Humility is the Golden Virtue and without humility all other virtues are rendered meaningless even Hypocritical.
The Golden Virtue of humility, is by its very nature, something that is more often known by experiential reality being clearly seen in others who are living by the Spirit of the words in the Golden Rule, “ Love your neighbor as yourself” and “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”
But this all important way of “being” seen in the Golden Rule is the shallow end of the pool of humility. It is the flow and not the fountainhead.
For example:
If I as a child love my brother and sister and give them of my own things, doing for them things I would have them do for me it is good, however those gestures would mean little if I also decided to Kill our parents .
What I can provide of my own resources is empty and shallow if I have cut off the fountainhead from which the greatest blessings come, it is even treacherous. It then becomes PRIDE and not Humility.
Pride is not a virtue of course, rather it is the death of all virtues and it mocks all virtues.
There is only one test for humility ……and it is a most humbling one.
God is the fountainhead and if I kill Him in my head, if I kill Him in my heart, if I eclipse His Glory from my neighbor by hardening my own heart against Him as my all sufficient creator and sustainer and if I deny His existence, I cut supply off from the very source, the fountainhead of all Goodness.
Every “lesser Good”, imprinted on the conscience of man, even if we abide by it is impotent and rogue without being connected to the fountainhead.
Apart from understanding and accepting my place in the created order of things as a child made in the image of God, humility will be a concept in a vacuum; an empty and dried up stream without a source.
If we are not willing to be connected to God we fail the test of humility because we refuse to be Humble in the first order of things.
Yet
“God sends rain on the just and the unjust”
In other words God the fountainhead gives to all liberally but there is a distinction made between the “Just” and the “unjust”. The “Just” know the fountainhead, Love the fountainhead and accept and give thanks in Truth to the Lord for His blessings. The just accept their humble state and are the humble. Their Identity is in God.
The “unjust”, also receive from the fountainhead to a degree but give no thanks, accept no authority over their lives and are the, “Prideful”.
The greatest blessing, the singular blessing that opens up the total fountainhead to us is found in the Gift of God’s Son Jesus Christ. Humility acknowledges need and accepts what is required to meet that need.
The despots of this world always demand we bow the knee to them but with God the knee is bowed in the beautifully freeing reality that God is God and that in Christ we have received mercy upon mercy. We make no demands of God we see that our identity is not based in how we feel but in God and in Christ.
Jesus’ Life, Death and Resurrection become ours through the agency of the gift of faith through the Holy Spirit.
So I pray,
“Lord, grant me humility lest PRIDE keep me locked into some lesser fleeting identity attached to money, sex, position or feelings. At death none of these will do. Grant me only eternal life through Jesus Christ. (“May thy will be done on earth as in heaven.” )And help me to be some vessel to point the way out of this Pride obsessed world parading around in its various forms in the name of the self.”
We all have received many wounds while PRIDE rode over our heads and held us fast through our passions and our fears. Ought we not to be humble towards those who now receive the wounds while we have been set free?
Let’s get serious about “Humility” by looking away from ourselves and to the fountainhead remembering that the distinction lies in God since we all have lived in the narrow confines of pride in some way and only in Christ did we ever see the darkness of it.
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