People who are humble and gracious and kind and good - they are so rare that the moment we meet someone who is genuinely so, regardless of what our ideologies or advocacies may be, we find ourselves transfixed. There's a word for people like that in the English language: self-effacing.
Looking back, self-effacing is a product of one of three things, or a combination of any of these three: nature, nurture and self-will.
In short, the odds of being self-effacing is just as random as any other trait can be. But the weird thing about this? It's something that is expected to be "natural" among Christians.
I was reading on 1 Corinthians 2:5 a while ago and it struck me at how self-effacing Paul was. Of all the apostles, when it comes to eloquence and theological training, he stood out. And yet, he was able to boldly declare that he used none of those to win people over to God. Everything he did was "purely" on the "power of the Spirit."
There's this prayer that I used to pray often when I was still new in the faith. It was just a two-word prayer that I repeated like a mantra whenever I was "forcibly" assigned to lead an endeavor, stand as a speaker or anything else of that caliber: "ERASE ME."
Erase me.
Over the years, I guess that prayer got worn out and I maybe thought there was a better way of praying. But now, looking back, that prayer seems perfect to me. If, like Da Vinci's painting of a chalice at the scene of "The Last Supper," it seems that I am shining brighter than I should be, drawing attention unto me, then dim me, Lord. Erase me if You must. So that all eyes may be drawn unto You alone.
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