One thing that adversity will do, it will squeeze out any vestige of pride one might have hanging about. When you've lost your job, when you've lost your friends, when your health suffers, pride no longer has a place in your heart and humility begins to look for a comfortable chair. If one is unfamiliar with these two foes one will have a difficult time of it. The absence of pride will be interpreted as a loss of identity, a loss of value and worth. But, if you have some trace of humility, some memory of it, even if it is deep down in your soul, you might remember who you really are, where your true identity comes from and be all the better for it.

People who derive their identity from money, from status and even from accomplishments never cease to amaze me. I was looking at a coffee table book the other day of Vanity Fair portraits. Everyone who was anyone was in that book, all the successful, all the talented, all the accomplished and yet when I looked past the photographs into their faces I noticed an emptiness. Some were dead now, some were very old, some would someday be old and then dead...and then what? Then, what becomes of their success, their talent, their accomplishments, their money? As the song goes, "What's it all about Alfie"?

Sometimes I feel like we are all playing this game, that we are all pretending like death doesn't exist and that we will all just continue on like we are now. But death does exist and where we go after that, well I believe in what the Bible says, there are only two places, and pride and humility play a huge part as to whether you will go to one place or the other, as well as how you live your life here and what you believe. It made me start to think, I put myself into some magical place where I had a choice to live a life like the people in the Vanity Fair book or whether I would choose a "road less traveled". I put myself in this place so that I could get a grip on my sorrow over not getting the job, over being unemployed AGAIN, over gaining weight and losing friends because of it all. And, I thought long and hard about who I am and who I wanted to be, because it is my choice and it's your choice as well. Am I my weight? Am I my job? Am I my money? No, I'm not, I am a child of God, even if He has to put me in the woodshed now and again. I think that people who are kind, humble, honest and merciful are truly the richest people in the world and beyond. I think people like that know what happiness is and when you look into their eyes you see a warmth that reaches out and warms your soul as well. These people know humility, they know what it's like to stumble and fall and they also know what it's like to stand up again and reach out to others who are where they were.

So my question to you is, what kind of person are you? Where do YOU get your identity from? As for me, I choose humility, I choose to live a life of integrity and walk the road less traveled, even if I might wander off now and again, even if I have to be taken to the woodshed, I would prefer that to a life of vanity. As Jesus said, "What does it benefit a man if he gains the whole world and yet loses his soul"?...