~ Especially for Young People ~

Not Needed

Les hooked one finger over the side of the box of nut shells and quickly passed it on to Howard without taking one. At the end of the row Ernest took the box and rattled the one nut shell left around. "Who did we miss?" he asked as he scanned the group. But Les set his jaw and looked straight ahead. He hated these "Service in a Nut Shell" services, and this was not the first time he had passed the box of shells on, without taking one. In fact, the first service of this kind that they had had was the only night when he opened his shell.

The little slip of paper inside said, "Lead song service." Whether it had said, "Lead testimony service," or "Give a three-minute sermonette," it would have been all the same. For it was the sad truth that Les lacked talents, and there seemed to be absolutely nothing that he could do–nothing, that is, but take up the offering.

Les did not have a musical bone in him, to quote Les himself; and a bright red wave swept up into the roots of his hair as he remembered the night he had consented to speak to the group. They were having three speakers that night, and Howard had assured him that it would not be half bad. But standing before the group that way, everything he had studied left his mind an embarrassing blank. Even his notes did not throw any light on what he had planned to say, and after blurting a few unconnected sentences to the sea of suddenly strange faces before him, he had sat down and wished a thousand times during the rest of the service that the floor would somehow open up and swallow him.

It was the same way when he testified or led in prayer too. Words just did not hover around Les Townsend's mind ready to be used when the time came; that was all there was to it. As he sat through the service, he found himself growing bitter toward the ones who took part and did their parts so well.

That was the reason he turned Howard down after church when he asked if Les was going to be able to make it to jail service the next night.

"I'm not needed," Les shook his head. "I would be doing more good at home studying than trailing along with the group."

"What makes you think you're not needed?" Howard wanted to know.

"What would I do?" Les drew himself up to his full height. "I could lead the song service in a monotone–or even better than that, perhaps I could sing a solo."

"Now listen," Howard backed away a step and looked at him. "Just because you don't happen to have that particular talent is no reason you're not needed. The Lord has a place for you at the jail service, and you know it."

But Les still shook his head. They would probably feel sorry for him and call on him to do something just as sure as he went, and he would rather not take the chance. Nothing Howard could say would change his mind, either.

However, as he walked slowly on down the street after leaving Howard at the corner, Les was not as relieved as he thought he would be. "Lord," his heart cried as he walked along, "why is it that so many people have a lot of different talents, and I have none? What is there that I can do for You? Oh, let me do something."

A light shining from the dining room window as he came nearer the house, though, switched his thoughts. "I wonder what is up?" he thought as he bounded up the steps. "Surely the boys aren't still studying."

"Oh, a jigsaw puzzle," he laughed as he closed the door behind him and came into the dining room. "You boys would stay up all night to get one together, wouldn't you?"

His two younger brothers looked up. "It's a picture of an airplane," Tommy explained.

"And the pieces are cut so much alike, they're hard to fit," Ronald added.

Les pulled his tie over his head, and dropping it in the pile with the tablecloth at the end of the table, proceeded to help put the puzzle together.

Finally, it was all in but one piece, and that piece was nowhere to be found. The piece was a part of one of the propellers, too, and the picture was just ruined without it. "Oh, it's just a little one," Ronald decided as he rubbed his eyes. "Let's just forget about it."

But Tommy could not. "It just ruins the picture," he argued. "An airplane couldn't run with the middle of a propeller gone," and he dove under the table to look.

"Oh, here it is," Les said a few minutes later as he poked his finger under a table leg that was not quite on the floor. He straightened up and looked at the picture with the piece gone. Then he slipped the piece in, and a feeling surged through him that he had never experienced before.

"Now I can sleep," Tommy said as he took a last look at the airplane and ran after Ronald. "I don't think I could if we had not found that piece."

Les stood there a long time after his brothers had gone to bed. It seemed that every time his eye scanned the big picture that he had helped to make, his eye fell on that tiny piece in the propeller–the piece that "the plane couldn't run without," as Tommy had said so emphatically. It was a little piece, that was true, and it was not a corner or an outside piece; but it was needed.

"Sorta makes me think of myself," Les mumbled. "We all can't be the corners and outside pieces that keep the thing together, but we do all have a part in the Lord's work." He ambled over to the telephone. "If my part is taking up the offering, Lord, then that's what I'll do." He looked at his watch. Howard would not be in bed yet. He had planned to do some studying. "Yes," Les said into the phone. "I've changed my mind. I'll help in the jail service tomorrow night. I'll do my part."

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