In an earlier devotion we looked at the difference between good ambition (God/others first) and bad ambition (me first). Shakespeare has King Henry VIII admonish Cromwell about bad ambition: 'I charge thee, fling away ambition. By that sin fell the angels... How can man then, the image of his Maker, hope to gain by't?' (Henry VIII, Act 3, Scene 2).

Once when attending a 'directed retreat' we were asked to think about this question: 'What is your desire?' It's another way of asking, 'What drives me? Is the glory of God my primary ambition, and other things secondary ambitions?'

Being ambitious (for the right reasons) is OK, growing is acceptable, but success is addictive. We must grow beyond past successes. As Kettering put it, bluntly: 'The minute you get satisfied with what you've got the concrete has begun to set in your head.' Was it George Bernard Shaw who talked about being dead at thirty and buried at sixty? As Rudyard Kipling suggests, let's treat those two impostors - success and failure - the same.

So whether I succeed or fail, may my desire be acceptable to you, my Lord and my King. Amen.