Welcome to the Zoo

I walk into the nursery, absorbing the mirage of colors battering my senses as thirteen four and five year olds run toward the door, all fighting to greet their favorite teacher with loud exclamations of joy. I breathe in the familiar smells of crayons and lysol as I attempt to restore some order to the chaos surrounding me. Finally I bring the class to attention for a short recess of noise, before telling them they have fifteen minutes of playtime before our lesson.
They eagerly disperse throughout the room, grabbing Lincoln logs and plastic food, legos and puzzles to let their imaginations soar, but soon I have a problem on my hand. Harry and Sally have just grabbed the same gold sparkly ball I sent out on the desk to play hot potato with. Their little palms struggle viciously as they both shout "Mine" at the top of their lungs. Harry attempts to hit Sally, hoping she will drop the ball, but she lifts one leg daintily back and swings her flying pendulum forward, connecting with his shin.
The other children gather around as Harry begins unending howling, while I separate Sally and the whipped conqueror from each other. I ask each what happened, and get dissimilar responses as Harry excitedly tells me he needs the ball for his basketball game, and that he most assuredly had it first. Sally then primly explains that Harry snatched the pretty ball out of her hands and that as a lady, she had a right to play with it first.
After attempting to reason with both children, I finally reached the point of hopelessness. I quickly remembered however that I had brought two balls, one gold and the other tie-dye, in my bag. I handed the tie-dye ball to Harry, as loud exclamations of "Why don't I get the tie-dye ball?!?" erupted from Sally's side of the room. "I thought you wanted the gold ball?" I asked, my patience waning. She answered "No, I want this one" and coquetted across the room, hoping I would grant her request. Instead, at my breaking point after Harry stuck his tongue out at the girl, I ended up sending both children to a corner, giving instead the balls to the brother and sister in the corner whose blessed silence had made my day bearable in part.
This story may seem juvenile, and rather pointless. After all, kids argue like this all the time about getting what they want, and learning to share. Yet I would like to take a new look at this and point the fingers back on us, the Christians of our giant playroom of life.
You see, God gives each one of us talents and abilities that He wishes to shine brightly for his glory. He gives one the gift of singing, another the gift of healing, and another the gift of compassion. As Paul tells us, he enables the body with different organs all working together as a unit with Christ as the head. Yet somehow, our childish spirit of "If only I had..." never quite goes away, and we must attempt to intercept the prize God intended for someone else to have. We make up any sorry excuse we can imagine, using such logical fallacies as race, gender, age, and time to excuse our greed for what another has, but none of us seem to acknowledge that there remains a tenth commandment "Thou shall not covet." (Exodus 20) we may be impeaching upon.
God gives each one of us a different gift or even multiple ones to use for the kingdom in the body of Christ. As in the parable of the talents, he asks us to use these talents to increase his kingdom while we still remain on this earth. Some he gives more talents then others, or ones that seem more important to the body then others. We cannot dictate which talents we receive, only what we do with them. Somehow however, a fight most always breaks out between members of the church as to which talents they have been given or have not received. Never satisfied, we grapple like ducks fighting over a piece of bread in the water, not realizing their benefactor has been tossing more pieces out all the while they fight.
You may sit now, nodding your head assuredly with a emphatic amen to everything I have just said.
Good. I'm glad you can see what I see. Now what will you do about it? Like preschoolers in a classroom must learn to accept whatever color crayon they are given to use, we must take our talent, whether writing music or cleaning toilets, and start making our mark on the paper called life we have been given. If we learn to color inside our own lines, we all as the body of Christ can present a piece of artwork worthy of our Father's glory at his throne someday.