In this Christian work
we're committed to doing,
It's wise to ask ourselves,
Is it my recognition --
Or God's holy child's --
I'm busily pursuing?
Motive is everything.
And in this, as in everything
That concerns our daily walk,
Our great Example shows the way.
The true humility Jesus displayed!
Didn't he seem at times
To almost be hiding himself;
Never trying to be a "star",
Wanting invariably instead
To see his Father glorified?
So let us choose life's "lowest room"*,
Be unpretentious in what we do and are.
It is this not seeking things for ourselves,
Living to honour not us, but Him
That keeps us from the pride
That makes of our existence
Not His heaven, but a hell;
That empowers us to walk
A selfless, Christly path,
Touching other lives perhaps
More widely than we can tell.
As a letter Mary Baker Eddy once wrote to James Neal on this topic cautioned:
"Now dear one, watch that worldliness and the natural mortal love of human applause or any possible pride or vanity creep not into your thought for these are among the thieves that would steal into the good man’s house and spoil his goods – take away the riches of purer and higher thoughts – which weigh in God’s scale helping you to heal the sick and reform the sinner. To this end pray to divine Love daily: for if the good man watch, his house will not be broken open. Mary Baker Eddy **
*See Luke 14:7-11
** MBE: Christian Healer. P.171
