The Lion Who Knelt

In C.S. Lewis's The Horse and His Boy, young Shasta spends the entire journey terrified of a lion that seems to be stalking him through the wilderness. He has been chased, scratched, and frightened at every turn. When he finally encounters Aslan face to face in the mountain fog, he expects destruction. Instead, Aslan explains that He was the lion all along — not hunting Shasta, but guiding him. The lion who chased him toward safety. The lion whose roar scattered the wolves. The lion whose scratch woke the horses at the exact moment they needed to run.

What strikes me most is what Shasta does next. He doesn't argue. He doesn't demand an explanation for the scratches. He simply says, "I was the one you were looking for?" And Aslan breathes on him — warm, golden breath that takes away his fear.

Humility is not thinking less of yourself. It is what happens when you finally stop running long enough to realize that the thing you feared most was actually the hand of the Almighty guiding you all along. It is the moment you stop narrating your own story and discover you were a character in His.

Paul understood this. The man who once terrorized the church discovered on the Damascus road that the very God he thought he was defending had been pursuing him. "By the grace of God I am what I am," he wrote in 1 Corinthians 15:10.

True humility begins when we stop explaining our journey and start thanking the One who was walking it with us the whole time.