Article # 29 RESOURCES – Talent
This entire rest area of resources is a combination of time, talent, and treasure. Today’s article is focused upon the talent portion. We used an entire page of our book Life After Heaven with only these words written on it.
The two most important days in your life are the day you were born and the day you find out why. (Mark Twain)
This article is an expansion of the why. A Google search will take you places containing lots of material on the why subject. Simon Sinek is one more modern resource for finding your why. For this short article we have taken a spiritual, soul approach to the why topic. We are hoping it turns on some light bulbs for you.
So let us go back in time, to the time to when you were created. There is a God, and he is sovereign which means he is completely in charge of everything including the design and formation of you! To use a page and concept from Steven Covey’s book Seven Habits of Highly Effective People (published in 1989) – begin with the end in mind. Let’s start there. Do you think that God had a plan when he created you? Do you believe he gave you all the resources to determine how you were designed and built? Part of that building process was creating where your talents reside. So, invest some time to review Steven Covey’s work and surf around the Simon Sinek world.
Take your time. We will wait.
Welcome back. Now let’s go down another path of reason and rationality. It is a spiritual one. We have had the great joy over the last thirteen years to build a relationship with Jake Weidmann. When we met him his “office” was in the basement of his parents’ home. Now thirteen years later he lives in Littleton Colorado with his beloved Hannah and is father to three. You can go to the electronic presence of their two companies jakeweidmann.com and everydayheirloomco.com to do some background review. The two images below are examples of their work. This is a husband-and-wife team dedicated to taking the divine design of the talent the father God gave them at birth and put it on display in multiple forms of art. Some is wearable as jewelry, some is sculpture, some is wood carving, some are paintings, some are pen and ink drawings. Whatever they create from the deployment of their talents -the gift given from God – is their gift back to him. You can read about the backstory of these two images on their commercial web sites.
Take your time. We will wait.
Over the years we have encouraged Jake and Hannah to continually dig deeper into their souls in this rest area of resources to produce products which reflect the very heart of the one who gave them the ability to produce in the first place, God. The evidence of their achievements in this area shows up in their following on social media and the workflow of the Shopify system that drives the merchant machinery of their businesses.
We recently told this story in a public venue which generated some interesting conversation. One rather objectionable young man rather pointedly expressed an exasperated, ” Hey, I am no present-day Michelangelo like this guy.” “How does this apply to me !?!” We later took a side bar to that conversation, sitting with him to explain the uniqueness of the divine design of every one of us. Jake and Hannah are developing the talent deposited within them. The conversation continued. So, what unique talents do you have? How has the father uniquely designed you to become? What did he have in mind? What does this area of your Soul Roadmap reveal to you? With a widening grin on his face, he said “I am a welder. Nobody can weld like I do.” Bingo, HE GOT IT. We asked is that arc or acetenyl welding? He countered with, “Precision welding. I work in the aerospace industry.”
As you read this do you feel a tugging at the corners of your mouth creating a grin of your own? Are you also, bingo, getting it? What gifts do you have? What are you designed for? A good friend of ours said, “If you don’t do you, you doesn’t get done, and the world is incomplete”. Whatever this talent is and however it is displayed, you are fulfilling God’s original design for you. What you do with that gift is your gift back to Him.
You are continuing on the road building your own Soul Roadmap.