A Monument to Our Greatness

On May 1, 1931 the Empire State Building, in Central Manhattan, New York City, opened its doors for the first time. It was an engineer marvel with 102 stories stretching to 1,250 feet into the sky. It was to be the tallest building in the world for forty-one years! It is an office building with over 25,000 tenants, larger than many cities! On a clear day you can stand in the observation tower at its summit and see for nearly two hundred miles. It is an incredible building. There are others taller, of course, but the Empire State Building remains one of America’s most visited places. It could be said that it has become a monument to our greatness. There is another such monument spoken of in the Scripture:

At one time the whole world spoke a single language and used the same words. As the people migrated eastward, they found a plain in the land of Babylonia and settled there. They began to talk about construction projects. "Come," they said, "let's make great piles of burnt brick and collect natural asphalt to use as mortar. Let's build a great city with a tower that reaches to the skies – a monument to our greatness! This will bring us together and keep us from scattering all over the world." (Genesis 11:1-4 NLV).

The story is told of a Rabbi and a New England minister as they were getting to know one another. Proudly, the minister exclaimed, "One of my ancestors signed the Declaration of Independence." "I understand your pride," responded the rabbi. "One of my ancestors signed the Ten Commandments."

Strange how easy it is to erect monuments to ourselves, isn’t it? All of these can be points of pride, which will lead to potential destruction. Corrie Ten Boom used to tell the story about a proud woodpecker that was tapping away at a dead tree when the sky unexpectedly turned black and the thunder began to roll. Undaunted, he went right on working. Suddenly a bolt of lightning struck the old tree, splintering it into hundreds of pieces. Startled but unhurt, the haughty bird flew off, screeching to his feathered friends, "Hey, everyone, look what I did!
Look what I did!" This old woodpecker reminds me of people who think more highly of themselves than they should. Usually they are so busy bragging about their achievements and their greatness that they fail to recognize God as the source of all their abilities. They are suffering from spiritual delusions of grandeur. Without the Lord no one amounts to anything, and in our own strength we cannot please Him. It is not wrong to take pride in our victories. The error is committed when we fail to recognize the ultimate source of our successes. Perhaps you have been building your monuments. Make the following confession today and begin building a monument to the grace of God:

Father, I know it's my pride that makes me independent of You. It's appealing to feel I am the master of my fate; I run my own life, I call my own shots; I go it alone. But that feeling is my basic dishonesty. I confess I can't go it alone. I have to get help from You and from other people, and I can't ultimately rely on myself. I know I am dependent on You for my very next breath. It is dishonest of me to pretend that I am anything but a man, small, weak and limited. It's not just a matter or pride being an unfortunate little trait and humility being an attractive little virtue, it's my inner psychological integrity that's at stake. When I am conceited, I am lying to myself about what I am. I am pretending to be God, and not man. My pride is the idolatrous worship of myself. Forgive me. Restore your Spirit within me and set me free to enjoy all Your blessings in their proper perspective. Bless me that I may bless others. Amen.