It’s the day following New Year’s Day of 1970 and my buddy and I are hitchhiking through Maine after spending a week in Connecticut. A somewhat-compassionate state trooper had put us off the interstate and we had to make it on secondary roads where there was little traffic. The temperature was below minus twenty and no one was stopping to pick up two half-frozen, young men.
Finally, in desperation I said to him, “It must be your face; let me be the first one they see.” He agreed, but my face didn’t improve our luck. One hundred thirty miles from home, broke, cold and in the dark we humbled ourselves and called his mother to come to our rescue. We literally had two cents left after the phone call.
I can’t remember thanking her for her love for her son or my reprimanding him for getting us into such a precarious situation. That was over fifty-one years ago and we are both doing well.
Now back to the benefits of humility.
By humility and the fear of the Lord are riches and honor and life.
Likewise you younger people, submit yourselves to your elders. Yes, all of you be submissive to one another, and be clothed with humility, for “God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble.”
Humility is a hard thing for a proud people, but God knows how to get it out of us.
Give it some thought.
Gary