Being the Best!

I had never read this speech given by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. just six months prior to his death until I saw it posted on Katie Weatherbee's blog, Around Here. It pretty much sizes up what I think and live by as far as doing any job I am given to do. It expresses my paradigm for living my life along with the verse that follows.

Dr. King's words strike a strong cord in my heart! They are almost exactly what I would say if I were able to say it as eloquently:

And when you discover what you will be in your life, set out to do it as if God Almighty called you at this particular moment in history to do it. Don’t just set out to do a good job. Set out to do such a good job that the living, the dead or the unborn couldn’t do it any better. If it falls your lot to be a street sweeper, sweep streets like Michelangelo painted pictures, sweep streets like Beethoven composed music, sweep streets like Leontyne Price sings before the Metropolitan Opera. Sweep streets 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 at the top of the hill, be a shrub in the valley. Be the best little shrub on the side of the hill. 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 a sun, be a star.For it isn’t by size that you win or fail. Be the best of whatever you are.

Another great man wrote similar words long before Dr. King:

And whatever you do in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him. (Col. 3:17)

These are wise words to live by! This is a high bar for a standard of living whether others see, appreciate or understand! Ultimately I'm not doing what I do for the approval of others anyway!