The King Who Climbed Down

Dear ones,

I am writing this with my hand pressed flat on the page, the way you write when you badly want to be believed. So lean in close.

Have you ever wanted to be first? First in line. First to be picked. First to be seen, so that everyone would know your name and say, "There she is. There he is. Look how high they have climbed."

It is a real wanting. I know it. And I know the cold thing underneath it too: the fear of being last. Of being the one nobody chooses. Of standing at the back where no one looks.

What comes next is hard to believe, and every word of it is true.

There is a King. The highest King. Higher than the highest mountain, higher than the stars, higher than the place where the angels sing. He has everything. He needs nothing. And he is loved, oh how he is loved, with all the love there has ever been.

And this King climbed down.

He came all the way down, letting go of the top with both hands and keeping nothing back for himself.

He did not clutch his crown the way you might clutch the last good thing in your hands. He set it down. He came into our world small, as a baby, with skin that could feel the cold. He grew up. He got tired. He got hungry. He let people misunderstand him.

And then he went lower still.

He wrapped a towel around himself and washed the dusty feet of his friends, the way the lowest servant would. Picture the King down on the floor, holding somebody's tired foot in his two hands.

And lower.

All the way down to a cross. To the very back of everything, the place we are most afraid of, where it feels like no one is chosen and no one is coming. He did not say, "I am too important for this." He went there. For you. So that wherever you ever feel last and alone, you would find he had already been there first, waiting.

He chose to be last, and he chose it for love.

Then came the turn.

Because Jesus went all the way down, God lifted him all the way up. Up past the cross, up past the grave, up past the stars, up to the highest place of all, and gave him a name above every name. The One who knelt on the floor is the One every knee will bow to. The One who went last is first forever.

The world says you rise by climbing over people, by grabbing, by shoving to the front. The kingdom of Jesus is turned the other way round. In his kingdom, the way up is down. The way to be lifted is to love.

So when you are afraid of being last, remember the King who chose it. He went to the very back of the line, and found you there, and took your hand.

And he has not let go of it since. He is walking you up from the back of the line, past every place you were overlooked, home to where the singing is. Hold on to him, dear ones. He knows the road in both directions, and he has never once let go of a hand he came down to hold.

With all my heart,
your friend who knows the King