Wednesday, October 29, 2008

A New Definition of Greatness

Recently I’ve been reading/listening to many sermons by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. One of his more famous sermons, titled “The Drum Major Instinct”, is one that I have found particularly challenging. King preaches on Mark 10:35-44, and towards the end of the sermon begins to focus on what it means to be great,
…and so Jesus gave us a new norm of greatness. If you want to be important—wonderful. If you want to be recognized—wonderful. If you want to be great—wonderful. But recognize that he who is greatest among you shall be your servant. That's a new definition of greatness. And this morning, the thing that I like about it: by giving that definition of greatness, it means that everybody can be great, because everybody can serve. You don't have to have a college degree to serve. You don't have to make your subject and your verb agree to serve. You don't have to know about Plato and Aristotle to serve. You don't have to know Einstein's theory of relativity to serve. You don't have to know the second theory of thermodynamics in physics to serve. You only need a heart full of grace, a soul generated by love.

While I agree wholeheartedly with King, I find this challenging because often times I don’t have a heart full of grace and a soul generated by love. This is where I most definitely need God’s grace and God’s help.

Its very easy to want to convey this point to the youth group that I work with, and many times I do. But at the same time, my example speaks louder than my words do. If I don’t have a servant’s heart and if I’m not trusting in the LORD to work this into my life, then I’m not going to provide a good example to backup exhortations of service.

1 comment:

L. Frank Morgan said...

This retired Physicist of 84 years can tell you he has seen and felt the physics of love, grace, the heart and the soul and is amplified to inifinite understanding and appreciation for life! Not to be able to see as well as feel the electron, and see them clealy in endless numbers inside the atom and endless atoms inside the molecule--- is to live in the relative darkness of the deepest cave. Real heaven and all paradise on earth is magnified by science and math!