Quote of the Week

It's Friday, and here is today's quote.:

"Remember, potential means you ain't done nothing yet."

You've heard the phrase a thousand times. It is used of up and coming athletes, young school children, and musical prodigies. These are people who are highly gifted, skilled, and talented. They often wow the socks off of you. They leave you envious of their obvious abilities and yet ten or twenty years from now you never see them or hear from them. They never reached their "potential."

Potential is often wasted through lack of opportunity, sloth or an inability to be disciplined. In order to achieve the fulfillment of potential it must be developed and applied. My father used to say, "The gutters are full of potential." I remember the first time he said it. We were in a car heading to an electronics parts store. We had to pass through an area of town known as skid row. Building after building of flop houses (as they were called in those days), and the streets were littered with alcoholics passed out on the streets. My dad looked at me with the most serious look a father can give a boy. He said, "Everyone of those men started out with potential. They all got distracted by alcohol or drugs and they never lived up to their potential. The gutters are full of potential."

After I became a Christian I read the parable of the talents. The talents are potential. Two of the recipients doubled their talents. The third one buried it. Jesus was telling us that each of us is given potential. Until we do something with this potential, it doesn't mean much, if anything at all.

Just as those words from my father impressed me as a boy, the Scriptures reinforce the truth that potential can be realized by applying ones self. Until then, potential simply means that "you ain't done nothing yet."