Dispensability

I am totally dispensable. I have frequently admitted it. Especially when told that I am; I am positively effusive about my dispensability. This is greeted in some quarters with consternation and admonitions to be more ambitious.

Actually, I know I am unique. In one sense, I am not dispensable - nobody can exactly replace the sum and product of what I am, what I was made to be, what I do, which hole in reality I fill. However, all my many tasks, duties and responsibilities can be given to others who will do better in each area. I remember when I made my first great dispersion of powers. At least six different people took up my various tasks, and I still was not done.

I was curious. I experimented. I disbursed and devolved, resolved never to take my own authority seriously again unless accompanied with true responsibility and power and the blessings of the Spirit. And I found nothing but freedom in the exercise. It was a surprise to me, even though the theory had always pointed the way; even though the theology said nothing but that.

And I learned something else. Sometimes, it isn't the 'killer application' which wins; it isn't always the ability to do individual things excellently which is the gift. It was my ability to link all the tiny things together in a way useful to other people which, in some arcane way, was the 'killer application'. The odd and sideways percipience, the peculiar trajectory, the weird web of seemingly disparate pieces of different disciplines - these were my forte. And since they weren't tangible and measurable, they were dispensable.

If we thought like that of the Holy Spirit, it would be dispensable too. Thank God we don't.