God’s been dealing with me lately. He’s been asking me what I am doing with the talent and experience He gave me. I am not usually a person who puts things away to use once a year or to save for “good.” I’m a “use it all up and enjoy it right now” kind of gal. But for the last few years I have not been writing. What is up with that?

A few weeks ago God sent me to a “Shake Your Tree” workshop with Patsy Clairmont where the little dried up writer inside of me got rattled around a bit. The words started popping to the surface and the desire of my heart surfaced once again. I heard God saying, “What are you waiting for?”

So I signed up for a writers’ group at Patsy’s house. Last night was the first meeting. The twelve of us are varied in age, life experience, careers, and ambition. We are songwriters, letter writers, e-mail writers, book writers, poets, and backpack note writers. But we are all hoping to shake some words out of our brains and onto paper through creative exercises and story sharing.

Our first assignment was to take a random quote from a deck of quote cards and write a response, rewrite it in our own words, or just write something that builds on the quote. The quote I got to write about? “If you have a talent, use it in every which way possible. Don’t hoard it. Don’t dole it out like a miser. Spend it lavishly, like a millionaire intent on going broke.” —Brenda Francis

How about that? God’s voice coming from a cute Sugar Boo deck of cards.

My response?

When I get to heaven I want to stand before Jesus able to say it’s all gone, I gave my all. I used my talents, turned them inside out and backwards and used them again like a pair of underwear when my luggage was lost. I want to be able to say I made dresses out of the drapes and snowshoes out of the tennis rackets of my life that weren’t being used for anything else. I want to be used up like toothpaste that has been scraped out of a cut-open tube in a prison camp. I want to write words that encourage, serve others until I’m exhausted, and love with abandon. But, most of all, I want to WANT all of this more than I want to watch the next TV show, try a new recipe, or take a soak in the tub. I do not want to keep anything back for a later time. I want to, every single day, be spent.

With all this going for us, my dear, dear friends, stand your ground. And don’t hold back. Throw yourselves into the work of the Master, confident that nothing you do for him is a waste of time or effort.
1 Corinthians 15:58 TLB