There once was a man; he was a preacher, of all things. But he was also a passionate amateur musician. He prayed regularly to God that he could become a better guitar player. He would pray earnestly, fervently: “Lord, please give me a portion of Stevie Ray Vaughan’s spirit!”

            But what happened, over the course of long, slow years of living was that he came, slowly, to realize that he just wasn’t a Stevie Ray Vaughan kind of guitar player or, for that matter, a Stevie Ray Vaughan kind of guy — not the Stevie Ray Vaughan before recovery, or the Stevie Ray Vaughan after recovery. He was no classy, funky, rocked-out bluesman; he was a preacher, for heaven’s sake! Preachers aren’t cool! (Okay, well, maybe some of them are, but not many. This guy wasn’t — as much as he wanted to be.) No, he was pretty much a straightforward, straight-ahead, white-bread, folky pop singer. That was the gift he had, and he learned over the years to honor that gift and to use it as best he could to be who he really was: a preacher of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, using such means as he had at his disposal to bring that Gospel into people’s lives.

            And so he came to understand that God had answered his prayer after all — or perhaps he just realized that his answer was always there, right in front of him, in the form of God’s gift of life to him. Whatever the case, the realization came slowly, over the years. The answer was not what he expected or thought that he wanted. God’s answer was to gently demand that he accept himself for who he was, identify his own gifts — however small and paltry they seemed in comparison to the gifts of others, and use those gifts to carry out God’s plan for his life and for the greater life of the church and the world.

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