“So, what’s your claim to fame?”

That’s what the guy from GoDaddy asked me, while we waited for some adjustments to be made to my account.

“Um, well…I don’t know…I mean…,” I replied, in a sad and halting fashion, before I was spared the pain of finishing by the completion of his task.

I hung up the phone feeling shocked by how much that simple question had rattled me, ashamed that I didn’t have anything really “big” to offer…feeling that I should. Did I really believe that somehow I would have more value, or greater significance, if I achieved some elusive level of greatness and left an indelible mark on the world? And who sets the bar for these things, anyway? Who determines how “big” is “big enough?”

Since that conversation, I’ve been examining not only myself, but observing the world around me. It doesn’t take long at all to become aware of how we, perhaps more than ever before, are almost desperate to make a mark on the world. In one way or another, we strive and work and climb, climb, climb to make sure the world knows who we are, knows what we’ve accomplished, knows that we matter. Older people scramble, frenzied, with the realization that their days are far fewer in number, while the younger ones are embroiled in fierce competition to get their name on top.

What in the world are we doing? And why?

I’m humbled at these words…

For all people are like grass, and all their glory is like the flowers of the field; the grass withers and the flowers fall, but the Word of the Lord endures forever.” 1 Peter 1:24 NIV

Perhaps it’s not our name that we need to be worried about.

 

What about you? Have you experienced the “pull” to “fame?”