In my reading this morning of A Testament to Devotion by Thomas Kelly, Kelly addresses the subject of humility. He asserts that humility and its partner, holiness, are the fruits of obedience. The following excerpt about humility caught my attention.
Humility, does not rest, in final count, upon bafflement and discouragement and self-disgust at our shabby lives, a brow beaten, dog-slinking attitude. It rests upon the disclosure of the consummate wonder of God, upon finding that only God counts, that, all our own self-originated intentions are works of straw. …
But humility rests upon a holy blindness, like the blindness of him who looks steadily into the sun. For wherever he turns his eyes on earth, there he sees only the sun. The God-blinded soul sees naught of self, naught of personal degradation or of personal eminence, but only the Holy Will working impersonally through him, through others, as one objective Life and Power. …
But the humility of the God-blinded soul endures only so long as we look steadily at the Sun. Growth in humility is a measure of our growth in the habit of a Godward-directed mind. And he only is near to God who is exceedingly humble.