Ol' Franklin

I was reading the other day about Benjamin Franklin. That guy did a lot in his lifetime. He also had this thing where he would have a list of virtues he wanted to work on as a person. Taking one virtue at a time, he would work on one for a few weeks and really pay attention to it in his daily life. He cycled through this list throughout his life. Here is some of the list; his words not mine to follow, Eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation, avoid trifling conversation, justice, orderly, resolute, frugal, industrious, sincere, humility, etc. etc. The list went on for a while. He added humility at the end because a Quaker friend of his told him he had the most problems with that. Franklin said about humility, "I cannot boast of much success in acquiring the reality of this virtue, but I had a good deal with regard to the appearance of it."

That stirred something in me as I read. I started to think about times when I thought I was being humble. Which as I thought about them, I realized pretty quickly that I was not very humble in those times at all due to the rapid fire of things I could remember. This challenged me with a question. Do I work hard to appear humble, or is it part of who I am. I think we all possess this trait, but where the balance lies I am not sure. Am I more humble towards certain things, and for others does the balance shift to appearance. Working for a ministry, I think Franklin's thoughts on humility really pushed me to really ponder this one. Being humble pops up a good bit in ministry, it is a pretty sought after virtue and in many cases their is a lot of opportunities to be challenged in humility.

One other Franklin quote for the evening, that I will Blog about later, I just could not wait.

"to know all, is to forgive all"