The elevating quality of humility

One time, I was waiting with some friends at an elevator to go up to another floor. When the doors opened, I hopped in, not noticing that it was actually on its way down. I rode alone to the basement and then back to where my friends, chuckling, joined me.

One friend joked – quoting Mary Baker Eddy, the discoverer of Christian Science – “You know, Karen, ‘One can never go up, until one has gone down in his own esteem’” (“Miscellaneous Writings 1883-1896,” p. 356).

We all had a good laugh, but how prophetic this passage proved to be! I would return to it many times in later years. At times when I had done the best I knew how yet success eluded me, this quote would come back to me, reminding me to set ego aside and embrace humility more.

But just what is humility? True humility is not weakness. Instead, it recognizes God – not human personalities – as the source of all the good that ever has been and ever will be. Christian Science explains that God’s creation, which includes each of us, is the reflection of His pure goodness, upheld by the one divine Mind.

Humility unites our thought with this divine reality, keeping us from swinging between personal adulation and self-condemnation, both of which are focused on the human self. Humility is centered on God, the Divine. And humbly acknowledging the fundamental source of ability and glory to be the all-powerful God has practical, harmonizing effects.

There was a time when I had been praying about a painful condition that had gone on for months, despite earnest prayer. Finally, with a humble desire to yield completely to God’s care for me, I got down on my knees and prayed the only prayer I had left in me: “Father, Thy will be done, and I really mean it!”

This was an echo of the prayer that Christ Jesus prayed in the garden of Gethsemane, right before his crucifixion: “Thy will be done” (Matthew 26:42). The magnitude of the whole body of healing work Jesus accomplished in three short years and left as a legacy for all who follow in the way he mapped out, is profound. Yet he also said, “I can of mine own self do nothing” (John 5:30) – acknowledging God as the only healer and the source of his success, and proving humility to be a Christ-like quality with power right here on Earth. As Mrs. Eddy points out in the Christian Science textbook, “In meekness and might, he was found preaching the gospel to the poor” (“Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures,” pp. 30-31).

So my prayer was not a fatalistic prayer, but rather an acknowledgment of God’s ability and willingness to lift me up, as well as my readiness to be lifted. And right away, the pain vanished and never returned.

Humility is strength. It empowers us to recognize our unity with the powerful infinite good, God. It silences fear and confusion and provides the quietude of thought where we perceive the fullness of God and His creation, lifting us out of stubborn resistance and inspiring wisdom and strength in the face of seeming dead ends. May we each feel this universal, elevating influence of humility, with all its spiritual power, blessing us and all.