Jitterbugging for Jesus

Being a jungle country as much as an oceanic nation, Belize has a kazillion varieties of trees — including her beautiful bamboo trees. (Never mind that bamboo is, technically, a grass. Let’s not get technical here.)

Every time I happen upon a riverside grove of bamboo in the bush, I think of how Jesus emptied himself of his God-self — which, by the way, he didn’t do by giving up his deity.

Our Lord emptied himself of his divine glory until his return to glorification at the right hand of the God. (See Jesus’s long discourse in John 17, especially John 17:5 here.)

Consider that a bamboo tree is empty on the inside but more solid and sturdy than many rocks and stones on the outside. You can break a stone with a sledgehammer or even chip away at one with a hammer. Try to shatter a bamboo pole with any kind of hammer and you might knock yourself out.

The more a bamboo tree grows — and the video above gives you an idea of how big they grow — the more hollow it becomes on the inside.

Maybe a bamboo tree should be the symbolic tree of Christmas — it would be far more apropos than the trees we chop down and water and allow to die for disposal after Christmas, wouldn’t it?

Here’s Paul’s wonderful word on the humiliation and obedience of Jesus all the way to death on the cross in Philippians 2:

5 Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,

6 who, though he was in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God
as something to be exploited,

7 but emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave,
being born in human likeness.
And being found in human form,

8 he humbled himself
and became obedient to the point of death -—
even death on a cross.

9 Therefore God also highly exalted him
and gave him the name
that is above every name,

10 so that at the name of Jesus
every knee should bend,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,

11 and every tongue should confess
that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.