Ever drive home and realize you have no memory whatsoever about driving home? You’re on auto-pilot, completely lost in your thoughts, yet successfully navigating your car in Atlanta (or wherever) traffic?
Yeah, me too. Happened just the other day.
When I got home, I went out into the yard to do some much needed yard work, and got distracted watching my dog wander the yard. Briscoe, my 8 year-old rescue yellow lab, is blind. Yet he navigates the yard with ease. He makes his way around all his spots, fences, trees, bushes, and eventually arrives at the back door, where he barks and demands to be let back in.
Unless his two girlfriends from next door, Poppy and Eloise, are here to play. Then he barks at them. He really wants to play with them, but they’re running all around him, and he can’t see them so he just barks in a “get off my lawn!” kinda tone.
And sometimes I forget he’s blind. He wasn’t always blind, but has been progressing since a few months after we got him in 2019. Uveitis. No cure. But he manages, as long as we don’t rearrange the furniture.
All that reminded me of each of our gifts. We all have God-given talents, gifts, things we just do without thinking about how to do them. We didn’t have to study or learn these things; they just came naturally to us.
My daughter organizes and cleans. Her new husband fixes things. My brother in law makes and restores stuff. All self taught. I know several people who sell without thinking about it or knowing it. Like Ted Lasso encourages and builds up everyone he meets.
They don’t have to think about it. They just do it. They’re not consulting “How To” books or YouTube. They have God-given gifts for doing those things.
Just like God gave Briscoe great ears and a good sniffer so he can compensate for not being able to see, God gives us all certain specific gifts that we must use in doing the work God has created for us to do.
What do you do that you don’t ever have to think about doing? No, not talking about not remembering your drive home. I’m talking about something you do everyday.
How are you using that gift?
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