Hopeful rather than haughty
Psalm 131 on how pride robs us of hope
131 Lord, my heart is not haughty, nor mine eyes lofty: neither do I exercise myself in great matters, or in things too high for me.
2 Surely I have behaved and quieted myself, as a child that is weaned of his mother: my soul is even as a weaned child.
3 Let Israel hope in the Lord from henceforth and for ever.
It’s impossible to be haughty and hopeful in the same moment. By its nature arrogance demands that the future is a settled matter in which one’s goals are routinely surmounted with casual ease. Hope is therefore unnecessary—a sign of weakness that requires us to look to resources outside of ourselves.
You will never meet a more disconsolate person that an arrogant man who has failed at something. The moment of failure is, for the arrogant, a crushing referendum that proved what their boisterous haughtiness attempted to conceal: weakness.
We’re all weak. We all walk with a metaphorical limp. We all need hope. And that comes from the Lord.