Getting Rid of Pride Rock

I've been reading Mere Christianity by CS Lewis lately; and today's chapter was on the subject of sin. Actually, I haven't even finished the chapter yet, I was interrupted with dinner.  But I left off on the subject of pride. Pride is the sin of all sins and it leads in to everything else. I guess you could call it the marijuana of sins.  I'm just fascinated with how deeply pride can affect every aspect of life and I'm determined to burn it's existence from my being. Yet that is a goal that I fear can never be accomplished, but always something to work towards.

We all want to be noticed in some way or another. We dress a certain way to stand out amongst the rest of the kids. We save up stories that we have worked on, perfecting the delivery of it for that perfect audience. We always want to look and be the best, so we pick an easy target to tackle and then give ourselves a gold medal and stand on the winner's podium for leaving them in the dust.

I hear it gets lonely up there.

I don't want to be the one person standing on top of Pride Rock, looking down on everyone else. I don't want to do things simply because it will get me closer to the top (whatever that really means). I want to be the kind of person who will stop to help someone who's car has broken down on the side of the highway. And at the end of that day, I want to completely forget that I ever did that so I won't feel even the slightest temptation to pat myself on the back. I don't want to live as a "servant" who all the while is hoping to make headlines in the paper for feats such as "Saved 183 Babies From Burning Hospital" or "Built Housing Community For Homeless." I want to be a servant who looks for no other credit than having the hope that God will someday tell me "Well done."

I pray that I might be able to forget myself and forget my desires. I want to climb down from all of the Pride Rocks that I build and simply live. And I pray that I would actually see the steps necessary to climb down from there.