There's a big scene in Matthew Ch. 21. Jesus comes riding into Jerusalem on a donkey. The people are cutting down palm branches and spreading them across the road, celebrating and shouting "Hosanna, Hosanna in the highest," as Jesus rides in.

Wouldn't it be something if that donkey thought all that celebration was for him?

A glory addict, I have a hard time admitting that I'm just an ass.How do we cultivate and embrace the spirit of the donkey, a posture of underestimating ourselves and selling ourselves short? First, we need to stop talking about ourselves so much. Jesus tells us that there is a strong correlation between our hearts and our words, "out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks." (Matt. 12:34). I appreciate Eugene Peterson's translation, "It's your heart, not the dictionary, that gives meaning to your words."

What fills our hearts will inevitably spill out of our mouths. If your heart is a canvas of affections, your words are the paint. If your heart is set on self—full of thoughts about self— your words will reflect that. You'll talk about yourself—a lot.

You'll boost yourself.
You'll be quick to defend yourself.
You'll promote yourself.
You'll tweet, snap, post, and tik-tok your five seconds of glory. Reels, videos, and pictures, as if
anyone cares about what you're eating for lunch.

Even the conversations that someone else starts, the conversation somehow makes its way backto you. Everything seems to be about you.

This infatuation with self is not a new thing. Augustine of Hippo wrote that man suffers from incurvatus in se (curved in on itself). Martin Luther believed incurvatus in se was a metaphor for humanity; in his Lectures on Romans, Luther describes the inward curve as:

"Our nature, by the corruption of the first sin, [being] so deeply curved in on itself that it not
only bends the best gifts of God towards itself and enjoys them (as is plain in the works-righteous
and hypocrites), or rather even uses God himself in order to attain these gifts, but it also fails to
realize that it so wickedly, curvedly, and viciously seeks all things, even God, for its own sake."

The curve is bent and pointed directly at our hearts and has been that way for a long, long time. Bending the curve outward does not happen naturally, rather, we must fight for it. Daily we must strive to bend the curve outwards, away from self, and out towards others. The outward bend starts by talking about ourselves less.

In place of talking about you, talk about others. Consciously enter every room, every situation, every conversation with the goal of honoring and hearing someone else. Strive every day to learn at least one person's story, something new about someone else. Someone else's dreams, hurts, and hang-ups.

Enter the room, telling yourself it is not about me.

Learn to be genuinely interested in others. Make being interested in others a daily practice. Your practice will become a habit. Your habit will become a desire. Over time you will earnestly desire to know others, to learn their story, to consider others more important than yourself (Phil. 2:3). Mr. Fred Rogers, the sweater-wearing saint of the '80s and '90s, always kept a piece of paper in his back pocket. The paper read, "Frankly, there isn't anyone you couldn't learn to love once you've heard their story."

By focusing on others, you can learn to love others, learn to love them more than you love yourself. By talking about yourself less, you'll have more time to hear from others. To listen to their story. Their hopes. Dreams. Hurts. Their needs. Practice being interested in others until you genuinely are. Practice until the inward curve becomes an outward curve, touching the lives of everyone you meet.

[I have a friend who has a legitimate superpower. You feel like the most important person in the
room whenever you are with him. That's his superpower—he makes you feel significant. He
wasn't born with that gift; he cultivated it. He shaped and reshaped that curve until it was
pointed outwards. He embraces, he welcomes the spirit of the ass.]