A humble post

 

I had a beautiful post about humility almost finished and ready to post a couple weeks ago. Unfortunately it had a flaw: it was beautiful. It was poetic. But in the moment that humility is needed, nothing about it is beautiful or poetic. It’s raw. It’s ugly. Often it hurts. It means admitting that the things I like the least about myself exist, and allowing them to be visible. At least that’s been my experience of humility.

And I’m stuck here. I’ve been sitting looking humility in the eye for months now, sometimes choosing it, sometimes not, but always staring right at it. The Bible has so many good things to say about it. Humility is a doorway to grace. That sounds great. Humility is the fastest way to look like Jesus. Wow, that sounds beautiful. Humility makes space and basically invites God into your circumstances and life. I think most of us would say that sounds like a great deal.

And yet.

And yet that one word is so hard for me to grasp. It means laying down my rights and my opinions. It means looking for spaces to serve even when I feel spent, or looking for places to rest at Jesus’ feet when I know that today is the day the servants are going to be honored publicly. It means placing so much value on people around me that it almost tangibly hurts, but not taking on that burden because I know it isn’t mine to bear.

Whew, this thing called humility. It’s complicated, right? But it’s so very simple. Look for Jesus. He was a servant to all. He poured out his life even to the point of the ugliest death imaginable in his day. He loved even when faced with betrayal and judgments. When I find Jesus and do the things He did and the things He is doing, I will naturally be in a place of humility.  So that’s what I’m trying to do. And some days it hurts. And some days it is so ugly. And most days I fall oh so short of humility as the flesh flares up and tries to convince me to let it have a shot. But that doorway to grace is undeniable and I couldn’t live without Gods grace every moment of every day.

So if you’ve never tried it, sit a while with humility, see what you can glean from its wisdom. And if you have already learned from humility please share your experience, because if there's anything that humility has taught me, it is that I have so much more to learn from others.