Last night while sifting through some old notes and quotes of mine, I found this paragraph in the chapter about self-conceit from the book “The Imitation of Christ” by Thomas a’ Kempis. I was deeply moved again as I was the first time I read these words:
“If you see anything good in yourself, believe still better things of others and you will, then, preserve humility. It will do you no harm if you account yourself as worst of all; but it will very much harm you to think that you are better than everyone else.”
There are times when each of us will catch ourselves saying something like, “At least I’m not as bad as that guy” or “At least I didn’t do what she did” or any similar phrase. It’s times like this when we need to take the focus off our ourselves and re-focus on the good of others. We need to find a way to strive to have that “good” in our lives. We need to strive to improve the way we live by how we treat others, how we think of others, and how we even see ourselves. To see others as being better than us is not something that is easy to do. Therefore, we need to take this to prayer so that we can ask God to help us find a way to become better people and better disciples.
In the words of C.S. Lewis: Humility is not thinking less of yourself; it’s thinking of yourself less.
If we can see the good in others, we will then be able to recognize God in others as well. Amen.
