Daily Word of Grace # 226 (April 23, 2021)
One of the recurring story lines in the hilarious offbeat cult classic 2004 film Napoleon Dynamite is the friendship between awkward high school students Napoleon and Pedro. After Pedro secures a date for a school dance, Napoleon begins stressing out because he does not yet have a date, “Well, nobody’s gonna go out with me.” Pedro asks him, “Have you asked anybody yet?” “No,” Napoleon replies, “But who would? I don’t even have any good skills.” “What do you mean?” “You know, like nunchaku skills, bow hunting skills, computer hacking skills—girls only want boyfriends who have great skills.” Pedro follows up, “Aren’t you pretty good at drawing like animals and warriors and stuff?” “Yes,” Napoleon says, “probably the best that I know of.” “Just a draw a picture of the girl you want to take out and give that to her as a gift or something.” Napoleon agrees, “That’s a pretty good idea.” So Napoleon does just that—he draws a picture of Trisha Stevens. Unfortunately it’s frighteningly bad, but I digress. Each one of us has been given skills of one kind or another—some of us “great skills”—by our Creator, as Paul wrote to the Corinthians, “there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit” (1 Corinthians 12:4). This same Spirit works in our lives to develop and utilize these gifts in the midst of the awkward stages of our lives and in doing so continues drawing God’s image in us.
Love and Prayers,
Dave