a time to grieve; a time to dance

Have you ever found a glistening coin on the bed of a flowing stream? You point at it but your friend isn't quite able to see it. Or maybe your friend is pointing at something at a short distance and, for all your neck-craning, you can't quite see what it is.

This blog is exactly that. This is me pointing at something that I know is there and hope you'd see, too. Whether it's at a golden mask at the bottom of the well or an eagle soaring high in the sky, I wish you Happy Looking!

23 June 2011

Pride stinks

I recently heard that pride is like body odor. If you have it, everyone around you knows except you. That was a revelation to me on many levels. When I heard it my face went like this: O_O

You mean a person with body odor doesn't know he stinks? What an awful fate that is! I always thought that it was that person's conscious decision to stink. I thought he decided that he's antisocial or mysoginistic that he swore never to take a shower or use a deodorant ever again. "I hate you, world! Here! Smell me!" Or maybe he hates the planet and so in expression of anti-environmentalism he decided to make his armpits his weapons of world pollution.

So then a person with B.O. doesn't know it? Wow. That's a whole new perspective for me. Has he not any friends who can tell him? That's not hard to imagine. But suppose he does have friends... don't you think they must tell? Or maybe they don't know because they have B.O. too and they're unconsciously outstinking each other?

Now I'm thinking about pride. The Bible says God is opposed to the proud, but gives grace to the humble. That's grace. That is God not allowing you to stink with pride so He is opposed to you so that you may change. In the pride-body odor analogy it also makes sense because Psalm 141 says, "May my prayer be set before you like incense." Now a humble man would recognize his need of God and would continually pray, hence God goes over to him and takes a good whiff. Humble men must really smell good to God as they keep on praying. Also of course since Jesus died and rose again for us, He has covered us with His righteousness, so that must smell pretty good to God, too.

Proverbs 6 says there are six things that the LORD hates and haughtiness is top of the list.

So pride stinks. And a good way to ward off pride is to practice the hygiene of humility. Show up before God and ask Him to examine your heart and just BE before Him. Get a heart check up. Besides, God is opposed to the proud so that may be an indicator when you begin to notice that He's being opposed to you (what a scary thought!) then there must be pride in your heart somewhere.
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