Lowly Worm

"For thus says the One who is high and lifted up, who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy: ‘I dwell in the high and holy place, and also with him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly, and to revive the heart of the contrite’" (Isaiah 57:15).

You may remember Lowly Worm, the fictional character that graced the pages of Richard Scarry's children's books. Lowly was an earthworm.  

Sometimes I feel like Lowly. 

Especially after some ugly display of the flesh.

God allows us to humiliate ourselves from time to time, not to shame us but to remind us that we are "dust and ashes, and full of sin." “(Failure) cures our illusions about ourselves and teaches us to depend on God. We learn, on the one hand, that we cannot trust ourselves even in our best moments...” (C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity). 

We play the fool, humiliate and shame ourselves. Our well–earned humiliation, however, can be the beginning of our healing if it leads us to humility and contrition, for this is the key that opens God’s heart. He himself has said, “This is the person to whom I look, he that is humble and contrite in spirit, and who trembles at my word” (Isaiah 66:2). God resists the proud, but he cannot resist the humble. Though fallen, they fall into his welcoming arms. 

Julian of Norwich has written, “When you are distressed, then, by your failures, do not run from the Lord—as if any of us could hide from Him! Instead, run to Him quickly...and say, ‘I have corrupted myself and made myself filthy, and I hate it because now I’m not like you. I cannot be clean again—cannot be free from this corruption—unless you come and lift me and help me.’ And He always comes…." (I Promise You a Crown).

"Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me."

David Roper

9.29.18