“What is greatness?”
A young man once set out to find the
answer to that very question. It was during the early years of our nation’s
history. He was ready to start out on his life’s work, and so he went to an old
family friend — a canal-boat captain — to ask his advice on what he should do
with his life.
The captain responded with a
question: “What do you know how to do?”
“I know how to make soap and
candles,” the young man replied.
“Then do it, and do it well; but do
one other thing. Take the Lord into partnership with you. Give him at least
one-tenth of what you make, and realize that it is God who is in charge of the
partnership, not you.”
The young man, William Colgate, took
this advice to heart. He started a soap-and-candle business in New York City. His
little storefront eventually grew into the Colgate-Palmolive Corporation. He
became a philanthropist, one of the founders of the American Bible Society. Colgate
University was named for him.
William Colgate achieved greatness
by the world’s standards, but only because he knew a different kind of
greatness: that which comes from serving God and others.
The preacher Philips Brooks once
said that the way to true humility “is not to stoop until you are smaller than
yourself, but to stand at your real height against some higher nature that will
show you what the real smallness of your greatness is.”1
Pharisees
In today’s scripture passage, Jesus
has a lot to say about a group of people who imagine they are very great, at
least in the spiritual sense. He’s talking, of course, abou
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