness, and they may arrive at the heights of God. As for the wise and prudent, they aim at the loftiness of God without believing in his humble lowliness; and so, by overstepping his humility and reaching his loftiness, they have remained, empty and weightless, inflated and elated, dangling, as it were, at a windy middle level between heaven and earth.
They are indeed wise and prudent, but in the affairs of this world, not of the one by whom the world was made. Because if they were possessed of the true wisdom, which is from God and is God, they world understand that it was possible for flesh to be taken on by God without his being changed into flesh; they would understand that he took to himself what he was not, while remaining what he was; and that he came to us in a man without ever departing from the Father; and that he continued to be what he is, while appearing to us as what we are; and that his divine power was confined in the body of an infant without being withdrawn from the whole mass of the universe.
—Augustine of Hippo (354-430), from a Christmas sermon preached in the year 396, as found in PROCLAIMING THE CHRISTMAS GOSPEL: ANCIENT SERMONS AND HYMNS FOR CONTEMPORARY INSPIRATION. Edited by John D. Witvliet and David Vroege. Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2004, page 30. ISBN 0-8010-6405-8
“O come, let us adore Him, Christ the Lord.”
“Where meek souls will receive him still, the dear Christ enters in.”
I’ll have something to say about humility, “meekness,” and blunt speech in days to come, so hold on, readers, cos we may be in for a very bumpy ride… 🙂
Trackposted to The Pink Flamingo, Perri Nelson’s Website, The Amboy Times, Dumb Ox News, and The HILL Chronicles, Pet’s Garden Blog, Rightwing Guy, 123 Beta, Woman Honor Thyself, Adam’s Blog, stikNstein… has no mercy, The Uncooperative Blogger ®, The World According to Carl, and Conservative Cat, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.
*BTW, if there be a single twc reader who’s offended by the “Xmas” formulation, please email me for private instruction. 😉