What is my "best"?

A friend of mine posted a quote from Joan Chittister’s book “Following the Path” on Facebook this afternoon and it confronted my present reality. The bit that caught my attention stated that "we not only need to find out what we do best and do it to the utmost. We also need to ask ourselves again why we were born. What is it that we have that the world needs and is waiting for us to provide?"

This morning I was brutally confronted by my sense of inadequacy... Because of the cultural and language barriers that I'm currently experiencing, what I consider to be my "best" has been sidelined. And today I was reminded of my favorite verse in the process: "'My grace is sufficient for you for my power is made perfect in weakness.' Therefore, I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me."

A friend of mine shared with me that she thinks vulnerability is part of what it means to be made in the image of God.

Yes, for me, vulnerability in its purest form is Christ on the cross...Yet very few of us list vulnerability as part of the "best" that we have to offer the world. We lose this perspective when we're listing our gifts, our talents, our accomplishments, our skills...

But perhaps what God defines as my "best" is the vulnerability part... the inadequacy part... Maybe what the world needs and what I can provide is THIS. Not my gifting in leadership development or my strategic mind, not my passion for mentoring or any of the other great items that might show up on my resume…

Yet we so easily miss it. We so easily clutch at all the "incredible" gifts we spend years developing and lose the essence of what it means to be a child of the Most High God... vulnerable, inadequate and incredibly loved.

Is it possible that the world needs my weaknesses? That somehow God miraculously uses my inadequacies? That my vulnerability can somehow expand His presence in the world?

What an incredible thought!! A bit upside down from the world’s mentality but redemptive and totally transformational!

x