Today's Devotional

January 20, 2005

Subject:  The Best Street Sweeper In The World

Colossians 3:23 - "And whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord, and not unto men."

Without spending too much time introducing the quotes from Dr. King, today's message simply speaks to excellence.  Go to any store or restaurant today and witness the quality of work or service that you're given and you'll quickly find that few people today aspire to excellence in their craft or work.  We as believers should be different because we are always at work, in whatever we are doing, to bring glory to God.  Here are Martin's quotes on the matter.

"We must set out to do our lives work so well that nobody could do it better.

We must set out to do a good job.  We must not seek merely to do a good Negro job...If you're setting out to do this, you have already flunked your matriculation exam for entrance into the university of integration.

We must set out to do a good job and to do that job so well that the living, the dead, or the unborn couldn't do it better.

As I've said so often, if it falls your lot to be a street sweeper, go on out and sweep streets like Michelangelo carved marble, sweep streets like Rafael painted pictures, sweep streets like Beethoven composed music and like Shakespeare wrote poetry.   Sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will have to pause and say, here lived a great street sweeper who swept his job well.

If you can't be a pine on the top of the hill, be a shrub in the valley, but be the best little shrub on the side of the rail.  Be a bush if you can't be a tree.  If you can't be a highway just be a trail.  If you can't be the sun be a star for it isn't by size that you win or you fail, be the best at whatever you are."

Carlen