Pride and arrogance are not strengths but weaknesses, and we should not think of ourselves pridefully but rather ' soberly'.
In the poem Loss and Gain, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote,
"When I compare
What I have lost with what I have gained,
What I have missed with what attained,
Little room do I find for pride."
Pride is a universal human problem. Everyone suffers from it to some degree.
None of us is perfect, and the lack of one should be supplied by the sufficiency of other.
We are told that in humility, we value others above ourselves, not looking to our own interests but each to the interests of the others.
True greatness is not arrogant and puffed up. Rather,it has decency and elevated conversations, refinement of the feelings clothed in modest grace, simplicity, and self forgetfulness.
In today's self- absorbed culture, this is a peculiar countercultural point of view, where homes, societies, and consequently nations are being destroyed because the ones who should lead prefer to fulfill their own selfish agenda even at the expense of others.
C.S. Lewis wrote, “Pride is spiritual cancer: it eats up the very possibility of love, or contentment, or even common sense.”
We should cherish the grace of humility in our hearts. Though it is painful to learn lessons of humility, yet nothing is more beneficial in the end.
And whatever position or title we have, we should know that our only safety is walking humbly, taking into consideration that real humility fulfills God's purposes by depending upon His strength.
"On the highest hills
Lies the whitest snow;
In the smallest rills
Clearest waters flow;
In the loneliest dells
Are the fairest bowers;
Sweetest perfume dwells
In the meekest flowers.
Much may you and I
Learn, dear friend, from this;
We must seek on high
For the purest bliss;
And must tread the earth
With a humble mind,
If we are much of worth
Would desire to find."
Peter Burn
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