Pride

Do not be like your ancestors, to whom the earlier prophets proclaimed (Zechariah 1:4)

I wonder if he was thinking of his grandfather? Certainly it suggests a degree of self-awareness that what he was writing was prophecy. How then did he maintain any degree of humility? I imagine him waking up in the morning, looking in the mirror and going 'I am a prophet. Coo.' Pride is such a wheedling sin. The way it gets in just when you think you've got it licked. As soon as you think you might be humble you know in that very thought that you are not. 

It requires both a complete self-forgetfulness and a careful self-awareness at one and the same time. Just today, I caught myself telling people of all the Lord had done among us, without telling of all the Lord had done among us. I would love to think that it was accidental, but I suspect pride had crept in and I felt that insidious need to big myself up a bit in front of an important audience. Sorrow, followed by sorry is the only way ahead - but how to avoid it in future? Watchful of self, and forgetful of self. Now that is a narrow path.

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