THE FIRST THING THAT COMES TO MIND when I think of humility is that it takes a whole lot of it to realize you're the child of God. What do we have to give up to have this humility? Honey, we have to give it all up!
Some years ago I woke up one morning totally unrecognizable to myself. My face was swollen, my eyes were bloodshot, and I was covered in bruises. I decided to stay in my room, and just like always, I turned to prayer. The next day. my daughter got home from a college class and laid into me about my hiding in the bedroom. "Hiding out is what error tries to do!" she said. And so I opened the door and came back into daily life.
That afternoon, something Mary Baker Eddy said kept coming to me. "Be temperate in thought, word, and deed. Meekness and temperance are the jewels of Love, set in wisdom" (Retrospection and introspection, p. 79). Talk about a start! Meekness and temperance—the "jewels of Love." The word meekness stuck out to me, and I went straight to my good old Webster's dictionary. The definition said, in part, "gentle, patient, mild—not inclined to anger." Right away Jesus came to mind, because he was the meekest, gentlest man who ever walked this earth. But his meekness never meant he was spineless. No way. His power came from knowing and feeling his inseparable oneness with his Father-Mother, God.
