I can't remember where I came across this story. I've read so many books and articles and I'm getting so old that a lot of the details seem to escape me - but I do remember the story. It's about a black man who was a mechanic aboard a small river boat. It was sometime after the civil war but well before civil rights, so it was during a time when opportunities for black men in areas like employment and education were quite limited.

Another man had opportunity to cross a large river (it might have been the Mississippi) on this boat, and for some reason he went below where the engine room was. This was the domain of the black gentleman and what the passenger observed stunned him. He had been below on a number of such vessels, and they were all pretty much the same. They were dirty and greasy and usually a jumbled mess of needed parts, cast-off items that still might have some use, and other equipment needed to keep the boat running. This engine room, however, was not at all like the others he had seen. It was spotless!

He complimented the gentleman for what he had observed, stating that he had never seen anything like it. Why, he wondered, would anyone go to so much trouble to keep an engine room so immaculate? The black gentleman simply smiled and replied, "I gots a glory"!

This, in my opinion, is the way that life should be lived. Sometimes we fall into the trap of not thinking too highly of what we do, and our everyday labors become a bit mundane. Since we don't think too highly of what we are doing, and perhaps we don't even think too highly of who we are, we have a tendency to "let things slide". This is a common situation, and I suppose most people fall prey to it from time to time, but we shouldn't do so. As the Apostle Paul was inspired to write, we should do all things as if we are working for the Lord. It not only makes a difference in the way people view us and in the way that we often view ourselves, but it will also influence the way that some people see Christ whom we are serving.

I think everyone needs a glory. Like most people, I'm proud of my family. My son and his wife have a non-profit on the side that drills wells so that people can have clean water in certain villages in Africa that do not already have access to such. My oldest daughter is the volunteer director of a Bible school, and is responsible for arranging all the curriculum, lining up the teachers, and taking care of the myriads of other details that such an endeavor requires. My youngest daughter is married to a preacher, and they handle all of the duties that such a profession entails. My sweet wife designs Bible curriculum in her spare time that is currently being used in hundreds of churches in Ghana and within countless households all around the world.

They, like that wise black gentleman, would be embarrassed to talk about such things because none are doing it for attention. They simply do it because there is a need for these things to be done and God has blessed them with the opportunity to do them. And, since they are doing them anyway, they might as well throw their hearts and souls into these tasks so that they can do them right.

In short, they have a glory!

And that glory is not for themselves, for that would be a pretty worthless life when you think about it. No, the things that we do need to be done to the glory of our Father and His Son whom we are honored to serve. And the things we do, don't have to be that spectacular in the eyes of others. They just have to be something that we can do. And since we can be doing them, we might as well do them well, for it is a privilege and an honor to serve God in any capacity which He allows.

Do you have a glory? It has the potential to change your life!