Hebrews 2:5-9

Now God did not subject the coming world, about which we are speaking, to angels. But someone has testified somewhere, “What are human beings that you are mindful of them, or mortals, that you care for them? You have made them for a little while lower than the angels; you have crowned them with glory and honor, subjecting all things under their feet.” Now in subjecting all things to them, God left nothing outside their control. As it is, we do not yet see everything in subjection to them, but we do see Jesus, who for a little while was made lower than the angels, now crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone.

According to the writer if Hebrews we have a lot in common with Jesus. For a while both Jesus and we live a life a little lower than the angels. For a while we do, but we will not always. While we do, in the meantime between this life and our resurrection to new life, we live less than an angelic life. What the life of angels is like or looks like is a moot point because we have no idea. We can only imagine. What we imagine so often is that that life is certainly better than this life. So be it.

But this life is not so shabby either, if we take this passage at face value. The writer says that we human beings are crowned with glory and honor even if we are less than the angels. All things in this life in this world are our subjects. We rule over them because God has given this world to us to be the only place where we live and move and are to have our being. So if we think any less of ourselves, that is our problem. God seems to think very highly of us.

As well he should, too, because God created us. We may not be on the level of the angelic at this moment in time, but we are not mincemeat either. We should never think less of ourselves because we may be lesser beings at the moment.

But we do and we do it all the time. The problem is not that we think less of ourselves because we are not angels. That thought probably never even occurs to us. Rather, we think less of ourselves when we begin to compare ourselves to someone else, someone we deem more intelligent, more handsome or beautiful, more talented, more successful, more whatever-we-are-not. We think in those terms. God does not.

God thinks in terms of how good and glorious we are, of how much good we each can do with the gifts we have been given individually by him. God does not look at me and think less of me because I can’t play the piano like Van Clyburn. I may think I pale in comparison when I try to match my gifts with his. But, again, that is my problem. What I am to do, what we are all to do, is use whatever gifts that are given to the best of our ability. Doing that is our crown of glory and honor.

I pray: Lord, I know I am not always grateful for the gifts you have given me and that I often think less of myself. Help me to remember that you love me just as I am and want me to do the best I can for your honor and glory and even my own. Amen.