It's Who You Are

School started this week.  Do you remember what that felt like when you were a kid?  I always had kind of mixed feelings about it.  On the one hand, I really enjoyed summer and the freedom it gave me.  That was especially true when I was little, before Dad would put me to work.  But on the other hand, there was a part of me that was ready to go back to school.  I was ready for the structure of school, and to go back and start learning whatever it was I was supposed to learn.

But then, even in summer, I never stopped learning.  My Mom was a former teacher, and so she was always teaching all of us, summer and winter.  Not in formal classes, not in the sense of homeschooling the way it’s known now.  She just did it naturally.  Mom was a natural teacher.  She still is, really.  Put her somewhere where there are little kids, and she just automatically finds a way to teach them something.  It’s who she is.  It’s who she’s always been.

God gives each of us certain talents and abilities, more than we know, really.  Each of us has some talents and abilities that we will never develop, whether through lack of interest, lack of confidence, lack of time, or just because of the circumstances of our lives.  Each of us also has talents and abilities that we develop to a certain extent, but no more.  And there are a variety of reasons for that, too.

But I also believe that each of us has at least one talent or ability--maybe more--that we cannot help but use.  It may be something we do for a living.  It may be something we do as a hobby.  We may have never even thought of it as a specific talent or ability--it’s just something we do, something we’ve always done.  But that talent or ability is something God put inside of us.  And God put something inside of us that makes us determined to use that talent or ability.  We cannot help it.  It just comes naturally to us.  We use it without even thinking about it.  It’s just who we are.

And that’s true no matter what our age and no matter what our situation.  Sometimes, circumstances may keep us from using that talent or ability as much as we wish.  Mom is in a nursing home now, and because of the lockdown she cannot have little kids around her.  But that talent is still within her, and it finds ways to come out--with the residents, with the staff, with anyone she’s allowed to come in contact with.  It’s who she is, and it’s who she always will be.

What is it for you?  What’s that talent or ability that you cannot help but use, no matter what your circumstances are, because it’s just who you are?  Embrace that.  That’s something God put inside you.  It’s who God made you to be.  Embrace it, and use it to the extent you possibly can in service to God.