Einstein - Everyone is a genius

"Everyone is a genius. But if you judge a fish on its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing it is stupid." -A. Einstein.

This is a great illustration of the value of every person, and would be well-used in any sermon about spiritual gifts or Christ being one body composed of many parts.

I shouldn't be the one to...

I was walking out of a restaurant the other day and heard a man on a cell phone as he was going in. He wasn't shouting and making a scene but he was clearly agitated. As we got to that place where we passed one another in the parking lot I heard just a single phrase: "I shouldn't be the one to _____." I didn't hear what he had to say, but it struck me how often all of us say that.

• I shouldn't have to be the one to clean this.
• I shouldn't have to be the one to do youth group or youth camp.
• I shouldn't have to be the one to pay for this person's poor financial choices.
• I shouldn't have to be the one to be overstretched, to take on more projects, to take care of rudimentary things.

The fact of the matter is that you may be right. But you are the one who needs to. Jesus shared this sentiment in his prayers in Gethsemane. "God, I shouldn't have to be the one to take the fall for all of them," but the reality is that sometimes we are. He struggled with this but also understood that sometimes you are the one that just has to do it. Jesus finished this prayer with the thought "not my will, but yours be done."