I really didn't abandon the blog on purpose. I will post again...hopefully sooner than later.

Humility

*This is notes from my journal earlier this year.

The characteristic of humility has been something I've though about often over the past year or so. I've been reading about it and pondering what exactly it means, trying to figure out what it looks like in everyday life.

In reading and thinking about humility I've developed a handy definition to help me remember what it is: everything I am not. The more I look at humility the more clearly I see the lack of it in my life. Pride is such a sneaky sin. When you slam the door in its face, it slips around back and crawls in an open window. And there is always an open window. T.S. Eliot spoke truth when he said, "Humility is the hardest of all virtues to achieve; nothing dies harder than the desire to think well of oneself."

I give lip service to the desire to be a servant of both God and man, but I find within myself an altogether opposite desire: to be looked upon favorably by those around me. It is this desire that prompts way too many of my words and deeds.

I'm learning that it's not enough to do the right thing. We must do the right thing with the right motive. We may be able to white-knuckle our way through the right actions, but we can't while-knuckle our way to the right motives. If I say with my mouth, "I forgive you," but my real reason for doing so is to make me look like the better person, it is worthless. I am then no more than an actor putting on a show. I don't want to just "put on a show."

I want to do the right thing for the right reason. But how does this come about in our lives? How do we get the right motives? It is the work of God. Author John Ortberg used the analogy of a sailboat. We can put up our sails, but we can't make the wind blow. That's something God does. We can also "put up our sails," spiritually so to speak by reading God's Word, praying, and being quick to obey when God has made a course of action clear. Then somehow, in some way, when you're not looking God changes you on the inside. You wake up one day and realize that you're looking at things quiet differently, as if you are seeing them the way they really are for the first time. Then it happens again...and again. And, as Donald Miller might say, it's quiet beautiful really.