Humble and Confident
Do you like to see the confidence in others, to know a person of great confidence? How about humility: do you appreciate encountering a person of humility? The amazing thing is one can find, however rarely, both confidence and humility present strongly in a person. I know you have met people like this. How refreshing it is to find someone who knows fully what she can do, and yet knows that at times she leans on others, to accomplish what is needed. A man who offers all that he has can be humbly and clearly aware he has limits and must turn to others to accomplish a great task.
Most heartening of all is to find the woman and man who will give confidently of themselves but rely greatly and humbly upon God who supplies their needs. I think suddenly of the youngest son of Jesse of Bethlehem, young David the shepherd. He was no warrior, but this shepherd was taken in to serve the King as armor-bearer, also as a musician, to calm the irritable King Saul by playing the lyre. He composed played music learned in the pastures to calm his sheep. This little squirt was humble, knowing his limits, but courageous with confidence in the God he served. When the giant Philistine warrior was posed as a challenger against whatever Israelite champion they might pitch against him, who went? None but the scrappy shepherd who had confidence built in his days of chasing down bears or lions that carried off sheep, rescuing the helpless animal from the predators’ jaws. Does this sound like confidence? …He said, “This Philistine will fare no better than the lions or bears I have killed since he has defied the ranks of the Living God.”
He was too small to wear the king’s armor, and the use of the sword was foreign to him: all of that was cumbersome. See for yourself in 1 Samuel 17. David thought himself a small one, who served a great God, the source of his confidence. He was happy to use the familiar weapons of the shepherd, gathering five smooth stones from the river for his sling. With that, he went to meet the Philistine called Goliath. You know the rest.
At our best we know we can only do what we can do, and we give our all. We courageously offer all we can, and beyond that, we lean on God, for whom all things are possible. We admire a person with confidence in their considerable capacity and who also knows personal limits. When we reach our limit and need more, we turn to God. The coming First Sunday of Advent calls for personal humility and confidence in God’s help. Look at this slice of the Psalm appointed:
And so will we never turn away from you;
give us life, that we may call upon your Name.
Restore us, O Lord God of hosts;
show the light of your countenance, and we shall be saved.
—Psalm 80:17-18
We can only hold so much, we can only conceive of so much, but we are invited to turn to God who is utterly beyond us. We can’t handle the inconceivable wonder and grandeur of God, but we are invited to reach out anyway. I was ordained on the feast of St. Basil, so I love this line from his writings in the fourth century. (It was cited on the service booklet in my ordination liturgy.)
It is easier to measure the entire sea with a tiny cup than to grasp the ineffable greatness of God with the human mind. +St. Basil the Great (330-379 AD)
We are all humble enough to know that we need God, and confident that though we are small, part of the greatness of God is the great mercy we find and the limitless love. The incarnate Son of God has bridged the gap, and so the problem of our insufficiency is solved. The goliath problems of life, for all of us, are insurmountable. For us it is impossible, but not for God; in God, all things are possible. Our anxiety becomes too much for us, our lack of humility too. Our fear overwhelms us; our resentment at times is gigantic. Our wisdom is lacking, our foolishness huge. We are up against it and out of time. Where can we turn?
In Advent, starting this Sunday, we learn that the Son of Man will come in the clouds with great power and glory, at an hour that God chooses. God will set things right. But guess what! In the meantime, we can turn to the Holy One now, right now, where we are. You know how much you admire these qualities, so take them up now. Take up the humility to assert the truth: you cannot do it all. You cannot solve all on your own. Take up the confidence in yourself, but more, in the All-Powerful One who is beyond us, but mystifyingly is God-With-Us. This Shepherd rescues us from the jaws of that which carries us away. Gently, then our Rescuer carries to safety.
I don’t play the lyre, but I am willing to sing. Sing with me the words of the earthly shepherd from the pastures around Bethlehem. Sing again the words he sang to the Great Shepherd who alone can save:
And so will we never turn away from you;
give us life, that we may call upon your Name.
Restore us, O Lord God of hosts;
show the light of your countenance, and we shall be saved.