- This is part of a leadership series on the theme of humility -

Israel’s pride led them to disobey God’s commands, so God invested 40 years in developing their humility and obedience.  God took them into the desert to show them how vulnerable they were (and how vulnerable we are).  In Deuteronomy 8, we see the relationship between prosperity and humility and between difficulty and pride:

When you have eaten and are satisfied, praise the Lord your God for the good land he has given you.  Be careful that you do not forget the Lord your God, failing to observe his commands, his laws and his decrees that I am giving you this day.  Otherwise, when you eat and are satisfied, when you build find houses and settle down, and when your herds and flocks grow large and your silver and gold increase and all you have is multiplied, then your heart will become proud and you will forget the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery…. You may say to yourself, “My power and the strength of my hands have produced this wealth for me,”  But remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you the ability to produce wealth, and so confirms his covenant, which he swore to your forefathers, as it is today.  Deuteronomy 8:10-14, 17-18

Moses exhorts the people to remember, after they take the land and flourish, that everything they have has come to them as a gift from the Lord.  They are to walk in humility before their God and not think they have achieved these things themselves.  One of the great dangers of success is that we deceive ourselves into the arrogant belief that we ourselves have brought it about.  We are like Bart Simpson who prays at the dinner table, “Dear God, we paid for all this stuff ourselves, so thanks for nothing.”

God can give wealth, and he can give poverty.  He can raise you up; he can take you down.  Sometimes it is the severe mercy of God to impoverish you because you were getting too cocky.  He may need to take away some of your toys until you get the message.

We are all born with closed hands.  Babies come into the world with their hands balled up into tiny, little fists.  As we get older, we learn to hold tightly to things – handlebars and lunchboxes, bats and balls, other people’s hands.  When we start out in the business world, we grab the lowest rung on the corporate ladder, and we hold on for dear life until we can clutch the next one.  We clutch and scrape for whatever position or prestige we can garner.  Perhaps one day we’ll find ourselves hanging on to canes and walkers or even the edge of a hospital bed.  We cling tightly to life itself until we die.  Then, perhaps because our focus will no longer be on ourselves and this earthly realm, we can finally relax our grip.

What a contrast between our hands and the hands of God.  Throughout the Bible story God opens his hands to provide food, protection, blessing, love and support.  The Psalmist writes, “You open your hand and satisfy the desires of every living thing” (Ps. 145:16).  When God came to this earth in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, he taught, loved and blessed.  But mostly he opened his hands and touched.  He refused to clutch or cling tightly to his rights and privileges.  Instead, he opened his hands and, in the most startling example of humility the world has ever known, stretched out his arms to pay for our failures.