Humility

Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, so that he may exalt you in due time. Cast all your anxiety on him, because he cares for you. (1 Peter 5:6-7 NRSV)

It’s not something we do well. In fact, in many ways it is trained out of us. If you approach your career with humility, you may be seen as not having leadership qualities necessary for advancement or long-term success. Some of what we do would be negatively impacted if we approached it with humility. From a young age, we are taught to avoid being a doormat and to stand up for ourselves. Assertiveness is a desired and looked for personality trait. Being humble, self-effacing is often not so desired.

The passage from 1 Peter is not the only place in scripture we are told that humility is important. Being too proud, being too focused on one’s own power or status does not fit with the life to which we have been called as Children of God. We dance that line every day. Some leaders are better than others at empowering others to succeed, at serving others before themselves, at seeking opinions from colleagues. All of those attributes are necessary and are skills to be learned in order to be a humble servant leader. Each of those aspects of humility can be learned and can become a more central part of who we are and how we live.

But there’s more to it in the letter of 1 Peter. Here we are given a very important task to do as we seek to be humble. We are called to cast our anxieties (cares) on God. We are not to be so proud that we think we can handle it all ourselves without the love and guidance of our God and King. Our God is so much more powerful than we are. That might be the hardest lesson to learn.

Trusting God - allowing God to be the one to control our lives takes us farther down the road to humility than anything else we can try. Think about the last time you were struggling, the last time you were facing anxiety and trying to figure out what you were supposed to do. Maybe it would have helped to listen to God for a while before you made a decision. Maybe the anxiety would have eased just a bit if you would have asked God to be a part of the struggle with you. Yes, we still have to make decisions; sometimes very quickly and decisively. That’s not necessary being too proud. But, what can you turn over to God? What can you do to let God be more in control than you are?

That’s the call of 1 Peter. That’s God’s call to you as a humble Child of God.