I can’t recall if I met my friend Vicki at 4-H club or recess. The year was 1991 and Vicki’s Dad, Leroy, worked as an air traffic controller, so I got to go up with her in a Cessna (they let me land the plane). Pretty heady stuff to set up the transition into junior high school. Yet our real conversation was about the horses we had.
Vicki rode a lanky chestnut mare that looked more like a thoroughbred than the quarter horse she truly was. Somehow the years have erased that horse’s name from my memory, but last month Dad reminded me that she was a daughter of Impressive because Leroy dabbled in halter horses for a time. To register the shock of that, you’d have to know Impressive’s bloodline and history of becoming the forefather of the billion-dollar industry of halter horses (the equine equivalent of body builders). According to her papers, Vicki’s mare should have been just over fifteen hands tall (five feet at the topline) and about three feet wide. Instead, she was over sixteen hands and thin as a rail.
All that was still not why most people remembered Vicki and the chestnut. If you have ever seen a vocalist sing with his whole body as it were, that’s probably a starting point to understand how Vicki rode. When she left the gate, her voice hit the top register and ripped through the arena. She was all heart, screaming to the mare and I guess anything that got in their way. A lot of riders looped an over-under quirt around the saddle horn to spur on the horse to faster speeds. Not Vicki. The mare must have loved her for it because they were perfectly syncopated and a force with which to be reckoned.
Yet the thing I saw dumbfound people time again was the dissonance of it all. The gate would open, Vicki’s shrieks would tear through air, and the long-legged mare would lope around the pen. Or so it seemed. Vicki was all fury, and the mare’s flared nostrils said she was too. But it didn’t seem fast. It looked so… subpar. And then the all-telling clock would freeze. Onlookers’ faces registered the shock. The seemingly slow-moving horse was deceptively fast, unbeatable.
Why recall the story? Something about a horse with ill-matched bloodlines and whose performance looked lackluster registers with me this month. When the horses with the right pedigree and confirmation hit the dirt, their legs moving in perfect cartoon style the way everyone expected, onlookers just knew they’d win the day. Then unconventional Vicki would show up with every strike against her, nothing looking like “they” said it should, and illogical perfection unfolded.
How often have people throughout history missed their moment because it didn’t look like what “they” said it should?
Whether due to the expectations of loved ones, the counterfeit ideals society mandates, or the boxes we build in our own minds, have we talked ourselves out of ill-packaged opportunity?
I find that God delights in overturning expectations and using the unlikely. It’s outrageous God chose David. He was the youngest brother, not even called to the ceremony. He couldn’t even handle the armor. Yet God saw potential.
If you were picking your next pastor, Paul probably would not make the short list. Common logic would surely prevail. He terrorized Christians. Why would God choose him to plant churches? Could he even be trusted? And yet he became the apostle to the Gentiles and planted numerous churches.
On we could go through the pages of Scripture to survey account after account of illogical choices God seems to have made concerning people. Yet if we are to share His heartbeat and love as He loves, perhaps His methods would call us to a few commitments.
1. Embrace the Call to Serve
First, we must embrace the call to serve, even if it doesn’t look like we expected. Someone had to be the first deacons, house church hosts, assistants to the apostles, and on the list goes in the New Testament. As God calls people to serve in new ways to support the ministry of the church today, let’s open our minds to His leading.
2. Avoid Comparison
Second, we must squash the temptation to compare. Paul warned the church that comparisons were foolish. We are to become who God called us to be based on His plan, not the blueprint of someone else’s ministry. Rest in His calling and reject the human tendency to compare and compete.
3. Look for Every Person’s Potential
Finally, we must look for the potential in every person. It is one thing to support someone who embraces a calling; it is quite another to see it in a person and call it out, nurture it. God, grant us men and women who will see the plan You have in the most unlikely people and foster it.
Being salt and light in an increasingly dark world will require new and creative ministries. Everyone has a place and value in His kingdom. Let us work together to embrace who we are and who He is calling those around us to be.
This article first appeared in Pentecostal Life magazine. For subscription information, click here.
For more by Lee Ann Alexander on embracing our purpose, check out More Than Grasshoppers: Reclaiming Your God-Given Identity.