Photo and Commentary ©2025 by Robert Howson
Tuesday, February 11, 2025
It’s quite clear that God honors humility and despises pride in mankind. “To fear the Lord is to hate evil; I hate pride and arrogance, evil behavior and perverse speech.” (Proverbs 8:13 NIV) Or put another way: “When pride comes, then comes disgrace, but with humility comes wisdom.” (Proverbs 11:2 NIV) Unfortunately for us, this seems one of the hardest lessons to learn. Fallen human nature is inherently self-centered.
Switching gears, we can see this same self-promotion at work in natural history. Take, for example, the Pectoral Sandpiper, one of the larger sandpipers in a group known as “peeps”. This bird nests in the Arctic with most of the species wintering in South America. A few head more to the west and make their way to Australia or New Zealand for the off season. Either way, this can mean a round trip of 19,000 miles every year. Obviously, traveling this far would necessitate having strong flight or pectoral muscles, which it does, but that’s not the reason for the bird’s name.
That comes from the fact that during courtship, the male develops inflatable air sacs on its breast which are employed to make a booming sound. Thus equipped, he puffs out his chest to twice its normal size and performs both terrestrial and spectacular flight displays to attract the female. One writer compared his colorful appearance to that of a “feathered balloon”.
Such may be appropriate for this sandpiper, but the Apostle Paul warns us against this kind of behavior: “They will be sneaky, reckless, and puffed up with pride. Instead of loving God, they will love pleasure.” (2 Timothy 3:4 CEV) While being puffed up may be appropriate for sandpipers, breakfast cereals, and pillows, we humans would do well to concentrate on being humble.