Last Saturday I went up to the church to help some of the other men repair a couple of broken pipes that had busted during the ice storm the previous week.  When I told my wife Marta about my plans for the day, she said, “Really??  You don’t know anything about plumbing.”  And like always, she’s right.  I don’t know a thing about plumbing.  You don’t want me fixing your busted pipes or repairing too many things around your house.  I am just not that handy when it comes to plumbing, electrical systems and things of that nature.  My skill set is mostly geared toward manual labor.   So that is what I did.

By the time I got to the church, one of the guys had started a fire to get rid of an old pile of branches and brush.  I told the others I would tend to that burn pile and keep it going and if they needed me to do something to help with their project, just let me know.   So, I kept tending to the fire, burning the brush and the branches.  Every now and then someone would ask me to run down the hill and relay a message or go fetch something.  And while I’m no good at plumbing, I can tend a fire, burn brush and run up and down a hill all day long delivering messages and fetching things for somebody else.  It’s okay that I’m not good at plumbing.  I am just grateful to be able to do whatever it is that I can do to help.  As I was thinking about the fact that there are certain abilities I have and certain abilities that I don’t have, I was reminded about what the Bible says about spiritual gifts in 1 Corinthians chapter 12.

Paul says that God has distributed spiritual gifts to every believer and that God gives each of us the spiritual gifts, the spiritual skillset that He wants us to have.  God gives us the ability to do something for the kingdom; something for the common good.  And just because everyone’s gifts are different does not mean that certain gifts are better than others.  Not everybody is a preacher, not everybody is a teacher but every believer is gifted to serve in some capacity.   And every gift is special because it comes from the Lord.  As Simon Peter said in 1 Peter 4:10 “As each one has received a special gift, employ it in serving one another as good stewards of the manifold grace of God.”

Whatever spiritual gift God has given you, put it to use.   Employ your gifts and serve others as a good steward of God’s grace.  Tend that fire, keep it burning.