You Might Be Humble If . . .

I tried this once before. Let’s examine the question, “You might be humble if. . .” Is that a question? The question is, “how do you complete that sentence?” Here goes.

You might be humble if you had a choice between attending the funeral of someone you barely knew or spending the day walking through an antique mall and you chose the first. Okay, so I chose the second, but I really didn’t know anyone who was at that funeral. So shoot me and then go to an antique mall during my funeral.

You might be humble if you found yourself arriving at the entrance to a store just ahead of an elderly woman and you paused to hold the door open for her before you entered. Of course, you may have been very humble but needed to get inside to the bathroom really, really fast and the woman was really, really, really slow.

You might be humble if you stopped at a red light behind a silver Ford Explorer which was unaware when the light changed to green and made you sit through another red light but you sat calmly refusing to honk or act unseemly. Even if you imagined yourself in a monster big-wheeler rolling your tires over the inconsiderate cell-phone talker’s SUV, you still behaved with humility.

You might be humble if you were in a theatre sitting next to a family of six, not including dad who was probably enjoying time away from his noisy, odor-some offspring, and even though you were trying to watch a movie you had been excited about seeing, you dodged popcorn and stupid questions without a scowl or growl and even patted one of the sticky children on the head not very hard as the movie ended and you departed.

You might be humble if you went through an entire Monday at work without a mention of the terribly frustrating weekend you survived and made no one aware of the heights of humbleness you climbed or the depths of humility through which you waded not wishing to call attention to the volumes of virtue from which you could elucidate but won’t.

Yeah! So there!

Rick Warren's Inauguration Prayer

Here is Pastor Rick Warren’s invocation at the inauguration of the 44th president of the United States on January 20th, 2009.

Almighty God, our Father, everything we see and everything we can’t see exists because of you alone. It all comes from you. It all belongs to you. It all exists for your glory. History is your story. The scripture tells us, “Hear O Israel, The Lord is our God. The Lord is one,” and you are the compassionate and merciful one and you are loving to everyone you have made.

Now, today we rejoice, not only in America’s peaceful transfer of power for the 44th time, we celebrate a hinge-point of history with the inauguration of our first African American President of the United States. We are so grateful to live in this land, a land of unequaled possibility, where the son of an African immigrant can rise to the highest level of our leadership. And we know today that Dr. King and a great cloud of witnesses are shouting in heaven.

Give to our new President Barack Obama, the wisdom to lead us with humility, the courage to lead us with integrity, the compassion to lead us with generosity. Bless and protect him, his family, Vice-President Biden, The Cabinet, and everyone of our freely elected leaders. Help us, O God, to remember that we are Americans, united not by race or religion or blood, but to our commitment to freedom and justice for all. When we focus on ourselves, when we fight each other, when we forget you – forgive us. When we presume that our greatness and our prosperity is ours alone – forgive us. When we fail to treat our fellow human beings and all the earth with the respect that they deserve – forgive us.

And, as we face these difficult days ahead, may we have a new birth of clarity in our aims, responsibility in our actions, humility in our approaches, and civility in our attitudes even when we differ. Help us to share, to serve, and to seek the common good of all. May all people of good will today join together to work for a more just, a more healthy, and a more prosperous nation, and a peaceful planet. And may we never forget that one day all nations and all people will stand accountable before you.

We now commit our new President, and his wife Michelle, and his daughters Malia and Sasha, into your loving care. I humbly ask this in the name of the one who changed my life: Yeshua, Esaa, Jesus, Jesus . . . who taught us to pray:

Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.

10 Most Humble Phrases

Researchers at Oxford University compiled a list of the top 10 most irritating expressions.

1. At the end of the day
2. Fairly unique
3. I personally
4. At this moment in time
5. With all due respect
6. Absolutely
7. It’s a nightmare
8. Shouldn’t of
9. 24/7
10. It’s not rocket science

I personally, at this moment in time, would have included “when pigs fly” and “duuuh,” with all due respect. I, of course, am more interested in what would be the 10 most humble phrases? Here are those phrases, in my humble opinion. You may notice that I left out “I’m sorry" (because love means never saying that). I also threw out “it’s my fault” and “go ahead, I deserve it.” I attribute these phrases to low self-esteem, not humility. I would be interested to know which of these ten the reader would omit and what phrases the reader would add. I submit these after very little thought.

10. You choose, it doesn’t matter to me
9. I don’t want it, you can have it
8. Are you okay?
7. You are amazing.
6. And then what happened?
5. Please forgive me
4. What can I do to help?
3. I missed you
2. Thank you
1. God bless you.

Descend to Reascend

Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men. (Philippians 2:5-7) In the excerpt below, C.S. Lewis describes the humility involved in this incarnation of Christ.

In the Christian story God descends to reascend. He comes down; down from the heights of absolute being into time and space, down into humanity; down further still, if embryologists are right, to recapitulate in the womb ancient and prehuman phases of life; down to the very roots and seabed of the nature He had created. But he goes down to come up again and bring the whole ruined world up with Him. One has the picture of a strong man stooping lower and lower to get himself underneath some great complicated burden. He must stoop in order to lift, he must almost disappear under the load before he incredibly straightens his back and marches off with the whole mass swaying on his shoulders. Or one may think of a diver, first reducing himself to nakedness, then glancing in midair, then gone with a splash, vanished, rushing down through green and warm water into black and cold water, down through increasing pressure into the deathlike region of ooze and slime and old decay; then up again, back to color and light, his lungs almost bursting, till suddenly he breaks surface again, holding in his hand the dripping, precious thing that he went down to recover. He and it are both colored now that they have come up into the light: down below, where it lay colorless in the dark, he lost his color too.

In this descent and renascent everyone will recognize a familiar pattern; a thing written all over the world. It is the pattern of all vegetable life. It must belittle itself into something hard, small and deathlike, it must fall into the ground: thence the new life reascends. It is the pattern of all animal generation too. There is descent from the full and perfect organism into the spermatozoon and ovum, and in the dark womb a life at first inferior in kind to that of the species which is being reproduced: then the slow ascent to perfect embryo, to the living, conscious baby, and finally to the adult. . . .Through this bottleneck, this belittlement, the highroad nearly always lies.

(C.S. Lewis, The Joyful Christian)

God becoming flesh is amazing and magnificent. The highroad for the follower of Christ is always this position of humility that is willing to stoop to stand, to fall in order to rise, to lose to gain, to submit in order to subdue, to be lowly so that God may lift us up. Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you at the proper time, . . . (1 Peter 5:6)