12 1-3 What I want to talk about now is the various ways God’s Spirit gets worked into our lives. This is complex and often misunderstood, but I want you to be informed and knowledgeable. Remember how you were when you didn’t know God, led from one phony god to another, never knowing what you were doing, just doing it because everybody else did it? It’s different in this life. God wants us to use our intelligence, to seek to understand as well as we can. For instance, by using your heads, you know perfectly well that the Spirit of God would never prompt anyone to say “Jesus be damned!” Nor would anyone be inclined to say “Jesus is Master!” without the insight of the Holy Spirit. (1 Corinthians 12, The Message)
Paul now changes topics again in his first letter to the Corinthians, an urban center possibly not unlike our modern cities. He is answering questions young believers without a Bible to guide them, without podcasts to listen to, without libraries full of books about spirituality to research in, living at a time when Christianity was just forming as a distinct faith tradition, differentiating itself from Judaism and other world religions. It reminds me of young adult life when I was sorting out my faith from what I had inherited from my parents. The question of “Who am I and what do I believe” had my attention. I love Jean Val Jean in Les Miserables debating if he was 24601. Paul starts a new topic today. We as Christians are gifted.
Allow me to say that again, we are all gifted by the Holy Spirit. There are no mistakes, no ooops, no after-thoughts. Each person we meet on our spiritual journey has a gift for us and somehow contributes to the eternal Temple God is building. It is easy to watch American Idol, America’s Got Talent and all the posts of Face Book and become small in our own eyes. We become grasshoppers in our own eyes even as the spies did when they checked out the Promised Land and met the giants. But God comes along and says “NO!” To those feelings. We are all important and gifted. We all have something to contribute. We have all won American Idol!
Lord, open my eyes to the gifts you have given me and those you bring into my life today. May I never forget how valuable I am to you. Thank you.
On the Way to Wonder 