From the Corner Office to the Corner Cubicle

I knew the change was coming.
I had agreed that it made good business sense.
But the day that Human Resources came in and asked how quickly I could vacate my office so they could get someone else moved in, it felt like my lungs had been filled with concrete - externally I think I was mostly composed, but inside I was on the verge of panic.

It took several trips to carry my belongings out of my nice big comfortable office, down the stairs, out the front door, and into the cubicle farm next door, where I had my pick of the available 3' x 5' cubes!

What should have taken 10 minutes took the better part of an hour. Mostly because it took time to assure each person I passed in the hallway that this move to the cube was not a demotion. Of course I didn't say it in those words, but I literally felt like I couldn't stop explaining the reason for the move; it was like Tourette's syndrome, minus the cussing and twitching - okay, maybe it wasn't like Tourette's, but it was impulsive.

A melancholy fog rolled in while I settled in at my new desk. I remember saying to someone that God must be trying to teach me something about pride. It seemed that without realizing it I had let my office (with it's big desk, space for small meetings, four walls, ceiling, and door) become a significant part of my identity. There was pride in my heart about what I felt like that office said about my status and importance within the company and as a man. Moving into the cube was like opening a trap door beneath me sending my perception of my value into a free fall.

Thankfully God didn't make me wait too long before He started impressing some thoughts on my heart. My initial response had been to feel that I was less valuable because of being moved into the cube farm. But God wasn't trying to just teach me something about pride by "knocking me down a few rungs" - he had something deeper in mind, something bigger!

We so often accept false dichotomies; we can only see two answers to a question and forget that God works on an entirely different plane. We look at ourselves (usually in comparison to someone else), make an assessment of our relative worth, and feel pride or self-hatred. But these are just opposite sides of the same coin; both pride and self-hatred base our value on our own possessions, performance, or abilities. God does want to eradicate pride from our lives, but His answer is not to have us trade in pride for self-hatred. God's answer is to free us from this faulty thinking entirely and to call us to look beyond ourselves to find our worth in relation to Him and who he says we are.

Who am I in Christ according to God?
- I am a child of Father God.
- I am a saint, called by God and set apart for His purposes.
- I am an ambassador of the King of the universe.
- I am a man who has been forgiven and accepted.
- I am His workmanship (handiwork) created in Christ Jesus for good works which He has prepared in advance that we should walk in them.

- I am not an unimportant man in a cubicle.
- I am also not, and never was, an important man in an office.
- I am neither of those men.
- By God's grace I am someone entirely different; where I sit does not determine my value and identity.

Note: Neil T Anderson has a devotional book called "Who I am in Christ" that explores this theme in much more detail.