Use Your Best Soap
I have an obsession with soap. I know we all love soap to some degree but my love is kind of intense. I’m not sure when it started. I think I was pretty young. I remember growing up and having to use yellow Dial soap. I hated the way it smelled..still do. Around middle school when I would get money for babysitting or birthdays I would buy fancy soap. At that time fancy soap to me came from Victoria’s Secret which I know now is really just a gateway soap. I would get home, look and smell my beautiful soap and then I would do the weirdest thing with it, I would display it. I guess I came by this soap displaying trait honestly since my Grandma had the same shell soap displayed in her bathroom my entire life. Now you other soap displayers know that if you don’s use your best soap it cracks and I know for me, once the soap cracked I threw it away. I never used it for it’s intended purpose.
What a waste! I vowed many years ago to stop displaying and frankly wasting my soap and to use it up..use it up good.
Wasting your best soap reminds me of how sometimes we waste our greatest talents. We sit them on the counter until they are all dried up or like the parable of the bags of gold, we bury them. If you are not familiar with Matthew 25:14-30, it is a story told by Jesus about a master who entrusted his gold with his servants. Two of the servants doubled their master’s money while the other servant buried it in the ground. The master was pleased with the first two servants but called the final servant lazy and wicked.
Now for me, it is pretty obvious about the gifts that I do not have and not always obvious about the gifts I do have. The great thing about throwing yourself into all sorts of situations is that you can find out pretty quickly about what gifts are God given, what gifts you have to work at and what gifts just aren’t there no matter how hard you try. There is nothing wrong with using your best soap as well as your cheap dollar tree soap. Effort is just as much a gift as talent.
This picture is my favorite picture of a mission trip I took to Kenya. It’s my favorite because it is one of the few moments on that trip that I knew I was using a God given gift. I speak kid. I speak it pretty well. I had spent the entire trip uncomfortably fumbling my way through ministering to people with a language barrier. You see I can not share the story of Jesus or pray aloud without crying uncontrollably and crying uncontrollably makes me extremely uncomfortable. I spent a lot of time dreading the next visit when someone would ask me to pray. I did it because God wants me to use my cheap soap too but it wasn’t easy. This picture is me using the soap I was given. It might not be the most effective soap but it’s my soap and I’m going to use it all up.
Are you using your best soap?
Romans 12:6-8
Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them: if prophecy, in proportion to our faith; if service, in our serving; the one who teaches, in his teaching; the one who exhorts, in his exhortation; the one who contributes, in generosity; the one who leads, with zeal; the one who does acts of mercy, with cheerfulness.
My Life With Freckles 