Merciful Humility

I have just read Jane Williams’ The Merciful Humility of God. It is a great reminder, in so many different ways, of how God loves and values us and how God wants us to recognise that. The very title of the book, including mercy and humility, is a powerful reminder that God’s approach is very different from what we find elsewhere. She uses the image of the shepherd to remind us of this, and it is worth our remembering that shepherds would have been regarded as outcasts.

“God has always had a soft spot for shepherds, from David onwards, and the child whom the shepherds came to worship grew up to describe himself, quite often, as one of them, preferring that description to ‘king’ or ‘messiah’. There is something about shepherding that lies close to the heart of how God works; shepherds feed and care for sheep, who can give them little in the way of understanding or affection in return; shepherds protect the weak sheep against the strong predators all around; shepherds risk their own comfort and safety for the sheep. No wonder God invites them to Bethlehem.”

She carefully and rightly reminds us not to go with expectation. Too often we get caught up in thinking how things should be and we use our conventions. The book carries a clear warning against that.

“God’s activity may sometimes look wasteful, inefficient or even lacking in potency. ,,,, God’s timescale may not be ours, but that means that we have something to learn, rather than that God should change. …. God’s action is sometimes spacious, slow and hard to comprehend in its apparent lack of force, but it seems that God is to be trusted. God may work quietly, humbly, apparently at the mercy of greater forces and even accidents of history, but this is still God at work, and love is still God’s meaning.”

“Almost the first thing Jesus does at the start of his ministry is to gather around himself a disparate group of friends, and to start to offend the people who might have been able to promote his agenda. He seemed to have a clear strategy, but one that is baffling by most ordinary standards.”

She reminds us that the world’s standards and expectation will send us in the wrong direction. It may not fit with what anyone is likely to expect but, actually, God’s different way sets things up as they should be.

“To hate is to be shaped by what is hated; paradoxically, it gives power to what is hated to continue to shape life and choices. …. Whereas forgiveness brings freedom and new possibilities.”

“The humble God makes the world bigger, because God’s humility notices and includes those who do not fit the dominant narrative of the world. Those who will never be ‘successful’, as success is commonly measured, ‘succeed’ in being loved by God.”

“In Jesus, we see God’s humility lived out in the world, not claiming power or prestige or approval or safety; and we come to discover that this is a mercy and a blessing for us. We no longer have to be measured by failure or success, and so to face the fact that we all fail.”