One of the most treasured community traditions of the Christmas season is the performance of Tchaikovsky’s ballet The Nutcracker. Most often a semi-professional ballet company teams up with a local children’s dance troupe to deliver this holiday staple.
I volunteer as an usher at the local civic auditorium in our city, (which boasts of a modest population of around 90,000) and our renditions of The Nutcracker have been good, some very good . . . until this year. This year was beyond good. It was fantastic! The reason? The Moscow Ballet was on stage. Therefore, the dancing, the costumes, and the sets were beyond what I have ever witnessed before. And as I was sitting there watching the performance unfold, I was amazed to think that this professional and highly renowned ballet company would still invite our local kids to be a part of the production.
Similarly, God invites us, as amateur as we are, to join Him in the work He is doing. Only there is one big difference. Whereas the Moscow Ballet came to town three months earlier and showed the local dancers what they needed to be able to do by the time the curtain was raised in November, God uses us exactly as we are. We don’t have to work months to reach a certain level of expertise before we can take part. He will put our current abilities to use and then create avenues of development for us to grow in knowledge and ability in preparation for further work.
Many of us feel we must have years of salvation under our belt or degrees in theology to be of service, but we don’t. It doesn’t take a diploma to dish out a hot meal or say a kind word or sift through the ashes of a burned out home.
It doesn’t take a certificate of completion to share God’s faithfulness in our own lives or demonstrate God’s love for others.
And if we are willing to step onto God’s stage, despite our feelings of inadequacy, we will be in awe of the wonderful things we are now a part of. The Moscow Ballet does not need local amateurs to perform The Nutcracker. They could do it all themselves, but they want the children to be a part of the experience. Neither does God need us to accomplish His purpose. He is omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent. But He wants to use us and invites us to be a part of his grand and beautiful work.
I volunteer as an usher at the local civic auditorium in our city, (which boasts of a modest population of around 90,000) and our renditions of The Nutcracker have been good, some very good . . . until this year. This year was beyond good. It was fantastic! The reason? The Moscow Ballet was on stage. Therefore, the dancing, the costumes, and the sets were beyond what I have ever witnessed before. And as I was sitting there watching the performance unfold, I was amazed to think that this professional and highly renowned ballet company would still invite our local kids to be a part of the production.
Similarly, God invites us, as amateur as we are, to join Him in the work He is doing. Only there is one big difference. Whereas the Moscow Ballet came to town three months earlier and showed the local dancers what they needed to be able to do by the time the curtain was raised in November, God uses us exactly as we are. We don’t have to work months to reach a certain level of expertise before we can take part. He will put our current abilities to use and then create avenues of development for us to grow in knowledge and ability in preparation for further work.
Many of us feel we must have years of salvation under our belt or degrees in theology to be of service, but we don’t. It doesn’t take a diploma to dish out a hot meal or say a kind word or sift through the ashes of a burned out home.
It doesn’t take a certificate of completion to share God’s faithfulness in our own lives or demonstrate God’s love for others.
And if we are willing to step onto God’s stage, despite our feelings of inadequacy, we will be in awe of the wonderful things we are now a part of. The Moscow Ballet does not need local amateurs to perform The Nutcracker. They could do it all themselves, but they want the children to be a part of the experience. Neither does God need us to accomplish His purpose. He is omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent. But He wants to use us and invites us to be a part of his grand and beautiful work.
RSS Feed