gifts

   My hands are about average, I suppose. Maybe a little larger in size than most, but nothing extraordinary. They have been nipped and cut and damaged for many years, and I still have a few scars to prove these wounds. At times they are all at once callouses and at times they can be as soft and fragile as the film on water. But there is something I must tell you about these hands. They cannot play the cello. They cannot play the drums or get by too well on a pipe organ. In fact, these hands sometimes have a very hard time holding a screwdriver steady enough to do a simple repair job. I have ungifted hands.
   You would probably agree with me that it would be foolishness to try to bring forth any steady rhythm, beautiful organ arrangement, or a cello solo with these hands. But do we not allow this sort of thing to happen in our Churches? We try to enlist people, by some massive army-like recruitment campaign, giving people their assigned task and telling them to get busy doing it, yet fail to allow the Spirit to fully control and function the situation so that there can be a spiritual result. Maybe we are enlisting ungifted people because the gifted ones are functioning properly.