Beethoven's music teacher said about him, "As a composer he is hopeless."

An editor told Louisa May Alcott that she was incapable of writing anything that would have popular appeal. That, of course, was before LITTLE WOMEN.

Walt Disney was once fired by a newspaper editor because he was thought to have no "good ideas." Tell that to the millions of people thrilled by Walt's movies.

When F. W. Woolworth was 21, he got a job in a store, but was not allowed to wait on customers because he "didn't have enough sense."

Each of these famous people proved to have a certain genius--but was it innate or did it grow out of their dedication to developing what they had been given?

Somerset Maugham said it best in his autobiography SUMMING UP, "I knew that I had no lyrical quality, a small vocabulary, little gift of metaphor. The original and striking simile never occurred to me. Poetic flights...were beyond my powers. On the other hand, I had an acute power of observation, and it seemed to me that I could see a great many things that other people missed. I could put down in clear terms what I saw...I knew that I should never write as well as I could wish, but I thought, with pains, that I could arrive at writing as well as my natural defects allowed." Somerset Maugham discovered the secret of genius.

The point is that God does not ask us to become what we are not. You and I are asked only to accomplish what our natural gifts allow to help God's kingdom.

Ron Newhouse