There’s a lot to be learned about humility. Right when I think that maybe I’m starting to get it…BAM. Pride smacks me in the face. Am I the only one who feels like trying to understand humility is like grasping for the wind?
But God has been teaching me humility in rather surprising ways. He’s been showing me that one face of humility is opening wide your hands and accepting with gratitude whatever God chooses to give. Not just the good things, but the hard, painful and disappointing things too.
Without going into all the ups and downs of life’s circumstances this year, I’ll just say this: I haven’t liked all of the things God has chosen to give me. I’ve thrown up a few fists and shouted “Why, God?” because deep down I’ve bought into the idea that I deserve better. I deserve to succeed, to live life pain-free, to be happy. I become the center and it’s here, here that ingratitude and pride squelches out joy.
Wasn’t ingratitude the problem from the beginning, from the Garden of Eden? Adam and Eve had everything and yet they let themselves believe that it wasn’t enough. They thought that they deserved better, and because they chose ingratitude, they were banished from the garden and broken off from communion with their Source of eternal joy and happiness.
Ingratitude. Pride. Fists in the air. “I deserve better.” This has been our story ever since that fateful day in the garden.
Thousands of years later, a better and more perfect Adam came, and it was He (Jesus) who lived the perfect life of gratitude to His Father, gave thanks over the Last Supper, and accepted the path of suffering that His Father had willed Him to endure. If anyone deserved better, it was Jesus. He wept, grieved, and He even asked “Why?” but then we see Him doing what Adam, Eve, and everyone since have failed to do. He completely trusted His Father’s love for Him and accepted the cup that was before Him, even though it meant losing His very life. He opened wide His hands to receive and because He did, we can now live and be restored to the only source that will bring us true joy.
Humility is opening our hands and accepting with thanksgiving whatever God chooses to give. Pride clutches it’s fist at troubles and let downs and says “I deserve better!” but humility sees everything – the good, the bad, and the painful – as given from an infinitely good and loving Father, Who loves better and more fully than we could ever imagine, and who uses even our troubles to prepare us “for an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison.” [2 Corinthians 4:7]
