Yet I have been the Lord your God ever since the land of Egypt; you know no God but me, and besides me there is no saviour. It was I who fed you in the wilderness, in the land of drought. When I fed them, they were satisfied; they were satisfied, and their heart was proud; therefore they forgot me. So I will become like a lion to them, like a leopard I will lurk beside the way. I will fall upon them like a bear robbed of her cubs, and will tear open the covering of their heart; there I will devour them like a lion, as a wild animal would mangle them. (Hosea 13: 4-8)

Humility is a very practical virtue. Recognizing and accepting the limits of individual influence is profoundly realistic.

Jim Collins, author of Good to Great and other management studies finds the most effective leaders are characterized by a paradoxical mix of confidence and humility.

These leaders recognize the power of externalities, of change, of randomness, of influences far outside their control.

Others accept success as their due becoming proud and forgetting what is real. Lack of humility is a significant vulnerability.

Without humility we are unnecessarily surprised and seriously threatened by the natural consequences of reality.

Above is a relief of a royal lion hunt from the Assyrian palace at Nineveh. The king is stabbing a lion.