"Of your time and talents give him, they are gifts from God above, to be used by Christians freely to proclaim his wondrous love."

Hymn: “Come, All Christians, Be Committed” – Eva B. Lloyd (1912-2006)
Tune: BEACH SPRING

As the choir processed at First Baptist Church of Waxahachie, Texas on this past Sunday morning, my tired ears were greeted by Myla McClinton’s playing of an arrangement of this hymn – and the final eight measures were close to “tutti,” my personal favorite organ dymnamic! So it just seemed like a good time to reflect on this hymn by an English teacher from Maryville, Missouri.

The entire hymn is worthy of our study, pulling hymnline after hymnline… giving careful attention to its well-crafted text.

This particular hymnline speaks brilliantly for itself; there is little I can add to expound upon its message. The fact that both time and talent (ability) are gifts from God is something we somewhat-gifted people too often overlook. However, the strike-me-down word in this hymnline is “freely.”

I am one of those people who is good at a lot of things, but great at very few. I shaped my life that way almost intentionally it seems. My early years of majoring in visual art seem almost wasted because I rarely pick up a pen-and-ink to draw. I’ve been just involved in enough drama (writing, directing and participating) over the years to know blessed little about either one. I’ve written a few songs, done some arranging.  I've written a few hymn texts and anthem texts… and so the list goes on.

In my semi-retirement, I’m teaching about all these things at the college level, but I am doing none of them consistently. I have made a personal (now public, I guess) commitment to do more of all of them, hoping that one will re-surface as a talent to occupy my time – and that whichever that turns out to be, I want to share it freely in order that more attention might be drawn to Christ.

I hope I will do it “tutti.”

Hymn being sung in worship