Vanity--It is All Vanity

Madeline L'Engle reminded me, today, why it might be that God allows many of us to have jobs that can be frustrating to do, puts us in contact with people who are sometimes difficult to work with, or means that you do hours of work for no recognition (or other people get the praise for that work!).

Speaking to those who give a job their focused, highest quality attention, and speaking to those who are apparently much more spiritually developed in this particular area than I sometimes am, L'Engle says the following:

Ah, surely it is vain to think about words of praise. It is permissible for us to be pleased that a job has been well done, but we can't take any personal credit for it. We can only be grateful that the work itself knocks self-consciousness out of the way, for it is only thus that the work can be done.

Getting to that stage where my self-consciousness has been knocked out of the way, there's the rub.