Not Knowing Anyone and Find Your Gift to the World

Psalm 46:10 "Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth."

So my doctor told me I had to take my 3 mile walk up to a jog or run! I was freaking out b/c to run just looks and feels ridiculous. I just thought running made it look like you were working harder at something than you had to. My doctor told me in order to keep my weight loss moving, I was gonna have to up my exercise. I was like, I joined Curves again and I’m working out there too do I have to run? So I’m upping my efforts on my run and glad that I live somewhere no one knows me! Running! What’s so funny is that yesterday was my first day running and the pastor of the church I attend here in Memphis saw me and honked his horn at me. I was so embarrassed when I walked into Bible Study last night and he announced he saw “Billie Jean running as hard as she could down White Station.” Yeah, so much for not knowing anybody around here.

I do enjoy attending the smaller church I found on White Station Road. White Station Baptist Church. I noticed one Saturday they were doing a car wash for the youth and their group was rather large outside the church washing cars. I thought about how churches flourish when they invest in their youth like that. So I decided the next Wednesday to visit and I loved the people that were there that night. Very warm and friendly, inviting and sweet to each other as well as to me. I’m glad I found a church to attend b/c I was thinking that driving home every single weekend was going to get old, fast.

Lewis Hyde recounts a memory of poet Pablo Neruda who is a Nobel Prize winning poet. In Hyde’s book, The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property, he writes that “Neruda said that one day when he was a little boy growing up in southern Chile he was playing in a lot behind his house, peering through a hole in a fence.
Then, sensing something was going to happen, he pulled back.
At that moment he saw something come through that hole in the fence. It was the hand of a boy his age.
A moment later the hand was gone. But in its place was a gift. A small well-worn toy sheep Neruda found magical.
His response was to take the sheep and then go and get a treasure of his own - and place it in the hole in the fence, in exchange.
Years later, he wrote of that exchange. He said:
‘To feel the love of people whom we love is a fire that feeds our life. But to feel the affection that comes from those whom we do not know… is something still greater and more beautiful because it widens out the boundaries of our being and unites all living things.’
Neruda went so far as to hint that his poetry might have been his gift back to the world in response to that one moment of intimate human connection shared with a boy whom he would never meet.”

What is your one gift back to the world? I don’t mean easy contributions such as your children or the money or time you give to a charity. Which are all great things to give back to the world, but I want you to think about deep down what do you give back to the world? It’s hard even for me to think about this one. I know my gift is encouragement and I try to encourage any and everyone who reads this blog. Even my smile has been known to encourage people. So my smile is a gift to the world also. Think about your gift or gifts to the world and let me know what yours is. Some people are great listeners and that is something I have to work at daily and it is not my gift. We are all gifted with talents the Lord wants to use to further His Kingdom. Attempt to find yours and develop them for the greater good of mankind. The Lord also wants you to commit to Him your talents and He will reveal your gifts if you’re having a hard time finding what He has given to you to help bring His Kingdom about.