Day 6 - Boldness and Humility

God repeatedly calls us, through Scripture, to be humble and yet bold at the same time. How is it that humility and boldness can be used in the same sentence to describe someone? How can we be both these things at one and the same time? Perhaps it is because of the need of the hour and the quality of the workman.

It is easy to offer prayer for another; we often feel it to be the best we can do under our, or their, circumstances. But God finds the straightest way to a human heart to lie through the heart of another. And therefore, at best, the need can only be fulfilled through us. That thought alone must surely be sufficient to induce humility.

It is not us who must be bold but the act of our witness, preaching, the sharing of the good news of the message of the cross. But if that bold speaking does not break through the defensive shields of the over-religious and the unreligious it is of no value. It will be mere rhetoric.

So we must go on being more than content with sackcloth and ashes while we swing our axes into the gates of hell.