Meditation on the Text of the Week

Duty Trumps Humility

He who is faithful in a very little thing is faithful also in much; and he who is unrighteous in a very little thing is unrighteous also in much. Luke 16:10

Humility is one of the loveliest of the graces. . . . It is an element of character which wins the admiration of all the world. . . . No grace is more highly commended in the Scriptures.

And yet in its shades there hide very specious counterfeits of itself. Many a man, while seriously believing that he was exercising an acceptable humility, has buried his talents in the earth, hidden his light under a bushel, lived a useless life when he might have been a blessing to many, and passed in the end to a darkened and crownless future. . . .

Amid the almost universal strife for the highest places, it is refreshing to find a man who is not scheming for preferment, and who even declines proffered trusts and honours. The exceeding rarity of modesty and humility in men's self-estimates makes these traits shine in very charming beauty when they do appear. We grow so sick of men's pretensions, their bold pressing of their own virtues and excellences upon our attention and their eagerness to assume responsibilities for which they have not adequate fitness, that we very easily glide into the other extreme.

It is especially in the sphere of moral and spiritual work that we are most apt to excuse ourselves from duty on the plea of humility. Even those who quite eagerly accept important positions in secular life, and perform their duties with confidence and effectiveness, shrink from the simplest exercise of their powers in Christian work. . . . Classes go untaught in many a Sabbath-school, and there are thousands of children that ought to be gathered in and trained. Meanwhile, there are large numbers of Christian men and women in the churches, with abundant ability for such service, but who shrink from it and try to satisfy their own uneasy consciences by humbly pleading unfitness for the delicate duties. . . .

So they fold their talent away and bury it, and think that they have acted in the line of a beautiful and commendable humility, in modestly declining such important responsibilities. It does not occur to them that they have grievously sinned.

Our humility serves us falsely when it leads us to shrink from any duty. The plea of unfitness or inability is utterly insufficient to excuse us. It is too startlingly like that offered by the one-talented man in the parable, whose gift was so small that there seemed no use in trying to employ it. The lurid light that the sequel to his story flashes upon us should arouse us to read the meaning of personal responsibility, and to hasten to employ every shred of a gift that God has bestowed upon us. . . .

It is the faithfulness of the one-talented million rather than of the richly endowed one or two that is needed today to hasten the coming of Christ's kingdom. . . . It is a fearful thing to take a faculty given wherewith to bless the world, and use it in such a way as to leave blight and woe and curse instead of blessing. But it is also a fearful thing to fold up the talent and hide it away. It is the blighting of our own hope of glory, the throwing away of our own crown. . . .

Responsibilities encircle us about. They make solemn all of life's relations. They charge even our lightest acts and our unconscious influence with the most weighty seriousness. . . . We are not put into this world for idle ease, but for most earnest work. They misunderstood the meaning of the Christian life who in olden days fled away to the deserts and dwelt in huts and caves and lonely cells, far from the noise and strife of the world, and they misread the divine writing also who think in these days to serve Christ only in prayer and devotion, while they go not out to toil for Him. . . .

Let no one, then, hide away from the solemn responsibilities of his calling in any imagined humility or lowly estimate of his own abilities. When God calls us to a work, He gives the needed strength. Not one of us knows the possibilities of usefulness that lie folded up in his hand and brain and heart. The Lord can use human feebleness as well as human strength. To him that is faithful in a little, more is given, and more and more.

Dr J R Miller, Week-Day Religion, 1897