Quotes for the Journey

The First of Three Unexpected Points of View

The beginning of wisdom is this: get wisdom. Though it cost all you have, get understanding. -Proverbs 4:7

My wife and I are on a long-planned journey to Italy (an adventure I am certain will be part of future posts!). Given the lack of time at my desk over the next few weeks, I thought I’d share a few quotes that have sourced much wisdom in my walk with Jesus over these many decades. The first one clears up a very common source of confusion among Jesus-followers. The second has been strangely and wonderfully encouraging to me as a convinced Christian in a skeptical world. The third one inspires me to continue my daily adventure of reading the Bible.

I hope you find each of them as fruitful as I have as you read them over the next few weeks.

Enjoy!

-Randy

A Walk in Tuscany

Quote One:

I love the wisecrack of the pompous pastor proudly proclaiming the polar opposite of what he wanted to promote when he preached, “I am the most humble person that I know.”

Yet this joke rests on the idea that humility is thinking less of yourself. This assumption makes humility an impossible goal. You can’t intentionally pursue it. The only way to become humble, it seems, is to have life sneak up and hit you from behind. This is the basis for another joke I’ve heard, which warns against praying for humility. The punchline? God might answer.

George MacDonald, a preacher, a writer, and a mentor to the likes of Lewis Carroll and C.S. Lewis, offered a much more practical approach to humility; a way whose measure is less centered on our opinion of ourselves. The humble person, he says,

“…has no thought of making himself less than his neighbor, his thought is to make his neighbor greater than himself.”¹

Isn’t that wonderful! It untied the knot in my thinking and made it clear how I could pursue humility every day. The key question is this:

Who can you make greater than yourself today?

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1. In “Jesus Sermons” by George MacDonald.