The Foreign Land of Humility

Philippians 2:1-11 

   Humility is basic Christianity.  Which is sobering, considering how difficult, counter and foreign it is to us.  Even those of us who are not brash, who do not boast aloud ... we silently notice when it is not about us, when we are not noticed or fully appreciated.  If I am humble, I am not really thinking about me, or what should be mine, or what I should be getting, or who should be noticing ... those things, even if deserved, are not something to be grasped - just as Christ did not grasp at what was rightfully His, equality with God, but emptied Himself. Likewise, I am to die to myself, make myself nothing, serve, follow, look outward ... and leave the noticing to God - who sees in secret and rewards in secret (Matt. 6).

Am I the Me I think I am?

   Sometimes, we hear ourselves the way we want to hear ourselves.  We even create our own reality around our perceptions of ourselves and others.


    Have you ever had an encounter that upset you and afterwards, you replayed it in your mind ... emphasizing certain parts and maybe even recreating certain parts ... in essence, making your own reality, a more flattering reality?  Especially when the real reality is not very flattering.


   This dramatization that I heard on This American Life conveys it pretty well ...

Act Two. The Conversation. from Own Worst Enemy