Becoming Humble: What's Hope Got to Do With It?

In a post-enlightened world, where God is viewed to be under man rather than man under God, we find ourselves in a massive amount of disunity. We incorrectly call upon the past to support our proclamations for the future. We know everything, we stand our ground and we live in a spiraling whirl of "the moment" without regard to consequences of our actions. Acting as our own authority in everything, we live our lives in that moment scenario, over and over again, without a sense of hope.

Instead, we need to call on all of our senses to humble ourselves before one another. Our service to each other should surpass the service and good of ourselves Philippians 2:3 - "Do nothing from rivalry or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves." That's pretty direct. So why don't we do that?

I can only give myself as an example. And for me it comes from my own human nature, especially when I am in a not so good place. You all know that I've been experiencing challenges the last 8 months, and that the challenges keep presenting themselves nearly weekly. I have two choices on how to handle things....with my dark side of pride or my light side of humility.

When I reference light and dark, they are sides we each have and carry with us. The good and the bad, the virtue and the sin. It is different for each of us and we can explore it individually if anyone would like to start these discussions. But for this moment and this post, let me explore how the dark side can and has effaced itself.

Pride is not just the puffiness we experience when our kids make a goal, get into the perfect college,, our spouse gets a promotion and we can get a new house, car, etc. Those certainly show up as happy, proud moments, The darkness is when we hold pride as the gauge for what we do, how we do it and how we respond to others. It is also when we are too "proud" to humble ourselves to others. We can do things better than others, we know what someone needs better than they do and don't allow them to experience their own growth, and we are too "proud" to let people help us when we are in need. All these are traps we fall into when pride takes over in our lives and it's like being on a carousel ride that you can't get off of.

Instead, we are called to humble ourselves. To uplift and uphold one another. Not let selfishness or conceit or pride push us into superiority. Becoming humble means we allow ourselves to become vulnerable. It means we awaken our souls to the hope we have in the journey as we each travel the path we are on. Hope is infused in our lives when we become humble, and I know it is a life-long battle for some of us, but grasping onto that hope enables us to look and examine our lives and see where pride is controlling us and where humility reigns and sets us free.

As we humble ourselves and humility becomes an anchor in our lives, we will be able to see love overflowing and focus our attention on the hope that awaits us in this very moment.

It's been a busy couple of weeks, and I will catch you all up on that, but here are a few haikus for this week to do your prayer, meditation and reflective journaling."

"Awaken your soul,

Living into the moment,

Experience hope."

"Love overflowing,

Says be still my beating heart,

Watch for the echo."

"When did I get on,

Life's carousel gone awry?

How do I get off?"