Humility [part two]

By Pastor Paul Gauche

Today’s Word: ‘HUMILITY’ as in… Part Two of some really well developed, finely honed, and helpful thoughts on Humility.

Again, please tell me you caught the irony, if not the sarcasm in that.

In a riveting story from Luke’s Gospel (14:1, 7-11), Jesus watches a group of grown men treating one another like an unruly group of adolescents in an elementary school cafeteria. No humility. A great deal of humiliation. I imagine Jesus leaning forward and saying, “Look guys, If you walk around with your nose in the air, you’re going to end up flat on your face. But if you’re content to be simply yourself, you’ll become more than yourself.”

Content being yourself leads to becoming more than yourself. That’s money. That’s humility.

The word humility is – no pun intended – grounded and rooted deeply in the Latin word humus, which means earth, or ground, soil, all of the things gathered up into the hands of God when we were created, and life was breathed into us. We are simply, and essentially humus in God’s hands, constantly being formed and fashioned into the image of God every day; breathed into with the breath of God.

Humility is about embracing our essential, grounded, rooted selves that God is working nurturing. Humility is understanding that we are the humus, the ground, the soil, the holy dirt of the garden that God is growing which will bring more life to the world. When Jesus challenged the dinner guests to stop lifting themselves up by putting everyone else down, he wanted them to see themselves as growing into the people God was creating them to be. Jesus was challenging them to be simply themselves so that God could continue to grow them into who they could become. That’s humility. Humility isn’t something that we learn by studying or trying harder to achieve. Humility isn’t about holding up our false selves to others.  Humility is about living into our true selves; living into who God is calling us to be for others. That’s humility.

What resonates most for you with this view of humility?

#100days50words

Paul Gauche is the Pastor of Life Transitions at Prince of Peace. His posts are part of his #100days50words project, where be blogs about a different word each day. You can follow his project on Instagram (@pgauche), or on his blog, Thriving Rhythms.