The Parable of the Lost Sheep, Retold

Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them. Once he notices that they haven’t been around lately, he stands by the sheep fold, shouting, “Sheep! Here, sheep! Come home, Fluffy, come home!” Then, he looks around, wondering if he’s done something wrong, something to offend the one who wandered off, and he tries to think of what it will take to keep any of the other ninety-nine from leaving.

After a while, he decides that he’ll just have to live with it. If God had meant him to have all one hundred sheep, after all, then God wouldn’t have let that one sheep wander off. Perhaps, the shepherd thinks, he wasn’t given the gifts to lead all one hundred, and he should lower his sights to having only ninety-nine sheep, and accept what God has given him. God bless that lost sheep; he probably just wandered into another fold, where he’ll be taken care of, just fine.

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I think that I'm done with thinking that my church isn't supposed to be very evangelistic, because we don't have anyone really gifted in it. Well, maybe it's better to say that I'm done with thinking that I'm not supposed to be very evangelistic, because I'm not that gifted in it. The parables in Luke 15 tell us that God is willing to go to extreme measures to bring every individual back to him. If we're going to be like Him, shouldn't we follow this example, too?

I'm not saying that giftedness isn't relevant. I'm just saying that ignoring the mission of every Jesus-follower -- to point the way to God -- misses the point of the gifts we have. Our gifts aren't just for encouraging other believers, they are for drawing as many people to God as we can.

I read an illustration last night of the point. At the firehouse, each of the firemen has various duties to do when they're not fighting fires. One cooks, one cleans, another maintains the equipment, another feeds the dalmation... But those duties aren't their job; their job is to fight fires. When fighting fires, they also have their various roles, based on their training.

So it is with us as Jesus-followers; our job is to point the way to God. How we do that is largely influenced by our gifts and skills. What we do the rest of the week (jobs, school, hobbies) is secondary, even though it may take up most of our time.

I've got some re-thinking of my gifts to do. I have been letting myself get away with thinking that because my gifts have more to do with things that happen on Sunday mornings, that my time is best used on that, and not on reaching out to people who need to know God. I need to find out how to apply my gifts to serving others.

So how does a big-mouthed, music-loving, computer geek with aspirations as a writer do this? I'll let you know as it happens.