Humility is a tough pill to swallow but possibly one of the most beautiful stances to be in. No, it doesn’t feel beautiful at first. It feels awful, maybe not as awful as getting a root canal but pretty close. I wonder if being humbled is the first step to serving God?
Have you ever even considered that being humbled could be a good thing?
This week I shared chapter 31 in A Prairie Devotional about my first real job. And I don’t mean Little House, I’m talking about when I was a teenager. It was a fast-food sort of place called The Plump Chicken. The employees wore hot pink shirts with a bright yellow chick on their chests. It was mostly fun… well except for the embarrassing pink shirts, but the worst hour took place after the manager on duty locked the front doors. No matter how many chickens were left in the big metal warming oven, they all needed to be de-boned before anyone could go home.
I remember one night very clearly. There must have been over 25 chickens left in the warmer. The only thing to do is take a deep breath and put on the plastic gloves. The chickens were so hot my fingers could barely do their job. A fellow employee, who happened to be my twin sister, stood beside me—both of us elbow-deep in grease. At that moment, we felt pretty low on the totem pole.
Every time I’m at Costco I think of that night… the metal ovens, the chickens slowly turning, and the grease!
What choice did we have but to choose the appropriate attitude? To laugh at our current state of being and get to work?
Serve God With Humility
It all comes down to adjusting our perspectives on why we are being humbled in the first place, and what we can gain from the experience. Humility can turn any job we’re doing into serving God or serving others. Don’t get discouraged, being humbled is part of life and with it comes some beautiful rewards.
- Remember that humility is a great teacher
- Remember that humility leads to gratefulness
- Remember that being humbled doesn’t last forever
I made it through that dreadful night and two whole years of de-boning hot chickens. Humility taught me to never be ashamed of hard work and to be thankful for every job I’m given, no matter how greasy! Check out my YouTube channel for a live telling of The Plump Chicken story from earlier this week.
I’d love to hear about your first part-time job… the more humbling the better.
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