Three Books And A Tuesday

Three books. She could tell you the argument of each of them and where they disagree, and she has notes in the back of two.

The first one was about the self and it was rigorous. The second one was more devotional and made her cry twice. The third one she has not quite finished, which is not the fault of the book.

She stood in her kitchen this morning at twenty past seven with the kettle going and her housemate's bowl in the sink and a full day ahead of her, and she thought, quite clearly: what am I supposed to do with any of it.

Not despairingly. It was a practical question and she could not answer it.

She knows what humility is. She can define it four ways and correct three common errors about it and she has argued about it with a friend on a train.

And there is nothing in her that knows what it asks of her before nine o'clock.

If you have read about a thing and cannot find it in your Tuesday, you know exactly what I mean.

Something you put on

Let me answer the question directly, because you asked it clearly and it deserves a clear answer rather than another chapter.

Look at how Paul instructs it, because he does not treat it as a subject at all. He treats it as clothing.

Put on therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, bowels of mercies, kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness, longsuffering.Colossians 3:12

Put on. It is the ordinary word for getting dressed, and it is the same thing you did this morning without a thought, and the list runs like a drawer being opened: mercy, kindness, humility, gentleness, patience.

And notice the four words before the instruction, because everybody rushes past them and they are the whole reason it works. As the elect of God, holy and beloved. That is who is doing the dressing. The garment goes on somebody who is already chosen and already loved, which means it is not the thing that makes you acceptable and never was.

You are already chosen and loved, and the humility goes on somebody who is already both. That is not my encouragement. It is written in Colossians 3:12, and it is the Holy Spirit and not my sentence who carries a written line past a person's ears into the place where they actually live.

So the answer to your kitchen question is smaller than three books. You have something to put on this morning rather than something to become, and it is available at twenty past seven. The word settled that before you were born, and the same Spirit who inspired it is in the kitchen while you read this.

Why it will not turn into a practice

Here is worth saying plainly, because you are the sort of person who will otherwise leave this page with a plan.

Do not make a plan. If you build a scheme out of this you will fail it inside a week, and then the failing will become the subject, and you will be further away than you were this morning.

Clothes are not a discipline. Nobody has a practice of getting dressed. You do it, and then it is done, and you do not think about your shirt again until tomorrow.

That is the shape of it. Not a level to reach, not a state to maintain, not a thing anybody grades. One morning at a time, and this morning is the only one available to you.

And there is no scale here. Nothing on this page is measuring you against anybody who has been doing it longer, and there is no version of the Christian life in which humility is a league table, because the moment it becomes measurable it has turned into the thing it describes.

You have a garment rather than a grade, and it goes on the same way tomorrow as it does today. Colossians 3 puts it in a list of clothes; His Spirit is the one who makes an ordinary morning the place where it actually happens.

One plain word, because a page cannot see the room you are in. If part of the reason you are reaching for this is that somebody near you makes you pay for taking up space, nothing here is asking you to absorb that. Reaching for help is not a failure of humility, and in the United States 988 answers by call or text at any hour.