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Each month the Glen Park Gospel Church produce a one page newsletter called the Green Leaf. It's available from the chapel each Sunday. Anything that may be of mild interest will be published here.

Pride and Humility

    WISDOM IS BETTER THAN FOLLY
 KNOWLEDGE IS BETTER THAN IGNORANCE
    GIVING IS BETTER THAN RECEIVING
  HUMILITY IS BETTER THAN PRIDE
      DASD IS BETTER THAN CTAPE

At work I used to post funny signs periodically at my desk for those who passed by or visited. Don't worry about the last line; it was a mainframe thing, and was the abrupt joke for the IT crowd. One fellow really got tripped up over the second to last line, which at least prodded some discussion.

The world implores us constantly to be proud, that we are worthy of whatever is being sold. We begin to believe that it must be an appropriate attitude. And yet in reading the Bible there is some memory about pride going before a fall. Proverbs 16:18 is but one of many verses on this wisdom.

To be sure, being humbled is not nice even when it is needed. We try to avoid situations that might lead there. Being humbled or praised comes from outside of ourselves. Either a situation or a person sees something about us or something done and points it out.

Pride and humility, on the other hand, come from within ourselves. They don't need to be based on any reality and can lead to being boastful or timid respectively. Being praised is one thing, especially for the timid, but being proud, as reliably attested in the Bible, never leads to a good place. The trick is to maintain humility of heart yet to become confident in spirit. Warren Buffet is a man who is known to be rich in both qualities. Mother Teresa was the same and was given the good grace of dying on the eve of Princess Diana's funeral. She maintained humility even in death, being obscured by that other event.

The Apostle Paul comes across as proud, speaking boastfully of crowns in Heaven for good work on Earth. But that is a superficial view. The reality is that, after becoming a Christian, he appeared smaller in person than in writing. His ministry was often under attack, being humbled, and he needed to defend it, to display confidence. And he encouraged others to be the same.

We all need to learn that humility is better than pride.

Thought for the Month

"Humility is not thinking less of yourself, it's thinking of yourself less."
- Pastor Rick Warren, from “The Purpose Driven Life”

"A Christian reveals true humility by showing the gentleness of Christ, by being always ready to help others, by speaking kind words and performing unselfish acts, which elevate and ennoble the most sacred message that has come to our world."
- Ellen G. White, Adventist Church

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