Thursday, October 02, 2008

Noble or prideful?

Excerpt from the book Blue Like Jazz:

A few years ago I was listing prayer requests to a friend. As I listed my requests, I mentioned many of my friends and family, but never spoke about my personal problems. My friend candidly asked me to reveal my own struggles, but I told him no, that my problems weren't that bad. My friend answered quickly, in the voice of a confident teacher, "Don, you are not above the charity of God."

In that instant he revealed my motives were not noble, they were prideful. It wasn't that I cared about my friends more than myself, it was that I believed I was above the grace of God.

...I am too prideful to accept the grace of God. It isn't that I want to earn my own way to give something to God, it's that I want to earn my own way so I won't be charity.

That's me more than I want to admit. There's still a part of me that desperately wants to achieve goodness on my own instead of being dependent on someone else (even God) to gift that to me.

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