GRANDEUR COMES WITH THE TERRITORY OF BEING A KING. Comfort, privilege, adulation. And what if a king is appointed by divine decree, because he has been forever linked to the eternal King? It's perhaps understandable that the life of such royalty should warrant even more than the usual pomp and circumstance.
But quite the opposite happened with Christ Jesus, the promised Messiah who would come to be known as "King of the Jews." The life of this king was anything but overplayed. His beginnings were humble. And his life remained so. He carried this humility with him as he lived out his divinely royal mission. The greatness of this king could be measured not simply by his human accomplishments, or by those of his followers, but by the humility that Jesus was born into and continued to live and teach throughout his life.
Humility enters Jesus' story early, as is seen in the nativity. In this simple drama, three of the main players were considered very low on society's scale: a shepherd, a woman, and a baby. When the angel announced to Mary that she would be mother to the Messiah, she vowed to serve the Lord in whatever capacity she could, and even referred to herself as a slave, or "the handmaid of the Lord." Luke 1:38.
