Humility
Lord, my heart is not proud; my eyes are not haughty. I don’t concern myself with matters too great or too awesome for me to grasp. Instead, I have calmed and quieted myself, like a weaned child who no longer cries for its mother’s milk. Yes, like a weaned child is my soul within me. Psalm 131:1-2
C.H. Spurgeon, the great Victorian Baptist preacher, commented that this psalm is: “one of the shortest psalms to read but one of the longest to learn”. Learning to be humble is so tough. Anyone who claims to have achieved it has a very long way to go!
Humility is a wonderful quality. The truly humble person knows where they stand before God. They recognise his greatness and power, and understand that they are privileged to be God’s servant. They don’t exaggerate their own importance and are eager to see the best in everyone around them. It is the arrogant person who needs to be pitied, because they have yet to learn that true freedom and contentment comes from humility.
I don’t believe that King David was suggesting the humble person avoids difficult issues. Far from it, the humble person is more likely to take on big challenges but, with a recognition that their own knowledge and resources are limited, they will rely on the help of other people. It is the arrogant person who falls flat on their face when they take on great challenges in their own strength and fail.
David says that he is like a weaned child. At the time, children were weaned at around the age of three years old. It’s as if David is saying he was like a toddler in his relationship with God. He wasn’t a baby any longer, but he was still dependent on God.
Learning to be truly humble is a life- long task. Reading the Bible helps by providing many illustrations of the awful destructiveness of arrogance, as well as the life-giving blessing of humility. But God also teaches us much from the humble people we meet. I thank God for the wonderfully humble people that I have known, who have shown me what humility looks like in all its beautiful attractiveness.
QUESTION
From whom have you learnt most about humility?
PRAYER
Loving God, teach me what it means to be humble and to live like a weaned child. Amen