I work at a job for which, as one man pointed out to me on location, 300 people want to replace me. Some may be better at the finger flying exercise I perform each morning with remote controls, a tiny piece of fiber connecting my workspace with the "eyes" at the end of the tiny ropes which tether controls with optics, 225 feet away, but I've been blessed with acuity and speed while I work.

Several times through my career, I reached the point of over confidence and became quite conceited around other people, and to myself. Suddenly, a part would fail and the precipitous fall from my clouds to the rough ground was a great ego shattering trip every single time. Usually the electronics engineer sitting next to me would leap to his feet and run from the facility to work on whatever was amiss, hoping to restore the system in whole to working condition again..

For the first year, I was tasked with helping with an old TV truck on its last legs as we humdrummed our way through 166 similar events, with intermittant failure from one device. Since we had no spares, we had to deal with the sooner rather than later dropout of portions of the signal from wherever that camera sat at the other end of the 500 foot cable.

One night, after one such failure, my director laughingly mocked our efforts, sarcastically mentioning how old everything was and why we were left doing this event, mentioning my name in reference to the failure of one of the ancient cameras, I barked a very conceited and irritated, "Just do your job!" on the intercom to the show director, who responded, "You'll never work in this town again!"

Everyone on the crew heard his shout. From camera operators to the cloister of technicians inside the facility, conversation dropped instantly to an uneasy silence. My conceit shriveled to lady bug size as I waited in cringing nervousness for the telling blow.

For the next fifteen minutes, the intercom was largely silent as only necessary calls and responses could be heard in tense progression. It would have been just as quick to simply call a far more intelligent answer, but I chose one born in my anger and pride. The engineer, now back from his emergency run, conversationally cracked, "That was one for the history books!" and he too fell silent.

Our conceit separates us from colleagues, family, and ultimately God. And worse, conceit is born of personal arrogance, an unsubstantiated pride in whatever we think we are capable to be. It's wrong every single time for confidence digresses from a reality that one can do the task at hand with a professional attitude. Conceit is the feeling that not only am I capable of doing the job, but I do it so well, that I can never be replaced!

Whereas God reminds us through His word that conceit is one of the sins we need to run from, we in turn must adopt the humiliy of Christ in all that we do, whether on the job or walking in the door each afternoon at home. If anyone was overdue for platitudinous recognition, Jesus was! But all he got were harsh words from leaders, forgetfulness from those He healed, and hostility on the day He was hung.

Lord, help us all to find and portray true humility in our work, with children, and with our spouses. Our best is nothing unless it is committed to You!