Humility

Humility

In 2001, I was blessed with the chance to summit Mt. Kala Pattar, Nepal. Sitting at nearly 5500m, it felt like a pile of black rocks when compared to the mighty Mt Everest and other surrounding 8000m peaks in that portion of the Himalayas, but it was nonetheless among the most difficult physical feats I had accomplished in slowly ascending to the summit of this peak.
I spent nearly 2 hours on the summit waiting for other members of our group to arrive and while basking in the majesty of the roof of the world, I spent a lot of time looking at Mt. Everest and imagining how climbers had attempted to summit the tallest mountain on earth.
One virtue that is evident among the best climbers on earth is a sense of humility in knowing one’s limitations regarding making a summit attempt. The gentleman who led our expedition had admitted to me he had been unable to summit Mt Everest on 7 different occasions! The most difficult one for him to accept was when he and another climber were a mere 20 metres from the summit but knew that due to the high winds and incoming blizzard, that if they did not turn back now, they would perish.
Though not a Christian, he told me that it was humility that saved his life that day. It was a humility found in knowing his limitations and putting his ego and desire to finally summited Mt Everest aside so that he could stay alive and keep safe the client he was guiding to the summit.
Humility is a virtue that can truly save lives. Not only in humbly admitting our physical limitations and mitigating risks to keep us safe, but also in our spiritual life when we humbly acknowledge where we are prone to fall into sin or when we have reached our limitations that if we tried to ignore could cause great harm to others and ourselves.
Let us ask of Lord, who is truly meek and humble of heart, to daily teach us where we can grow in humility.