Where’s your cape?

The photo was created by Richard Starbuck.   Although I’m sure if I’m a super hero or an arch villain.  It depends on who you talk to, I suppose…

I find the explosion of super hero-mania interesting.  (Not so much the zombie fascination, although I’m sure there’s probably plenty of fodder there for the psychologists, also.)  I went to to see the original Star Wars back in the late seventies, back before Harrison Ford and I had gray hair. Rumor has it that my in-laws knew one of the guys who played Darth Vadar, and that he was a really nice and gentle human being. 

Good acting, that.

One spin-off from all of this super-hysteria is Marvel’s Agents of Shield.  It’s a fairly violent show, so I’m not putting my Better Homes and Gardens Seal of Approval on it or anything, but it does bring up an interesting make-believe concept: people may have latent super powers for which they didn’t ask.  And, secondly, they need to learn to control those gifts for good or for bad purposes.  AND in that learning process, there tends to be “collateral damage” along the way.

But, really, is that so far-fetched?

We all have hidden (and sometimes not so hidden) traits that need to be harnessed, but to do so, they must first be identified.  What we may initially think is a curse, may be the very thing our Creator had downloaded into our personal hard drive for a specific purpose.  When it’s tempting to think, “Why did God make me this way?  It seems so abnormal!!”, it may actually be wiser to ask, “Why did You make me this way?  What’s Your plan?”

Case in point: I seem to not “feel” as deeply as some others do.  I tend not to “miss” people so much when they are away, although I love it when I see them again.  Or why some people seem so blessed with “feeling” the presence of God, and I’m just, well,…me.  So I wondered about my emotional make-up, until I began to see how this irregularity functions quite well when there is a need for calm, unemotional evaluation or action. 

And then I just love the whole Bruce Banner/Hulk thing.  He’s finally starting to figure out how his curse can be used as a blessing, although it is only via his interaction and relationship with his new-found Avenger teammates that he is learning to harness his power for good.  He needs  his friends’ help.  We are no different.

Finally, in the learning process, there tends to be hurt.  For me, people may think I don’t love them, or in the other example, that I’m not in love with God.  Both assumptions are grossly wrong.  Here’s where clear communication is so important.  Pray for grace, pray for protection. We have an enemy that would like to fully take advantage of this misunderstanding. 

“There are different kinds of spiritual gifts, but the same Spirit is the source of them all. There are different kinds of service, but we serve the same Lord. God works in different ways, but it is the same God who does the work in all of us.  A spiritual gift is given to each of us so we can help each other.”

So what are you waiting for?  Go grab your cape.

1 Corinthians 12:4-7 New Living Translation (NLT)  Holy Bible. New Living Translation copyright© 1996, 2004, 2007, 2013 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.