Humility is an odd trait because it requires that one step away from oneself, which would suggest you or I have to in some way “try” to be humble—as if it is a contest . . . which seems to run quite upstream to humility itself! A “most humble” award would be rather ironic. How do we attain it?
A primary step is simply to get yourself out of the way—out of the way of others, yourself—out of the way of God. Taking a step back from the front of the line will enable us to be better used by God. If my first priority is myself, then, of course, everyone and everything else comes in second and third and fourth place, and so on. If I step back from myself, then it opens the possibility that someone or something else, which has little to do with what I want, blossoms. That is particularly true if we want to be used by God to advance His presence in this world and to serve His children around us.
Moses was a great man, but he was humble. He knew (and learned throughout life’s journey) that God’s will and way were more important than his. The end result? A nation of people was freed and given a new home away from captivity.
The word “humility” actually comes from the Latin humilitas, a derivative of sorts from the adjective humilis, which means not only humble, but also “from the earth” or “ground.” A close relative of the word is “humus,” which is the dark organic matter we find in soil. Humus is essential to the health of other plants; in fact, the life of other plants depends on humus. Interestingly enough, however, it is composed in large part from the decay (death) of plant matter. This death of life makes way for more life.
As we step from season to season, as summer gives way to autumn, life continues. If summer had cognitive ability, we might say that it knows its place. When it is time to yield to the fall, it humbles itself. Few are more readily identified with humility than Mother Teresa. This small nun of Calcutta could be tending to the wounds of the horrifically impoverished one day and addressing a joint session of Congress the next, yet she maintained that Christ-like quality of humility. She once said, “If you are humble, nothing will touch you, neither praise nor disgrace, because you know what you are.”
In the end, humility is not so much something one achieves, but rather simply receives by stepping aside for others. For Christians, it is for Christ to rule in our hearts. I once read that humility is not thinking less of yourself but instead thinking of yourself less.
Great things can happen when we yield to God’s power. Moses freed a nation; Mother Teresa founded a home for the poor known round the world. But neither would have happened without humility, without stepping aside from their agenda and giving way to God’s. As summer yields to fall so that the rich buffet of colors spring to life, when we yield to God his life grows larger still. Perhaps it’s time to consider a bit of self-sinking.
Spend a moment or two honestly thinking on your own humility. What are some concrete steps you could take to step back from what you want so that others can be blessed? What are ways you can more faithfully yield to Jesus so that he can work his will through you?
A Prayer
Lord, let me live from day to day,
In such a self-forgetful way,
That even when I kneel to pray,
My pray’r shall be for OTHERS.
Help me in all the work I do
To ever be sincere and true,
And know that all I’d do for You
Must needs be done for OTHERS.
Let “Self” be crucified and slain
And buried deep, nor rise again
And may all efforts be in vain
Unless they be for OTHERS.
So when my work on earth is done,
And my new work in heav’n’s begun,
May I forget the crown I’ve won,
While thinking still of OTHERS.
Yes, others, Lord, yes others,
Let this my motto be;
Help me to live for others,
That I may live like Thee.
Amen.
—Charles D. Meigs, d. 1869
13 Cf. Proverbs 3:34.
Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.
—Deuteronomy 6:4–5
Are you a gardener? I am a bit of an amateur. My wife is leagues beyond my capabilities, but I do have a particular few items in our yard to which I tend. At summer’s end, things need to be done to tend to the garden.
For instance, I grow peppers, but we had a lot of rain this summer, and too much rain does not make for healthy pepper plants. In years past, I have merely cut them back for the following year’s growth. This year, I just pulled out the unhealthy plants and tossed them away. There were other plants in the yard that—as annuals—had come to their natural end and they too needed to be uprooted and tossed. To make the garden flourish in the next season of its life, some things simply needed to be rooted out.
Idolatry, the worship or devotion of one’s life to anything that would supplant God, is one thing that is most consistently condemned throughout the Judeo-Christian story. This passage from Deuteronomy is somewhat of God’s “one-liner” about his rightful place in the hearts of his children. Written about 1400 bce, after the Exodus from Egypt and before entrance into the Promised Land, most of the book is simply a long reminder of Moses to the Israelites about all that God has done for them, all God is doing for them, and all God wants to do for them. In return, they should constantly be on guard about allowing anything or anyone to take God’s place.
Now we sometimes see that as a negative. God is occasionally described as a “jealous God,” desiring no competition for His rightful place in our lives.14 But is God jealous for His sake or for our own? The testimony of scripture would be that God is not trying to squelch us by restricting our worship and devotion to Him, and Him alone—but really trying to benefit us. Why? Because putting anything in God’s place drives us away from God and what He wants for us.
Blaise Pascal, a famous French mathematician and philosopher, put it like this: “What is it, then, that this desire and this inability proclaim to us, but that there was once in man a true happiness of which there now remain to him only the mark and empty trace, which he in vain tries to fill from all his surroundings, seeking from things absent the help he does not obtain in things present? But these are all inadequate, because the infinite abyss can only be filled