The Word for Today devotional by United Christian Broadcasters (UCB) says:
A member of parliament took his little daughter to visit Westminster Abbey. As she stood looking up at its magnificent columns, her father asked, ‘What do you think, sweetheart?’. With childlike candour she replied, ‘I was thinking how big you look at home, Daddy, and how small you look in here.’
God’s presence has a way of humbling us. In the Old Testament, King David went in and sat before the Lord and said, ‘Who am I, O Sovereign Lord, and what is my family, that you have brought me this far?’.
The Bible’s filled with examples of people who humbled themselves before God. In Matthew’s gospel he mentions his own name only twice, and both times he calls himself a tax collector. And John doesn’t even mention his own name in his gospel. The name ‘John’ that appears throughout his gospel refers to John the Baptist. John simply calls himself ‘the other disciple’, or ‘the disciple whom Jesus loved’.
Luke wrote two of the most important books in the Bible without ever once mentioning his own name. And Paul, the Bible’s most prolific author, referred to himself as ‘a fool’ (2 Corinthians 12:11 NIV 2011 Edition).
He described himself as ‘the least of the apostles’ (1 Corinthians 15:9 NIV 2011 Edition), and later claimed to be ‘less than the least of all saints’ (Ephesians 3:8 KJV). In fact, as Paul grew older his ego grew smaller, and in one of his final Epistles he referred to himself as ‘the chief of sinners’ (See 1 Timothy 1:15).
King David wrote no psalm celebrating his victory over Goliath, but he wrote a psalm of penitence confessing his sin with Bathsheba (Psalm 51). So, always be humble!
