How Has God Gifted You for Ministry?
My Dear People,
Apples that taste like bananas? Apples that weigh more than a pound? Others as small as a grape? Spotted apples, striped apples, purple apples, near-blue apples? Apple trees as tall and as big around as oak trees? All these possibilities and infinitely more are possible from that plant we call "apple." If you go to Geneva, New York, there you can find 2,500 different varieties of apple planted by twos in one vast orchard. This immense range within one plant species is the result of what scientists call "heterozygosity," which amounts to each and every apple seed carrying within itself a unique combination of genes that, from seed to seed, even within a single apple, exhibits an exceptionally wide range of possibility and variation in the resulting fruit (The Botany of Desire, Michael Pollan).
While, in the context of the Church, the apple is usually associated with the story of "the forbidden fruit," in the ancient mythical recesses of humanity's spiritual journey, the truth is that Genesis does not identify the Edenic fruit as an apple (Genesis 2-3). It was only centuries into the Christian era that the fruit Eve grasped became identified in Western art as an apple. In other words, the apple got a bad rap! (not to speak of Eve's bad rap!--but that's another story.)
Perhaps then it is in some small way redemptive that the maligned apple would become, even only in the context of this brief written reflection, a symbol of God's gifts to his children: I would suggest that the apple, in all its natural, wild, and rich variability is an especially apt metaphor for the ways in which God equips us, his children, for ministry.
Our patron saint says, "Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of services, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone. To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good" (I Corinthians 12: 4-7). Paul gives a number of examples of these God-given gifts for ministry: wisdom, for instance, and faith. That said, the orchard that is the Church has an endless and endlessly rich variety of gifts, gifts God has given each of us for ministry.
So then, how has God gifted you for ministry? What truly unique combination of gifts has he given you, as Paul says, for the common good?
How much have you thought about it?
Is it time to think again?
You can be sure you have gifts, and you can be sure that God means to make use of them--with your help of course.
The orchard on Grace Street called St. Paul's Church is enriched, is made more beautiful, to have you planted in her midst, planted and growing, growing into a unique and gracious expression of God's one ministry of love, by which, with our help, and by way of the fruits that he cultivates in each of us, God means to do nothing less than reconcile the whole human family to himself and to one another.
Striped? Spotted? The size of a grape? Or a grapefruit? No matter. The orchard on Grace Street wouldn't be the same without it, without that fruit that is uniquely yours.
Your brother in Christ,
Wallace+
