I’ve always been a bit confused about spiritual gifts. At one church I attended, an older guy I just adored once said, “I think my spiritual gift is waiting–maybe?”
Don’t you think waiting should be a spiritual gift?
I don’t know what my spiritual gift is, but I have discovered a secret talent that comes in handy when I volunteer at Young Lives, a ministry to teen moms sponsored by Young Life.
Crying doesn’t bother me.
I don’t know why not. Maybe it was the summer when I was 15 and worked on a hospital floor and rocked crying babies with all kinds of tubes while their parents escaped to the cafeteria for a quick bite to eat. Maybe it was the long months with my own children, who cried a lot longer than the doctors said they were supposed to.
For whatever reason, I can handle it. I can’t necessarily get babies to stop crying, but I enjoy holding them and singing to them.
The other night I had 18-month-old Maricela (not her real name). She was determined to cry through the entire Bible study. I found a Spiderman toy on the floor and handed it to her. She kept crying. So I started singing the theme song to the old Spiderman TV show: “Spiderman! Nobody knows who you are!”
That was the only part of the song that I could remember, so I sang it over and over. Maricela kept crying–but only when I stopped singing. I must have sung that darn line for half an hour.
Nobody knows who Maricela will turn out to be. Maybe she’ll have superpowers or super spiritual gifts. I met her mom, who is even shorter than I am. She still has braces. Nobody knows who she’ll be either.
