God is Pounding on my Pride

The past couple weeks, God has really been showing me how privileged I am and how much of it has so little to do with my performance and so much to do with his immeasurable grace.  It has led me to confession and even a bit of weeping.  Here are the points that hit home -

• The movie Precious –  Wow I only made it through about 20 minutes of this movie.  The movie gives a view into the life of a young, overweight African American teenage girl that is truly horrific.  To describe the depth of despair, her mother let her father rape her so that the teenager could keep giving birth to children so that the mother can get more welfare money.  The fact that I was born to 2 white middle class parents who loved me thoroughly has way more to do with my current life than my hard work.  Mark against my pride of status / success in my life.
• A conversation with a good friend – A friend and I went to a movie a couple weeks ago and conversation veered to kids.  His sister came up in the conversation, and I was sad to hear that her firstborn is still experiencing real problems.  It appears that the young child has bi-polar and is still quite violent and down-right threatening sometimes.  Both my friend’s sister and husband are faithful, smart, excellent parents who are struggling day in, day out with their child.  This really shook me up as well as I act as if my children’s relatively good behavior is largely a result of my “good” parenting.  Another heavy mark against my pride of the “job I have done” in parenting my kids.
• The movie The Road – This was another movie that shouldn’t be watched after a hard day.  Basically it consists of a post-apocalyptic world where there is no food / animals left.  The story is about a man who is just trying to keep him and his son alive on the road.  It is incredibly bleak, but it again it just showed me how much I have come to expect out of life.  Safety, regular food production, clean water.  These things are insignificant until we start to think about what we would do if they were yanked away.  Of course, my sinful heart would think, well that couldn’t happen in America, but I see no place in the Bible where I am promised that.  Huge mark against my pride which lead me to expect all of the things of my life to continue uninterrupted.

All of this has caused me to pray more humbly, to thank God deeply for simple things (air, food, family) and to generally distrust my natural state of evil pride.  I still forget regularly about my need to do these things (chief sin of Israelites who forgot God), but I have been clearly shown my sin.  God, please be merciful to me and help me to further confess and turn from my sin.