Continuing from a previous post and the book “the Will of God as a Way of Life” Jerry Sittser wrote:
Talent
A second critical element in discovering our calling is talent. Proper talent is obviously necessary. Good intentions are not enough; we must have gifts to get the job done. Still, the intersection between inner motivation and talent is complex, as we will see.
As portrayed in the film Amadeus, Salieri, a music composer of modest ability, spent his later years burning with jealousy over the work of a younger and better composer, Mozart. After hearing Mozart’s music, Salieri discovered how pedestrian his own music was. He prayed (what is probably a fictional prayer), “O Lord, if you had to give me the calling, why could you not have given me the gift to go with it?”
At least Salieri understood his limits. Not everyone does. My wife, Lynda, was a professional musician, a soloist, and choir director. She usually had someone in one of her choirs convinced that he (or she) was called of God to be a soloist, though without having the voice for it. “If God calls someone,” Lynda often said to me,” one would think that God would have given that person the ability to do it.” It is painful to learn that what we want to do might not be what we can do because we lack the talent. If we fail to learn this lesson, we will try to do things that would have been better left undone. We will try to preach sermons that would have been better filed away, to lead organizations that would have been better led by someone else, or to teach students that would have been better taught by someone with a better aptitude for teaching. (continued)
Of course, talent alone is not enough. It provides a clue, but it falls short of being sine qua non (an essential condition; a thing that is absolutely necessary) of a calling. On the other hand, some people will never be able to use all the talent they have
Life Experiences
Third, life experiences can have a similar effect. Sometimes what happens to us pushes us toward a calling. A young woman whose husband dies of cancer goes to work for Hospice. A college student who hated junior high becomes a popular and effective counselor in a junior high school. A woman who endured years of abuse opens a clinic for battered women. A man who grew up in a lukewarm church becomes a successful evangelist. In each case, life experience awakens them to their calling.
On the other hand, some people excel in lines of work for which they appear to have only a modest ability. Steve Largent was for many years the Seattle Seahawks’ most successful receiver. He never claimed to have great ability, and opponents agreed. But Largent had savvy and love for the sport, which compensated for his average talent and turned him into an accomplished professional football player. The same is true of John Stockton, point guard for the Utah Jazz. He is barely six feet tall, a virtual midget for a professional basketball player. He is not particularly fast or strong. Yet he has set the NBA record for assists and steals, and he has helped to lead the Jazz into the NBA playoffs almost every year he has played. His mastery of the sport surpasses what his modest abilities would seem to allow.
~ Jerry Sittser, The Will of God as a Way of Life (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 2004). 176-77
(Posts with a preamble asterisk * are for a more general audience and not specific to teachings of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.)
