By John A. Huffman, Jr.
Jesus has equipped us to carry out our tasks. His tools are spiritual gifts. He states, "I do not want you to be uninformed." Unfortunately, we too often are ignorant of His provisions. These spiritual gifts are not means for our own personal benefit. We are gifted by God's Holy Spirit for the sake of the whole body of Christ. Your spiritual gift or gifts function right along with that of another's.
Imagine, for example, if Hoag Hospital had an entire medical staff made up of brain surgeons, 500 of them. They happen to be the finest brain surgeons in the world, functioning out of that excellent facility in this marvelous Newport Beach area. Needless to say, brain surgeons are some of the most well-prepared, skilled, gifted professionals. Just imagine how severely minimized Hoag's effectiveness as a hospital would be in this community if all it had on its staff were brain surgeons. A variety of gifts are needed. You think of anything that can go wrong with the human body and then build a medical staff around all those various specializations. No one set of individual gifts is adequate in providing for the holistic health of the community. You need not only doctors but nurses, administrators, laboratory technicians, orderlies and a host of volunteers.
Advertisement
The same thing could be said about an orchestra. Diversity is the key to a well-functioning orchestra. As a youngster, I played the trombone. I was never very good at it, but I loved the instrument then and I love it now. There may be an occasion on which seventy-six trombones would be appropriate for the music played. That is more the exception than the rule. The finest orchestras have a brass section, a woodwind section, a string section and a percussion section. Each of those have a variety of instruments. Not all of them play at the same time. Not all of them make sounds equally loud. Not all of them are the same size. Some appear to be quite a bit more majestic than others. An orchestra to be a great orchestra needs an enormous amount of diversity. My preoccupation with the trombone, if projected throughout the musical world, would produce a very dull musical diet.
One of my favorite preachers is Dr. Charles Swindoll. On one occasion, he was teaching about spiritual gifts and the importance of a variety of gifts functioning in a way which produces unified ministry. He referred to his own youth when he played in the Houston, Texas, Youth Symphony. I believe he said that he played the oboe, which put him in the middle of the woodwind section next to one of the two piccolo players. Being a practical joker, he had found a fishing cork of perfect size to fit into the end of a piccolo. On one occasion when they had a major concert, he thought he would have a little fun. While his seat-mate, the piccolo player who also doubled as the flutist, was playing the flute, he reached down and popped his cork into the end of the piccolo. He imagined that he'd be playing a little private joke on his friend, forgetting that the next time the piccolo was to be played was during John Philip Sousa's "The Stars and Stripes Forever." You know there's a passage there where suddenly the piccolo becomes the center of that stirring number. Swindoll relates how there were only two piccolo players in that orchestra. One was not very good, so his seat-mate was to carry the day in that tremendous flurry of piccolo music, which came at such an important part. He graphically describes the disruption which ensued when the piccolo player went to play his arpeggios, only to find that the piccolo didn't work. It was too late then to explain the cork and make an apology.
