The worst person in the room

Have you ever been to a meeting where you were the least competent person in attendance? That happened to me recently. Now there are some meetings where a person can be least competent and not mind it. For example, a star athlete would not feel threatened to stink at a meeting of a horticultural society, and medical doctor would not feel threatened to be the dunce at a meeting of civil engineers. Each has his own specialty and feels secure in it.

But my meeting was not that kind of thing: I was in a group with six other women that had gathered for the purpose of writing Bible questions for a church curriculum. That's "writing" and "Bible," the only two things in the world that I am remotely good at. (Which is to say that I stink at everything else. I recall that author Anne Lamott said if it weren't for writing she would be totally unemployable.) So if you are at a meeting that calls on what you are supposedly good at, and if it turns out you are the worst person in the room, you may be in for a rough spiritual ride.

I remember a guy named Ahithophel in the Bible (2 Samuel 16-17) who was the special counsel to the King and who committed suicide one day because at an important meeting he attended his counsel was rejected. That had never happened to him before, and so after the group dispersed he did the only thing he could do: He went home, put his things in order, and hanged himself. If he was not a counselor, he was nothing-he had no self.

As I was contemplating Ahithophel while sitting at the questions writers' meeting, sucking on my pen and having my few suggestions vetoed or ignored, the Holy Spirit started working His sweet ministrations on me. He reminded me that I am not the measure of my gifts; I am a child of God. It's rather funny that the passage the seven of us were discussing happened to be one in Galatians about being sons of God. My poor sisters got nothing valuable from me in terms of question-crafting. But the Lord was applying the Bible text about "Abba, Father" to my heart even as the women spoke on into the night.

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