Learning Humility in Exile - Day 19
Learning Humility in Exile
Day 19… from setback to comeback
This is Day 19 of our 40 Day Journey from setback to comeback. Today I am looking at an ancient book of the Bible for some insight into how to gain humility.*
“God doesn’t reject his people forever. Although he brings sorrow, he also has mercy and love.”
Comfort From Jeremiah
On Day Eighteen I said that God sends companions to comfort us in exile. One of those comforters for me, back in my days on the farm, were the words from Jeremiah the prophet. He wrote a letter of mourning after the destruction of Jerusalem. He understood the depths of loss.
After he reflected on his loss he wrote:
It is good for a young man to work hard while he is young. He should sit alone and be quiet; the Lord has given him hard work to do. Lamentations 3:27,28
Well, that got my attention. I was certainly working hard.
Just a reminder: I moved from the Twin Cities to a farm in Wisconsin with two other families back in 1990. It was a utopian dream to create a Christian community but it didn't work out that way. We ended up working very hard to survive financially and barely had time to spend with one another. After seven years we dissolved the community.
A Lesson in Humility
Jeremiah continues:
He should bow down to the ground; maybe there is still hope. He should let anyone slap his cheek; he should be filled with humility. Lamentations 3:29, 30
That’s how I felt, like I was getting slapped around by life. Nothing I did succeeded. It was very humiliating because I was used to succeeding.
I didn't understand why our plans for community failed. We thought we heard from God. But sometimes our lives felt like hell. Sometimes that’s what life does to you.
God Doesn’t Reject Us Forever
My guess is, you might know exactly what I mean. You too might feel slapped around and you wonder if anything good can come from it. So let’s keep reading:
But the Lord will not reject his people forever. Although he brings sorrow, he also has mercy and great love. He does not like to punish people or make them sad. Lamentations 3:31-33
This might sound like a downer, but it really helped me understand what God might be doing. I felt like God was using this time to break me of my pride. If I worked through it, I’d come out on the other side a better person to do God's will.
A Necessary Stripping of Pride
You see, before the farm, I was overconfident. I didn’t know that, but I was. I thought if I just worked hard enough and smart enough, and with God’s help, I could accomplish anything. I could even be profitable farming. That’s how delusional I was!
The farm experience revealed my overconfidence. It seemed that God was showing me that he wasn’t going to bless everything I touched just because I was a Christian and worked hard and smart. So, instead of blessing our farm experience, God used its failure to strip me of a lot of pride. (Not all of it, unfortunately).
Just about everything in my life struggled during those years: my marriage, my faith, my finances, my parenting, etc. Things broke on the farm that I couldn’t fix. I’d just stand there and stare at what I broke, totally powerless to fix it. Animals died from my mistakes. It was like I had the opposite of the Midas Touch.
I can’t tell you how devastating that was. I felt like an utter failure.
Is Your Pride Being Stripped Away?
Maybe you’ve been in a place like that. Everything you touched seemed to fall apart. Maybe you thought if you just worked harder on your marriage or harder on your career, that everything would work out. More counseling or more education was going to fix what was broken.
But years later and nothing changed. It’s disheartening.
This season was not a happy time in my life, but in retrospect, I think God was saying, I
’m going to use you Remy, but when I use you I want you to know that it has nothing to do with you. It has everything to do we with Me.
This might sound harsh but God knew what I needed to prepare me for the work that he had me to do. Now I can say, with Jeremiah,
God doesn't reject his people forever. Although he brings sorrow, he also has mercy and love.
I hope you can believe that and find comfort in your exile.
This 40-day journey is adapted from my book, Return from Exile.
* This is a repost from a 2013 40-day series of posts. I’m only reposting a few for this season of Lent. To find the other days use the search bar and search for the day you’d like, i.e. day three, day 12, etc. or “Return from Exile.”
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