Key Bible Verse: "God blesses those who are gentle and lowly, for the whole earth will belong to them" (Matthew 5:5). Bonus Reading: 1 Peter 5:5-6

Booker T. Washington, born in 1856, ended up advising presidents Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft. But as a child, he worked in salt mines, taking off only three months a year to attend school. This self-taught reader valued education, worked hard, and eventually graduated from Hampton Institute. Six years later, at age 25, he was appointed the first president of Tuskegee Institute, a trade school for African Americans.

Shortly after accepting this post, Washington was walking down an Alabama street when a white woman spotted him and summoned him to come and chop some wood for her. Most of us wouldn't have tolerated such indignity! We might have angrily responded, "Who do you think you are, lady? How arrogant to judge me by the color of my skin. Don't you know who I am?"

But Washington took off his coat, chopped some wood, and carried an armload of it into her house.

Later, when the woman discovered who he was, she went to his office to apologize. He simply said, "It's all right. I delight in doing favors for my friends." That woman not only became a generous supporter of the Tuskegee Institute, but left her entire estate to the institute.

—Henry Bosh in Our Daily Bread

My Response: Was Washington weak by today's rights-oriented standards? Why was he really strong?

Thought to Apply: He who takes his rank lightly raises his own dignity. —Hebrew proverb

Adapted from Our Daily Bread (RBC Ministries, 1973) by permission.

Prayer for the Week

Lord, combine in my life self-effacing humility and quiet confidence in your power.

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