Devotional Thought of the Day:
⁹  How can a young person stay pure? By obeying your word. ¹⁰  I have tried hard to find you— don’t let me wander from your commands. ¹¹  I have hidden your word in my heart, that I might not sin against you. Psalm 119:9-11 (NLT2)

“God resists the proud, but gives his grace to the humble,”11 the Apostle Saint Peter teaches. In any age, in any human setting, there is no other way to live a godly life than that of humility. Does this mean that God takes pleasure in our humiliation? Not at all. What would he, who created all things and governs them and maintains them in existence, gain from our prostration? God only wants us to be humble and to empty ourselves, so that he can fill us. He wants us not to put obstacles in his way so that—humanly speaking—there will be more room for his grace in our poor hearts.

In our devotions this morning, we came to the verse in psalm 119, Drvien by some need, I looked up the word pure, and was a little surprsed by the definition. One of my Hebrew dictionaries talked about that form of the verb being translucent or transparent. About having nothing in you that people couldn’t see, therefore being innocent.

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We talk about leaders needing to be that way, about being transparent, about their agendas being clearly seen. We need to be as well. So that people see what they get. So that we don’t try to hide anything from them, from ourselves, or believing that somehow we can hide things from God.

That brings a different view on God and his insistence on simplicity and on humility. Humiliation is a way of stripping ourselves of all that obscures the transparency and translucency. It affects our pride, because often what we are proud about is not an accurate portrayal of who we are in Christ. Simplifying it and clearly seeing who we are.

Sometimes revealing that reveals the cracks in our personality, and how we are broken. To see that revealed is not easy. It can only be handled by depending on God toll fill in those cracks, to make us whole again, even as He has promised. He will do this, and the final creation of our lives, fully transparent, will reveal what God has made in us, what God has made of us.

A masterpiece, a work of art, something that God himself treasures.

Lord, help us to trust in You, as You remove layer after layer of that which we created to obscure who we are…and help others see the new creation You have made of us, so that it can happen to them as well!

Escrivá, Josemaría. Friends of God . Scepter Publishers. Kindle Edition.