By Joseph J. Bucci ——Bio and Archives--November 11, 2026
There is something in the air these days. A shifting of the wind, and a sense of change. The election is over, and with its passing a foreboding sense of dread for some. For others there is a numbness, trying to gauge exactly what it all means.
There has been planted in the field of politics a new crop ready to be harvested. The fruit of humility is not always the tastiest, but it does produce great results. This crop is ready to be eaten not only by the pundits and the pollsters. Those of us, and I include myself here, who hoped for God to bless our nation by following a certain course received the Almighty’s answer loud and clear (The Message version really rings true on these thoughts):
“I don’t think the way you think. The way you work isn’t the way I work. For as the sky soars high above earth, so the way I work surpasses the way you work, and the way I think is beyond the way you think. Just as rain and snow descend from the skies and don’t go back until they’ve watered the earth, doing their work of making things grow and blossom, producing seed for farmers and food for the hungry, so will the words that come out of my mouth not come back empty-handed. They’ll do the work I sent them to do; they’ll complete the assignment I gave them” (Isaiah 55:8-11, MSG).
I have seen the fruit of humility--also called “humble pie”--on the menu of the “Restaurant of Life” many times before (Studio C, 2015). In sixth grade, I was put up as a candidate for class president. I did not realize that this was a joke, a ruse to play on the emotions of an awkward kid. After I had run my campaign and proclaimed my platform in front of the entire student body, humility was served up with whipped cream on it. When I think back to this event, there is no bitterness in my heart, but a sense of gratitude. From this experience, an awkward kid learned how to speak in public without fear.
Later, as an adult, I served on the staff of a very small church where the pastor, stricken with polio as a child, was an amazing example of fearlessness and productivity. He had recruited me as his chosen replacement to carry out his vision for the church he had built. When he passed away suddenly, the board invited in another former pastor to join the search committee, which I thought was just a formality. The next thing I knew, that man sat in our living room telling my wife and me how he planned to take over the church… and there was nothing we could do about it.
These were not happy times, but the fruit of humility gave us a choice about how to respond. Would we respond in bitterness and anger? There were certainly opportunities to challenge the decision. But ultimately, not being given the opportunity in this church led us into more diverse experiences, beyond what we could have imagined. That is the way it is with God’s plan and His timing. What seems like loss and betrayal, if received with the spirit of humility, becomes the opportunity to experience a whole new part of God’s amazing grace.
I tell these stories not to be pitied but because I am in good company. Some of history’s most remarkable second chances began the moment someone chose to receive a banquet of the fruit of humility rather than resist it.
John Newton knew what it was to be brought low. A sailor in the Atlantic slave trade, he was himself enslaved for a time on the coast of West Africa, abused and starved. Sailing home in March 1748, he was caught in a violent storm, certain he would drown. He cried out to the God of his childhood, and he marked that anniversary for the rest of his life (Armstrong, 2004; DiPrima, 2026).
Yet he did not change overnight. He stayed in the slave trade for a time, and only in 1788, thirty-four years after leaving it, did he publish Thoughts upon the African Slave Trade, including a repentant confession of his own part in it (Petruzzello, 2026; Newton, 1788). He became a minister, a hymn writer, and an ally of William Wilberforce. He called himself “the old African blasphemer” (Armstrong, 2004), and near the end, with his memory failing, he said that two things remained clear: he was a great sinner, and Christ was a great Savior (DiPrima, 2026). His second chance did not erase his past. It put his past to work. The fruit of humility nourished a hardened soul and God got the glory!
Tom Monaghan’s humbling came with a fortune attached. He built Domino’s Pizza into a global chain, bought the Detroit Tigers, and watched them win a World Series (Aleteia, 2024). By his own account he was spending money like water. Around 1989 he picked up C. S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity, a book he had put off reading because Lewis was not a Catholic (Aleteia, 2024). The chapter on pride, “The Great Sin,” hit him, he said, between the eyes (Ward, 2000). One of the faults he regularly carried into the confessional was trying to impress people (Aleteia, 2024), and now he saw how much of his life was built on that impulse.
What followed was a real unwinding. He sold the Tigers and gave up his lavish office, and in 1998 he sold most of Domino’s for a reported billion dollars to fund Catholic and pro-life causes (Ward, 2000). His second chance was not a comeback but a redirection: wealth once spent on impressing people became fuel for causes larger than himself. The fruit of humility nourished the innocent of society.
The company Monaghan left behind would face a humbling of its own. By 2009, focus groups were faulting Domino’s pizza for lacking flavor and for crusts that tasted like cardboard, and domestic same-store sales had fallen about ten percent between 2006 and 2008 (Thorn, 2018). The company could have blamed the economy. Instead, in late 2009, it launched its “Pizza Turnaround” campaign, airing real customer criticism and promising a rebuilt recipe. Patrick Doyle, then president of Domino’s USA, was already deep in the work. When he became CEO in March 2010, he stepped in front of the camera himself to acknowledge how bad the old pizza had been. The humility had follow-through: the pizza was reformulated, and in fiscal 2010 same-store sales rose nearly ten percent (Thorn, 2018).
A founder humbled by a book, a company humbled by its customers. Pride says, “We’re fine.” The fruit of humility says, “Tell me the truth,” and that is where second chances live.
Not everyone eats this fruit gracefully. Jonah became angry with God because he knew of God’s tender mercies (Jonah 4:1-2). He had an attitude problem about the “evil” people of Nineveh (GotQuestions.org, 2026), yet he was the first to receive a second chance: the word of the LORD came to him “a second time” (Jonah 3:1). Could it be that those of us of a particular political persuasion are angry because others have prospered where we did not think they deserved it? That was not God’s plan for us or for them. His plan was outside of what we can see or understand (Isaiah 55:8-9).
The word humility came to me clearly when I asked the Lord for ideas for this article. I dismissed it at first. Then, after answering several student emails, I found myself asking whether I had answered them with tenderness and compassion, the byproducts of the fruit of humility. I took that as my answer.
Paul lists compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience in a single sentence (Colossians 3:12). They are one fruit, and humility is its root. As James says, “God opposes the proud but shows favor to the humble” (James 4:6, NIV).
Perhaps in eating the fruit of humility we will be given the opportunity to be angels of mercy to others, instead of acting out of pride, wanting to have our own way (Romans 12:19-21). At times we revert back to two-year-old behavior where it was always about us. As Rick Warren famously said in his best-selling book The Purpose Driven Life, “It’s not about you” (Warren, 2002). Life only makes sense when oriented toward God and a larger eternal plan. And there are plenty of restaurants along the way serving the fruit of humility.
The fruit of humility is not always the tastiest, but I have learned to be hungry for it. It fed an awkward sixth-grader who learned to speak, a church assistant pastor who found more of God’s grace ahead than behind, a slave-ship sailor who became a pastor, and a pizza baron who became a philanthropist. Perhaps in this season it can feed us, too, not with the satisfaction of winning, but with the freedom of no longer needing to. The word of the LORD came to Jonah a second time. It still comes. The only question is whether we will be humble enough to hear and receive it.
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