Where Are Your Lost Abilities?

I heard a college educator recently suggest that you could ask a roomful of kindergarteners about what they could draw and they all would likely assume they could draw anything. You could ask them if they could sing or dance and they all would quickly make an effort to do just that. On the other hand, he noted if you asked a roomful of adults to draw or sing or dance, they often suggested that someone else could do it far better, without ever giving a thought to their own capacities to join in. This educator suggested that one of the great burdens of education was to discover how not to let that happen.

How is it that we diminish our efforts in light of our sense of social acceptance or from fear that our efforts will be less than well received? Might it not be important for us to think and dream and imagine and use our creativity to respond to the needs of the world in ways that we have never given ourselves permission to consider as “our” capacity to influence?

Many have heard the story about the young man who threw the starfish back into the ocean one at a time and when it was suggested that it didn’t matter that he did such a thing he answered by saying, “It mattered to that one.”

Perhaps our abilities, often self-defined as ineffective or limited in capacity, could be the needed investment to bring great changes to the world.

What might happen if significant numbers of Americans began to engage in dialogue and conversation about public policy?. What might happen if a majority of Americans went to the polls and voted in elections for people they really knew or had learned seriously about what they stood for, beyond TV sound bytes?

What might happen if you began to whistle a tune, sing a song, write a poem, tell a story, learn a new skill, or even say thank you a little more often?

What could happen if you would skip television for a week and read books instead? What would fill your mind if you studied your family history, or wrote a letter to a friend, or offered to teach a Sunday School lesson?

What could happen if you would start a personal ministry to bring unchurched children to church every Sunday for the next year?

What might happen if you invested in daily prayer and bible reading and shared what you learned with one other person in some way during each day?

Whenever talents and abilities seem to be presently beyond your grasp, reconsider your mindset as a kindergartener…you could and should develop all your talents and abilities with the joy and enthusiasm that allows you to dream great dreams in light of God’s love and blessings.