06 September 2007 Devotion for Today “Humility is Like Soap” James 4:6-10
I recently read where a man made almost a billion dollars selling laundry soap in China. He had never been to China before. He did not know the language or the customs. He knew only two things: 1)China has the most people in the world, and 2) People in China want to wash their clothes like everybody else. The American knew, however, that virtually no one was marketing laundry soap in China, so he bought a plane ticket and arrived in China to find out why. The first thing he did was to get a job in a rice paddy. Admittedly, that job had nothing to do soap, but he found a way to observe and learn about the Chinese people and why there was no current market for laundry soap in that country. He discovered that at the end of the week, all of the people working at the rice paddy took their clothes to be laundered at a special spring at the edge of the village. It was not that the people did not have water in their own homes- they did, but only for drinking. The problem was that the water in their homes, almost universally throughout the entire country, extremely hard. Few suds would generate from the household water. But at the spring, suds appeared like magic. The American tested the water at the spring and found it to be soft. Then he sent samples of the hard and soft water back to a laboratory in the US, which then produced a formula for creating suds in both soft and hard water. With this formula, the American then produced laundry soap which could be used in the typical Chinese home without them having to travel to the village spring to find soft water to wash their clothes in. What innovation? No, it was not innovation that made the American a billionaire. It was not even the soap, or the rice. It was humility- the humility to get a job in a rice paddy so that he could learn the culture and habits of people he might not otherwise have known.
The American teaches us what Christ teaches us everyday from Scripture- lessons that are usually ignored or lost because of our unceasing desire to feel like we have to be more than we are.
Humility is defined by Webster as “not proud or haughty: not arrogant or assertive; reflecting, expressing,or offerd in a spirit of deference or submission; ranking low in a hierarchy scale: insignificant, unpretentious. Through these definitions we get an idea of what it means to be humble. Up to now I have always known what the Bible says about humility and being humble, but I never really valued what I could get out of being humble until now.
God’s Word says in James 4: “But He gives more grace. Therefore He says, ‘God resists the proud, But gives grace to the humble.’..Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and He will lift you up.” (James 4:6, 10)
Where can you appropriate God’s grace in being humble today? It may not make you a billion dollars, but in time people will value the humility that they see in you, and you will become to them a greater treasure than Bill Gates.
Have a blessed day.
Rev. Jeffery C. Russell
Salem Baptist Church
Elizabeth City, NC
jefferyrussell@embarqmail.com
jcrussell@liberty.edu
Church website: http://25621.lifewaylink.com
Devotion Archives: http://www.msnusers.com/DevotionforToday
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