Humbling Myself

Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, so that he may exalt you in due time.

I've always been taught that humility is an ideal personality trait for Christians, though I'm not sure I've ever really understood what it means to be humble. I generally thought of it in terms of humbling myself before God — recognizing that God is greater than I am, and that I should live for God in all that I do.

I've recently begun to realize, however, that humility also involves knowing my own limits and taking small steps to accomplish greater goals.

During my Spring Break, I attended Ecumenical Advocacy Days, an annual event which brings together religious advocates to learn about U.S. domestic and foreign policy. This year's theme was "And How Are the Children?" For three days, attendees met in one of several tracks to discuss problems affecting children in different regions of the world. In the Africa track, I learned about the AIDS epidemic, debt relief, access to water, and other important issues. On the fourth day of the conference, many conferees went to Capitol Hill to lobby Congress on three issues chosen in advance by the conference planners: health care for all children in the U.S.; global climate change; and reallocation of funds for peace, not war.

Advocacy Days reminded me that I don't know everything. This sounds obvious, but bear with me while I explain. For years I have been boycotting a major soft drink company because of its treatment of workers in foreign factories. On my campus, I pick up a boxed lunch every day with a salad, yogurt, fruit, and a drink. The sodas are all from the company I'm boycotting, so I choose bottled water. Since it relates to my leadership project for HELM, I went to the session at Advocacy Days about access to water in developing countries. As it turns out, the privatization and bottling of water by large corporations has stripped natives in foreign countries of access to their own water resources and ultimately leaves the infrastructure of rural areas decimated. While I thought I was doing something for justice, I ended up doing something else contributing to injustice. Even though I know about countless incidents of unjust actions in the world, the conference reminded me there are even more I don't know about.

So what can we as Christians do about this? There are so many problems on our planet, how can we even begin to tackle them all? The conference organizers gave us only three issues to discuss with Congress. They pointed out that if everyone took a separate issue to their representatives, our message would not be heard. But if we picked a few concerns, our voices would be much louder and more likely to bring about action from Congress. Then next year, we can go back and target a new set of issues.

This year I have run into problems with my own leadership project. Initially I tried to do too much and realized I just didn't have all the resources I thought I would to do my initial plan. I had to reorganize and try a different, smaller project. The Bible reminds us that God will never give us more than we can handle. But sometimes we give ourselves too much. Humility, I am realizing, means that if we start with small tasks we will ultimately accomplish great things for God.