We Want What We Want

I've done a lot of things in my life. Most of the things I haven't done, you don't talk about in polite company (some of the things I have done, for that matter). One of the things that I have done is work with vending machines. I had a soda machine (or pop machine, depending on what part of the country you are from) for a while that had one double-capacity lane. Five lanes held 24 sodas, one lane held 48. Now I'm independent, I don't work for Coke, Pepsi, RC, 7-Up/Dr. Pepper, or Cadbury/Schweppes, so I can load anything I want in my machines. It didn't take long to determine that Coke sold the fastest out of any of the different sodas (sorry, Pepsi fans), so Coke always went in the double-capacity lane. You would be surprised how many people that found out I was doing that, tried to talk me out of it. I even had one young man, who had worked in the business before, try to tell me that Pepsi sells twice as much as Coke; therefore, I should put Pepsi in the 'big' lane. "Why," I asked him, "so that I can load up Pepsi every other week and Coke twice a week?" He just could not comprehend that I loaded 48 Cokes in that machine every week, and usually 19 or 20 Pepsi's.

But. a lot of times, we as individuals, fall into the trap of thinking that we are average. We tend to think that other people think the way that we do, and that they have similar tastes. Sometimes even when people start to get the idea that they are surrounded by stupid people, that most of them still think "pretty much like me."

I'm not sure that there are any 'average' people. God didn't create us as individuals to just be part of the crowd. Apostle Paul wrote at some length in 1 Corinthians 12 about the make up of the body of Christ. He talked about how some people in the church want to be something that they are not, and misunderstand their own importance in the church. If God didn't call you to preach, then you shouldn't preach (and if He called you to preach, then He also gave you the gift of preaching, and without that gift, you're not going to preach well, anyway). I am sometimes surprised at how many people think that they are called to sing in the choir, but they definitely don't have the gifts for it. The point is, though, God has an important job for you. It may not be the job that you think you want to do, but if you'll give it a chance, you may just find that you really enjoy the task, and find great fulfilment in it.

I have mentioned before that I teach electronics. Some years ago, I was working under contract through a college to teach electronics to young sailors (which was appropriate, since I learned electronics in the Navy), and I had a student that just wasn't getting it. It clearly was not for lack or trying: He paid attention in class, he asked good questions, he seemed to be spending a disproportionate amount of his life in extra study, and he just couldn't grasp it. I put in a recommendation that the Navy find another job for him; I just couldn't see the point of letting him beat his head against the wall with no success. Much to my surprise, it went all the way up the chain of command, and everybody agreed with my assessment. He went from being an electronics technician trainee to being a gunner's mate trainee; in most people's eyes, a considerably less glamorous position, but an important one, nevertheless (what would the Navy be without people to operate and maintain the ship's guns?). When he found out that he was becoming a gunner's mate on my recommendation, he wanted to talk to me about it. He wasn't happy, and I felt for him. He had enough wisdom that he didn't make any threats against me, but I felt an undercurrent in his words and body language that indicated that he would like to. Three weeks later, he came back to talk to me again. They checked him for weapons before letting him close to me, but all he wanted was to shake my hand. It seems that, much to his surprise, gun school came to him much easier that electronics school did. For the first time in a long time, he felt that he was gaining valuable knowledge. Several weeks later, I saw his picture in the base paper; he was being honored for graduating gun school with the highest average in his class. Imagine if we had given him chance after chance to be an electronics technician, and he had finally graduated at the bottom of his class, and gone out to the fleet doing a job that he no longer loved... Instead, he found that he had a real talent for working with guns, and that's an important talent in a military organization. What a waste that could have been.

I am reminded of the story of Uzzah in the Bible. Uzzah wanted to be one of the men who carried the ark of the covenant; but he wasn't. At one point in his life, he was part of an escort for the ark; probably the first time in his life he'd ever been that close to the ark. He was close enough to touch it, but he wasn't allowed to. That must have been driving him crazy, but then, the oxen shook the ark. Part in fear that the ark might come crashing to the ground, but, almost certainly, part of him thought that, finally, even God couldn't blame me for touching the ark now. So he reached out and steadied the ark, even though that wasn't his place, and God did blame him. There were a lot of other people besides Uzzah that did wrong that day; possibly some of the others were more wrong than he was, but Uzzah paid with his life. All because he wanted to something that God hadn't called him to do.

We should be about our Father's business, and we should seek His will for our lives. Don't ask God to let you do what you want, ask God to help you want to do what He wants you to do.