Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you. ~ James 4:10 ESV
Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up. ~ James 4:10 NIV
On October 14, 2012, Austrian daredevil Felix Baumgartner broke the sound barrier, falling from high above the earth to became the first human to travel beyond the speed of sound. During a four-minute plus free fall, he plummeted at a pace of about 834 miles per hour.
While it’s a great personal triumph and a remarkable feat, what has stuck with me about the post-event buzz is the commentary from Baumgartner. In interviews, he’s quoted as saying, “When I was standing there on top of the world, you become so humble, you do not think about breaking records anymore, you do not think about gaining scientific data. The only thing you want is you want to come back alive.”
Think about that for a second. You’re on top of the world. Alone. Few of us can lay claim to ever really being at the top of the world, but we all have probably had times where we are figuratively there. And there are really two emotions that can come of that: arrogance or humility. Sometimes, one will precede the other. But in Baumbartner’s case, I like his position. He also said…
“I wish the world could see what I see. And sometimes you have to go really high to see how small you are.” (emphasis added)
I can think of similar moments in my own. The first time I saw the Grand Canyon for instance. I’ll never forget standing at the edge of that massive crater and watching the sun rise, slowly displaying God’s majesty as the massive wonder came into full view. I remember looking down and thinking about the fall that would occur if the railing gave out or if I were too careless and made a foolish misstep.
That was in 1996. I had just finished my first year of college. Had been a Christian but just a year or two. At the time, I really didn’t have much perspective of eternity and really couldn’t appreciate the enormity of the situation. It would have been a great time to meditate and thank God for the gifts He’d provided me. Instead, the most I could muster was a realization of how SMALL I really was in comparison to where I stood.
Standing on the edge of the world, feeling small in God’s Glory
Fast forward about a decade and a half. That small feeling was an equally small reminder. Life had changed considerably. I’d been on two missions in Mexico, gotten married, had three children, experienced a solid career and had many other significant life events along the way.
Somewhere in that hustle and bustle though, I had lost that feeling. I had developed an incredible and somewhat overwhelming feeling of anxiety. I won’t go into the detail here, but I will confess that life had caught up to me at the height of a stressful situation where I felt absolutely no power and an incredible feeling of desperation.
Desperation gave way to hopelessness and hopelessness had given way to depression (something I’ve always battled). I had nowhere to turn and really had nobody that could help.
I battled alone. And that was the first mistake.
Tomorrow, I’ll share the rest of the 1Glory.