Marta Minujin created an 82-foot tall sculpture of the Tower of Babel in the Plaza San Martin in Buenos Aires. The artist made it using over 30,000 donated books written in nearly every world language. Inside the turret, visitors could hear a recording of Minujin’s voice pronouncing the word book in various languages. She said her mission was to “unite all people.”

Different languages emerged as a result of the original Tower of Babel. After the flood, some of Noah’s descendants found a nice, wide-open patch of earth in Babylonia. They settled there and planned to “build a great city . . . with a tower that reach[ed] into the sky” (Genesis 11:4). They hoped this super-structure would make them famous and keep them united. But their ambition for greatness was self-centered, prideful, and godless.

God came down, inspected their building site (Genesis 11:5), and decided to put the kibosh on the construction. He did this by creating multiple languages among them. Communication that had been effortless became impossible. The gobbledygook they heard from each other sent them running—they scattered throughout the world (Genesis 11:8).

The issue of ambition can be tricky. Although it isn’t wrong to want success, we’ve got to remember that God enables every achievement to take place (Deuteronomy 8:18). Also, our efforts to succeed should reflect godly virtues such as humility, honesty, and hard work. These qualities can point others to Jesus regardless of the outcome of our endeavors.

Christian researcher and writer David Kinnaman put it this way: “Gaining credibility for its own sake is vanity; gaining credibility to participate in God’s work to redeem the world is a mission.”

NLT 365-day reading plan passage for today: 1 Samuel 8:1-5