Remember the words I spoke to you: ‘No servant is greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will persecute you also. If they obeyed my teaching, they will obey yours also. ~ John 15:20
I would like to humbly say that I am a humble person, but chances are that statement would have more of a prideful boast to it than a humble acceptance.
I don’t think I’m the most proud person I’ve encountered on earth, but apparently some overbearing arrogance stubbornly clings to my character. I’ve noticed recently that my pride is strongest when I’m hurt the most. It’s something about the need to project an air of confidence when I feel the most fragile. Something about the need to assert my importance and value when I feel the most worthless and disposable to others. I’ve been on a tear lately and I’ve tried to give myself time to calm down and re-focus. Something I’ve learned is that my perspective of myself doesn’t change as long as I’m in my own head, in my own space and in my own world. It just took a not-so-subtle set-down from my boss to kick me out of my mental Queendom of Shawnda Land. I needed that.
Insecurity. That’s what I’m wallowing in. A whole bunch of insecurity and uncertainty about my life. And that changed me into a person whom I really don’t know or like. Apparently, others don’t like her either.
The Pride-Full Shawnda was also the Shawnda who was hurt beyond her ability to articulate her pain. Pride came along to bolster her up. To puff her up. To give her a sense of being and substance. Pride told her she was important to herself even if others did not esteem her at all. Pride made her think that the more she esteemed herself, the more others would also. But Pride failed.
“Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation? Tell me, if you understand.Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know! Who stretched a measuring line across it? On what were its footings set, or who laid its cornerstone— while the morning stars sang together and all the angels shouted for joy? ~ Job 38:4-7
It certainly wasn’t me. I hadn’t been there. Nothing can make you feel as insignificant as contemplating the incomprehensible vastness of God’s creative glory. Yet this same glory is also the one thing that makes you feel the most significant when you see yourself as part of His vast creation. In all His incomprehensible glory, God saw fit to create me and you. He created us with such infinite detail that we can’t begin to know anything about ourselves until we begin to know something about Him, our Lord and Creator.
Pride indeed failed to puff me up, but God never fails to fill me with His presence again and again.
