Hi and welcome to Our Daily Bread.

I'm Sheridan Voizzi and I've titled our reading today, Be Humble Day.

I'm often amused by the unofficial holidays people come up with.

February alone has a sticky bun day, a sword swallowers day, even a dog

biscuit appreciation day. Today has been labeled Be Humble Day. Universally recognized as a

virtue, humility is certainly worth celebrating. But interestingly, this hasn't always been the case.

Humility was considered a weakness, not a virtue, in the ancient world, which prized honor instead.

Boasting about one's achievements was expected, and you sought to raise your status, never lower it.

Humility meant inferiority, like a servant to a master.

But all this changed, historians say, at Jesus' crucifixion. There, the one who was, in very nature God, gave up his divine status to become a servant

and humbled himself to die for others. Such a praiseworthy act forced humility to be redefined. By the end of the first

century, even secular writers were calling humility a virtue because of what Christ had done.

Every time someone is praised for being humble today, the gospel is being subtly preached.

For without Jesus, humility wouldn't be good, or a be humble day even

thinkable. Christ relinquished his status for us, revealing through all history the humble

nature of God. Today's scripture reading is from Philippians chapter 2 verses 1 to 11.

Therefore, if you have any encouragement from being united with Christ,

if any comfort from his love, if any common sharing in the spirit,

if any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having

the same love, being one in spirit and of one mind.

Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit.

Rather, in humility, value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests,

...