sound of a soft breath

I am journaling through the book titled The Essential Jesus: 100 Readings Through the Bible's Greatest Story written by Whitney T. Kuniholm. In reflecting on this passage Kuniholm wrote "The Creator of the universe was willing to serve his creatures."

Christ's attitude of mind:

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)

I think this is one of those passages that can just simply blow you over. It leaves me speechless. Jesus willingly left his eternal throne, his supreme place, and became a man. Think about it. He limited himself in many ways by becoming a human being. To really understand this I am trying to imagine what that must of been like for Jesus.


From an ant's perspective we humans are probably overwhelming. Not that the ant has the ability to understand this fact. But imagine they can. We humans are huge. There is a huge difference between what humans can do and what ants can do. To ants the human world must be unimaginable. Our power and strength must be beyond their understanding. From science we know ants are incredibly strong, powerful, and smart ... in their world ... for their size. I have heard that ants can lift things 20 times their own body weight. In looking up ants I also found that if the ant was our size they would move at about 35-40 mph compared to our average 3 mph. In the insect world ant brains are the largest. So in their world, for their size, ants are intelligent and powerful, but in our world they are just little bugs crawling around and dig tiny little holes.

Ok, now imagine that we had the power to become an ant. We could shrink down to their size, turning into an ant, with an ant brain and body, and live like an ant. I know it sounds crazy. But just think about it. Look at what we would have to give up. I realize there are many flaws in this analogy - the gap between God and us humans is much greater than between us and ants. For one thing we did not design and create ants. Who would ever give up their place as a human in this world to become an ant and live in their world?

Jesus gave up his place to become human. He gave up his view of eternity to live in a finite place and a finite time here on earth.

In describing Jesus as humble Philip Yancey writes, in his book The Jesus I Never Knew,

... the events of Christmas point inescapably to what seems like and oxymoron: a humble God. The God who came to earth came not in a raging whirlwind nor in a devouring fire. Unimaginably, the Maker of all things shrank down, down, down, so small as to become an ovum, a single fertilized egg barely visible to the naked eye, and egg that would divide and redivide until a fetus took shape, enlarging cell by cell inside a nervous teenager."

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