Waste nothing; withhold nothing
Published 10:03 pm Wednesday, July 31, 2019
By QuaWanna Bannarbie
A mind is a terrible thing to waste. This slogan appeared in the advertising campaigns for the United Negro College Fund when I was a young girl. According to The Ad Council, these words were one of the most successful public service messages of all time and has raised more than $2 billion dollars to help graduate minority students from college and beyond.
I must have seen these commercials every single day watching television as a young girl. My mother was a single parent, and I knew she would not be able to afford to send me and my two sisters to college. One commercial showed me the reality of what could happen to me. I was encouraged to use my mind to articulate, create, complete equations, write and communicate. The slogan taught me that if I did not continue to work, to develop and to act on my ability to learn, I would never realize my true potential.
Potential is important to our Heavenly Father. But I don’t believe God views potential in the same way that we do. We see potential as an unknown capacity to become or do something in the future. However, God knows our end and therefore He requires us to live out, walk out and carry out our potential such that we are walking in our purpose more and more. Rather than saying “a mind is a terrible thing to waste,” God knows that a man is a terrible thing to waste. In fact, we see this in a familiar parable told by Jesus in Luke Chapter 15.
We all know the story. A man had two sons. The younger son asks his father to give him his inheritance. When the father obliges his son, the young lad leaves his father’s house to pursue his idea of living his best life, and he ends up wasting his entire inheritance. The son eventually finds his way back home; he receives the father’s grace and is reconciled to his family.
We know that Jesus used this illustration to convey the love of God for the lost. It wasn’t until recently that I learned that God’s message of warning against prodigal living is not so much focused on wasting the inheritance — as in the money that the younger son spent in his lavish living. Prodigal living is wasting the life and the purpose that God has placed in each of us.
God knows what He has placed in each of us, and the farther we are from Him, the less we are able to truly work, develop and act on our divinely imparted gifts and talents. The closer we are to Him, the more He steers us in the direction that prevents us from wasting what He has given us. I am a witness to this in my own life. The sheer evidence of my sharing this column with you, writing week after week and seeing the development of this craft in just a few years proves to me that God is a father that takes us back again and again. He wastes nothing and He desires that we do not withhold what He has given us. God is our source, and we are the resource.
My encouragement to you today is to stay close to God and if you don’t have a relationship with God, get close to God. Seek out a Christian mentor or teacher. Ask them to disciple you and help lead you in the ways God would have you to live and walk in your purpose. A man or a woman is a terrible thing to waste.
QuaWanna Bannarbie is an adjunct professor of nonprofit leadership and management with Indiana Wesleyan University, National and Global. Her children attend Suffolk Public Schools. Connect with her via Twitter @QNikki_Notes.