Diversities of Gifts

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · May 17, 1883

"Diversities of Gifts."

You want to build a house. You employ men of different trades—stone-cutters, brick-layers, carpenters, plumbers, plasterers, painters. You expect each to do his own work; but all to conform to the plan which you have prepared. What if the carpenter should complain of the brick-layer for building the chimneys of brick instead of wood? and the stone-cutters complain of the carpenters, because they use wood for the floors instead of stone? Suppose the painters should insist that the mason ought to use a brush instead of a trowel, etc.? How ridiculous they would make themselves! But who has not seen churches whose members acted just as absurdly? God is trying to use them to build up his spiritual house. He has given to each his own work, and taught him, by the Spirit, how to do it. But each stands with the tools in his hands watching some fellow-worker, and wondering why they two don't work just alike. Nay, he often criticises the work of those who are doing their part in their way, instead of doing it in his way.

Let every Christian rejoice if God has given him any gift. It is blessed to be even a door-keeper in the house of the Lord—blessed to have even one talent intrusted to us to use for so good a Master, and in so glorious a cause.

Let every Christian be glad that others have gifts that he has not—glad, for the sake of the Saviour and of the perishing world, that somebody can do what he cannot. If he is ignorant and cannot speak to edification he should rejoice that he has brethren who are eloquent. If he is poor and cannot give much money to sustain and extend the cause of Christ, he should rejoice that he has brethren who are rich.

Let every Christian co-operate cordially in his sphere, and according to his gifts; not expecting that everybody else will do just as he does, but hoping and praying that his fidelity in the least may stimulate those to whom much has been given, and recognizing their right to work in their own way, feeling that they are responsible to God and not to him.

Let no Christian try to measure others by his standard, or himself by theirs. The gift that seems least to us, may be the greatest in the sight of God. The humble visitor who brings the poor to the Sabbath-school and the sanctuary, may do more good than the eloquent preacher.—Occident.