Learning in War - Time

One thing that I have been struggling with and spending time thinking about a lot has been humility. It is very appropriate since the presentation that I will be giving with some girls is focusing on this through “The Screwtape Letters.” It is something that God has been trying to teach me a lot about, especially through my daily readings in God’s Word.   In a devotional book that I read to help focus my attention, one day made me think. Nancy Leigh Demoss said that “A grateful heart is a humble person, while ingratitude reveals a proud heart.” Where am I not grateful to God? Reading today in “Learning in War-Time” by C.S. Lewis, I was reminded of this when Lewis is talking about how God has given everyone an appetite of knowledge and beauty. He reminds us that “God makes no appetite in vain” whether that be concerning me, a wannabe Speech Pathologist, my brother desiring to be a doctor, or my dad who is a Pharmacist. God gives us our own passions that make us thirst for more. Lewis says that “Humility, no less than the appetite, encourages us to concentrate simply on the knowledge or the beauty, not too much concerning ourselves with their ultimate relevance to the vision of God.” He goes on to say that it is dangerous when our knowing something becomes a delight not in the exercise of our talents but in the fact that they are ours, or even in the reputation they bring us.” 

Going along the same lines as above, God has given me a heart for those born with disabilities. As I have helped teach and most importantly been taught by them, I have noticed something about me that has become scary. When others who are not able to take as high of a paying job because of their cognitive level, many people including myself, do not see those with disabilities 1) as God’s beautiful children and 2) with humility in our hearts. Many times I think that just because they may not talk the same way or are always confined to a wheelchair that it is hard to see their gifts that God has given them. But one thing that Lewis says is “The work of a Beethoven, and the work of a charwoman, become spiritual on precisely the same condition, that of being offered to God, of being done humbly ‘as to the Lord.’” How beautiful it is to see feet walking that humbly proclaim God in whatever gifts that God has given them.

In “The Screwtape Letters,” C.S. Lewis brings up another good point when he mentions how we can become prideful at our own humility. “Catch him at the moment when his is really poor in spirit and smuggle into his mind the gratifying reflection, ‘By jove! I’m being humble,‘ and almost immediately pride - pride at his own humility - will appear.” This brings me back to the devotion that I read the other day about a grateful heart showing humility. When we are grateful to God for the “appetite” that He has given us no matter what we see in others and what their appetite is, we are able to show beautiful humility.