Accepting Limitations

We love this thought shared with us recently by one of our former pastors, Bill Dogterom, an esteemed professor at Vanguard University:

Thinking about the gift that limitations are to creativity - the musician with eight notes, the artist with three primary colors, the athlete with a field of play, the dancer with body and gravity, the architect with an odd shaped piece of land - each one approaching their art, aware of the limitations - and enabled by them. Acceptance. Then… beauty and wonder.

A burgeoning limitation list is not uncommon in life’s later years. We can prevent, pray through, and fight off some limitations, but how cool, too, when we allow limits to bring focus and enablement.

Complaining about limitations doesn’t move the musician, artist, athlete, dancer or architect forward.

Special beauty and wonder await us as we learn to accept some of the limitations bordering our life’s canvas.

The Apostle Paul grew to accept his ‘thorn in the flesh’, which was no doubt accompanied by limitations and personal adjustment. Whatever that nagging thorn was, it didn’t bring his ministry or life to a screeching halt.

May our infinite God creatively use our finiteness to bring Him glory!

Thank you for cultivating and investing in potential—sometimes shaped and undeterred by our limitations.