Waste not, want not

"Having then gifts... let us use them"

Romans 12:6

I was running some errands last week, driving in the rain.  I like driving in the rain, cuz I like rain.  I like the cool grey skies, and the rich green color of the leaves when the sun is not shining on them.  Sometimes, if it's only drizzling, I even have my sunroof open.  Which, of course, makes it a rainroof.  My kids just love it when I do that.  Not.  But they do tolerate it.  They're good kids ~ Amazing and Awesome, you know.

But when I was running errands, it was raining pretty hard.  Not driving rain, you understand.  Just me, driving in the rain.  But I saw two things that got me thinking.  Actually, it was sort of one thing, two times.

The first was at a bus-stop I drove by.  There was one person waiting, a young man who looked to be in his early to mid-20s.  But he looked like he was slightly developmentally disabled.  One of those wonderful stories of someone who started life a little behind everyone else, but was loved and taught enough to function in society.  Maybe he even has a job, and the bus is how he gets there.

There was no shelter at this bus-stop, just a sign and a bench, and the young man who was waiting had an umbrella in his hand.  It was open, but he wasn't holding it over his head.  He was holding it sort of in front of his face.  I don't know if he was inspecting it, or was confused about the service it was supposed to be performing for him, or simply liked to feel the rain on his head.  I was just driving by, so I didn't get to assess the situation very well.  But I thought, well, that piece of equipment is not really doing the job it was intended to do...

So I kept driving, and when I was arriving at my destination, I saw a woman walking her dog.  And it was still raining.  But she had an umbrella, so she was nice and dry.  But her dog was walking along behind her, looking drenched and bedraggled. 

{Okay, side note here.  Because I love words, I just looked up the word "bedraggled".  I wanted to see if it meant the same thing as "drenched" because I didn't want to be redundantly repetitive.  Turns out that "bedraggled" is really a combination of the root word "draggled" and the prefix "be".  Did you know "draggled" was a word??  This is my new favorite word, simply because I never knew it existed.  It means "dirty or wet, typically by being trailed through mud or water".  Now, when you add the "be" in front of it, it means "thoroughly draggled".  Betcha didn't know that!  So now that I think about it, "drenched and bedraggled" seems a bit much...  Okay, back to the dog now.}

Her dog was walking along behind her, looking very wet.  Because although the woman had an umbrella, it was only over her.  Which makes sense; it's what I would do if I walked my dog in the rain.  But it struck me as odd, after seeing the man at the bus-stop.  Here were two cases where this tool was not doing all it could.  In both cases, there was an umbrella in the vicinity, and still someone getting wet.

And I started to wonder what there is in my life, that God has given me, that I'm not using to its full potential.  Maybe gifts He has given me, that I'm hiding under a bushel.  Maybe friends in my life who could be teaching or encouraging me if I made the time to connect with them more often.  Certainly I could say it about the Bible, which spends more time sitting on my table than it does open in my lap.

It's foolish to leave something valuable behind.  It's thoughtless to ignore something you have, that someone else wishes they had.  It's rude to ignore a gift someone has given you.  What umbrella do you have, that you are not using to its full potential?

~ "that you may be perfect and complete, 

   lacking nothing" ~

James 1:4