Emma is a sophomore at Wheaton College as well as a member of College Church. Her parents are Keith and Melody Bodger. Says Emma, "I have been going to College Church for almost six years and have enjoyed reading your Saturday morning musings for almost as long." We're delighted to post a musing from Emma today.

I read a great devotional a few months ago, written by Amy Carmichael. She wrote, “Take the opposite of your temptation and look up inwardly, naming that opposite: Untruth—Thy truth, Lord; unkindness—Thy kindness, Lord; impatience— Thy patience, Lord; selfishness—Thy unselfishness, Lord; roughness—Thy gentleness, Lord…” and so on.

I decided to try this and come up with an opposite word for my every sin and look up to God as my source. This worked until I found myself feeling prideful. Pride, that pesky sin most easy to fall prey to, the prompt inside that isn’t even a voice because all it has to do is point toward yourself. and you think, “Yeah, what about me?" Pride is not a skeleton in your closet, and it doesn't lurk in the recesses of your basement. Rather it dresses respectably and slides quietly into the passenger seat of your sinful heart, making you forget it’s there.

So as I was trying to apply this simple practice as a defense against this perpetual sin, I found that I couldn’t do it when I deemed humility as the opposite of pride. I couldn’t pray, “Thy humility, God” to the God of the universe! This is Yahweh, "the Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty." (Exodus 34:6-7)

He is the only one who shouldn’t be humble—the one who deserves all glory forever and ever. Utterly and completely sovereign and good. So when I felt my pride taking hold, I'd beseech God, “Thy…” and then halt, feeling the impossibility of my supplication.

After several weeks of this, I remembered the hymn Paul wrote in Philippians 2:5-11 (CEB version):
Adopt the same attitude as that of Christ Jesus.
who, existing in the form of God,
did not consider equality with God
as something to be exploited
Instead he emptied himself
by assuming the form of a servant,
taking on the likeness of humanity.
And when he had come as a man,
he humbled himself by becoming obedient
to the point of death—
even to death on a cross.
For this reason God highly exalted him
and gave him the name
that is above every name,
so that at the name of Jesus
every knee will bow—
in heaven and on earth
and under the earth—
and every tongue will confess
that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.

Jesus, equal with God, chose to become human, taking on all of our human
limitations, in a position without prestige, dying in the most ugly, shameful way possible at the time. He washed the feet of his friends and disciples, he hung around with and healed people no one else would have anything to do with.

And this is the God of the universe. He is worthy of all blessing and honor and glory, the Righteous One who will open the scroll when the time comes. He took
on human flesh and lived as a servant and died as a criminal.

When I pray to God, the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, I can pray "Thy humility," because impossibly, bizarrely, in the greatest reversal of all time, he humbled himself in order to take the penalty of our sins so that we can be made clean.