"Pride and Prejudice"

A few weeks ago I ran across two closely related quotes which went something like this:

You can tell who a man is, not by what he reads, but by what he rereads.

You haven't really read a book until you have read it more than once.

During the school year, when I'm teaching the kids, I don't spend enough time reading just for fun, just for myself. So, I decided to remedy this by rereading Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. I just finished it today, and have enjoyed such a wonderful two weeks revisiting the world of Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy. Last night I read while waiting for my daughter at ballet class, and one of the other mothers saw all of my yellow sticky notes protruding from my book. She asked me if I was taking a class. I replied, "No, I just like to mark the parts with especially good writing." She thought this quite a novel idea (no pun intended!), while I consider it not only normal, but necessary!

So, here's a favorite spot of Pride and Prejudice. One of Elizabeth's sisters, Mary (the bookish one), joins in a conversation about their recent meeting of the "prideful" Mr. Darcy. Mary says, "Pride is a very common failing I believe...human nature is especially prone to it...Vanity and pride are different things, though the words are often used synonimously. A person may be proud without being vain. Pride relates more to our opinion of ourselves, vanity to what we would have others think of us."

Isn't it pride that heavily factors into the fall of Adam and Eve? Disobedience, to be sure, but it was certainly driven by pride. Isn't it our pride that makes us think more highly of ourselves than we ought, and makes us think infinitely less of our heavenly Father than we ought?

God, please forgive me my pride and vanity. Help me to keep my eyes, my heart, my mind, all trained on You!