An Aspiring Street-Sweeper in the Kingdom of Heaven

I don't think I've ever fully explained on this blog why I refer to myself as "an aspiring street-sweeper in the Kingdom of Heaven."  I sign my emails this way (really hope it doesn't sound pretentious), and recently wrote an answer to a friend's question about the signature.  I decided that I liked the way I answered it, so I'm posting the answer bellow:

The "God's Aspiring Street-Sweeper" thing is a lesson I feel I've been learning.  For many years, I've struggled with issues of identity.  In the midst of me asking God who He wants me to be and why I'm consistently unhappy with who I am, I sort of feel like He said, "Luke, I want you to be a street sweeper in My Kingdom of Heaven."  This idea comes from several different sources, including one quote from Martin Luther King Jr., about doing the best with whatever our calling is, even if it's lowly:

“If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as a Michaelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, 'Here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.”

  And after God gave me that identity, He confirmed it by arranging for me to listen to this author, who basically said in his speech, "If you were made to be a street-sweeper, don't stoop to be a King."  The whole idea behind the concept is, God has given me something He wants me to do, and it's not about doing something grand.  It's about doing the best I can with what He's given me, and about striving to live a life of conscience, a life of making the world a better place (this ties into an idea from the movie Kingdom of Heaven, a fantastic [and very violent] story set during the crusades in which the main character questions what the "Kingdom of Heaven" really is, ultimately deciding that the Kingdom of Heaven isn't a spiritual place that men serve by killing "infidels," but is a physical place in the here-and-now where men live according to their consciences and strive to make the world a better place.  I only agree partially with this definition of "Kingdom of Heaven," but it's still an excellent movie and the idea is still partially true.)

As for the "Aspiring," that's because I generally do a pretty terrible job of serving God in the little "street-sweeping" things, because I'm so me-focused and flat out selfish most of the time.

Anyway, that's my two-cents spiel on street-sweeping!  I really hope that, at some point in his life, Stephen Spielberg has made a joke about spiels.