Celebrating humility is an odd notion. If someone told me they were celebrating humility, I would probably ask them (sarcastically) if they were selfish much. But this Lifestyle Celebration of ours spans a breadth of meanings for us. We celebrate Christ’s humility, that God would embrace humanity so deeply despite the many ways we fall short. We celebrate in and with humility, overwhelmed by the miracles, love and freedom we’ve experienced and witnessed around the world. We celebrate the discipline of humility, proclaiming a new way of being in the world and a new way of being with each other. There have been many lessons and mistakes that have humbled us in our lives and work. But what has humbled us most is the constant, abundant grace we continue to receive each and every day.
Dorothy Day once said, “The only way to live in any true security is to live so close to the bottom that when you fall you do not have far to drop, you do not have much to lose.” Perhaps the only “true security” that really exists is in our practices of humility, where we honor the image of God in others, and the image of God in ourselves. In this issue, we’re trying to inch just a little bit closer to the “bottom” of things. If there is anything you can take away from this issue, it is to always remember that we (and you, too!) have truly seen the face of Jesus in our friends. It doesn’t get much closer to humility than that. We continue to pray that when he was hungry, thirsty, and imprisoned, that we were compassionate and loving in our response. In your mercy, Lord, forgive us when we were not.
Because the more willing we’ve been to live closer to what the world sees at the bottom, the closer we’ve been to the presence of God. To the love of God. To the grace of God. We’re all chasing after the same things—justice, mercy, love. We’re all pursuing God in the midst of both brokenness and joy. It is this pursuit, the most humbling task of all, that has brought us more joy than we could ever imagine. We’ve learned in celebrating the last 20 years that, truly, we’ve got nothing to lose. We pray that this issue brings you closer to realizing that neither do you.