By Rennie Phillips

Back when we were living in Bartlesville I was attending the Wesleyan College there. One of the courses we had to take was Biblical Greek. One of, if not the, hardest courses I have ever taken bar none. I've taken chemistry and physics and math classes in college and none even come close to Biblical Greek. So for two semesters when we were learning Biblical Greek using Machen as a text book my every waking and it seemed like sleeping moment was filled with thoughts and dreams of Greek. Our teacher Rich Coleson said to make flash cards and put them everywhere. One place was on the mirror in the bathroom when we were shaving. So I did. Wore them out. But I learned Greek. And I thought I was pretty darn good at Biblical Greek. Above average for sure.

I went on to Asbury Theological Seminary for my Masters but one thing we had to take was an entrance exam to determine how proficient we were in Greek. So there must have been 400 or 500 or maybe even 600 or more students in this one big room to take the test. We were handed the test and told not to turn it over where it was a timed test. When we finally got to turn it over we were told to write our names on the test and then to begin. I'll bet half to two thirds of the students in the room wrote down their names and left. This wasn't a multiple choice test. This was a test where there was no guessing. Either you knew it or you didn't. There was no guessing. Passing was a 70 percent, which is exactly what I got. I thought I really knew it when in fact I was just starting. Talk about humbling. I went from a know it all to a know very little in minutes.

But humbling is good for us or at least in my opinion it is.

Gardening is one other humbling experience. I grow a lot of tomatoes when compared to the average gardener. But when I'm compared to the professional tomato grower I don't grow a drop in the bucket. Back when we first put up our high tunnels we had some awesome crops of tomatoes. Just awesome. There were a couple years where we picked over 1,000 pounds of tomatoes from each high tunnel. And after experiencing great success we sort of got the big head like we got this figured out.

Wrong! Along came last year and the summer wasn't very bright. I got the tomatoes out about the right time but ended up with aphids in both high tunnels on the tomatoes. Horrible little bug in my opinion. So I tried neem oil and soap and such but didn't seem to work. Finally cranked out the malathion and sprayed with it. Worked to a degree but still had some aphids. But when I got to looking some other bug was doing the damage and not the aphids. What that bug was actually doing was eating the insides of my tomato blossoms. I had a high tunnel full of nice looking tomato plants with almost no tomatoes on the plants with no prospect of tomatoes in the forseeable future. Bummer.

So one high tunnel we cleaned out all the tomato plants. Right around 125 tomato plants went on the burn pile. I don't compost any of my tomato plants. I burn them all. The other high tunnel we left to see how it would do. The growing season was about over so I got a whole mess of plants from Steve for a good price. We did decent last summer. Sold some and ate a bunch.

I didn't know it all. Humbling.

As you get up where you start to date you watch how other parents are raising their kids, and the thought comes man if we have kids they sure won't act like that. Huh wrong! Those little turkeys will pick the worst time and worst place to act out. Humbling. We were in Gibsons in North Platte, Nebraska when Vic pulled a whole stack of glass stuff off onto the floor. He was in a shopping cart so he didn't get hurt. Broken glass everywhere. Marge was pushing the cart so I just walked off like I don't know these two. Kids will bring you off your high horse in a hurry.

Or you go fishing in your new boat with a friend and are wanting to show it off. And you get to the end of the lake and your motor konks out. I don't know how many videos I've watched of Bill Dance in humbling situations. Shutting the tailgate on his pickup with the rod tips getting broken in the process. Trying out a new rod at the sporting gear shop only to have the ceiling fan break the rod tip. Man I remember pulling our boat back to Nebraska and dumping it in Lake McConauhey. I noticed there was getting to be a lot of water in the bottom of the boat. Dang! Left the plug out. I was wanting to show off and about all I did was give those watching a good laugh. Humbling. The worst part is I've done this gosh knows how many times and I'll probably do it again.

Humbling siituations bring us down to where we realize we are just ordinary people who are living a less then perfect life which is exactly true. Some seem to worry about the grey hairs showing up. Kind of a fact of life as we age. I can't do nearly as much as I used to. Fact of life. Some of us want to look thin and trim and all healthy but someone takes our picture and out pops this less than stellar image. And we think man that is a poor picture of us. Truth is it's probably accurate. Humbling.

Well we might as well accept the fact we are all going to experience a bad hair day now and then. Part of being human. And honestly the best way to handle these situations is to learn from them but also to laugh them off and go on.