There is something called false humility and I imagine that we have all been witness to it if not guilty of it. It is when we downplay or mention something we have done or can do with the hope of being puffed up by someone else and thus made to feel important. It can be conscious or unconscious. But at the core, it is about me feeling a need to be recognized because for some reason I don’t feel valuable enough. It is related to pride and vanity and it can be a lonely road. The virtue of humility, I believe, is not found when one is focused inward, but rather when we have set our sights on reaching out. It does not require us to be human door mats and humility does not mean backing down or shrinking. But rather humility displays a quiet, inner strength that comes from a spirit of the divine, of having a relationship with the one who has saved us and trusting that is enough. For when we realize that God stopped at nothing to rescue us, we can see that we are so valuable we are priceless. And once we can see ourselves in that way, we can see the pricelessness of one another. We can let go of our pride and vanity because they are no longer important and our self-value, our true self-worth, comes from the recognition that we are deeply loved by God. May we live in this realization of God’s love and may we boast; in what God has done and continues to do through Jesus Christ.