We yearn. Pant. Thirst. Long. Faint. Cry out. In the Psalms in Job and in Isaiah we cry out to the Lord with desire, with aching, with hunger. “I will see him with my own eyes.” [Job 19:25-27] “My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.” [Psalm 42:1-2] “I long to dwell in your […]
If we want to know the purpose of the pain and suffering in our lives, we might look to the story of Job, who was a devout believer in God, also a wealthy man with a great family and property and friends. As the story goes, God boasted to Satan that Job was a […]
“Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.” Whether our life circumstances have left us meek or humble or gentle or we have been “gentled,”[1] as Cynthia Bourgeault would put it, that is, healed and transformed by our surrender to the arms of God, the result is the same: we […]
Writing about gratitude last week leads me now to humility, the true reduction of our ego-importance to the reality of who we are before God. When we think that human beings are but one of an estimated 7 million species on this earth, and that this earth is but one planet in a vast universe […]
Humility is probably the most important quality that is realized in a close relationship with God. In surrendering our own agendas, our preferences, our cultural biases, our assumptions and our ways to God, we are left with our own poverty, our own lack of knowledge of God, our own small selves. Walking with the Lord […]
Humility is a strange concept to us Americans. We are so self-sufficient and self-directed and motivated, that we almost can’t grasp what humility is. It is not a cloak that we wear to subdue ourselves and look like we are “humble” and pious. It is not an attitude that we have to be a doormat […]