As I’m fond of saying, we’re living in the future. We’ve reached a golden time where there are a lot of written words and resources about almost anything you want to learn more about.
One of these topics, if you’re an interested and prayerful Catholic or Christian overall, is humility.
Your first step toward being more humble is to admit that you need to be more humble. Good job.
If you want to learn more about humility or learn how to pray more about it, there are books, lots of books. If you live a more digital lifestyle, The Google can take you where you need to go. You just need to be careful what you’re reading and be sure that it’s a solid resource.
Humility is a life-long quest. Even if we don’t reach perfection in that area, I like to think that as long as we’re headed in that direction, we’ll be alright.
“Be perfect as your Heavenly Father is perfect” is lofty, but apparently possible, or the Lord and Savior wouldn’t have said it.
Think about it
If you want to skip ahead in the line and avoid the intellectual and knowledge-based learning about humility, there’s something simple you can think about and pray about.
Think about everything you have in your life, material and otherwise, all of it.
Start with your home, your vehicle, your electronics, your hobby-related materials, even your kitchen appliances, bed, clothes, or anything you own.
Now, take the next step. Think about your family, your friends, your co-workers (even those who you don’t get along with), or anyone who is a blessing in your life.
Think about your job, your favorite things to do on a day off, the activities that help you relax.
Let’s take it another step. Think about your running water. Think about the money in your wallet (physical or digital), the food you ate today, or the breath you just took.
You have a lot, don’t you?
And now for the divine smackdown (to steal someone else’s phrase and use it for a different meaning) — none of those are totally yours. Everything you have, you got from God. You have nothing without him.
I want you to think about that.
I’m even going to give you space with which to spend time and do just that.
To reflect
Hopefully, none of us will be the next Job and have everything taken from us to prove a point, but we could very easily lose many of the things we have.
We didn’t get any of them on our own. We got them through the blessings of our Almighty Father.
If we do lose anything that we’re attached to or feel that we need, there’s no reason to think that God won’t continue to bless us going forward.
Let’s not feel guilty or unworthy of all that we have, but let’s feel blessed. Everything is a gift. Let’s say “thank you” and accept them all.
Once we’ve been humbled to the fact that we’ve been blessed with our many treasures on behalf of the Almighty, let’s use that feeling of gratefulness as a feeling of being equipped and being called to do the Lord’s work with all we have been given.
What does that look like? We’ll talk more next time.
Thank you for reading.
I’m praying for you.