ROTATIONAL RESPONSIBILITY

Recently in the night I heard this term: Rotational Responsibility. This was rather confusing to me until I went way back to my growing up years. We were a working family as long as I can remember; meaning my mom and dad and my two smart brothers and me and my other brother, everyone worked.

So when we were home there was Rotational Responsibility. A list was prepared at the beginning of each week listing who would wash dishes, change bedding, dry dishes, help with laundry, sweep the house, deal with trash, mop the floors, rake the yards and general clean up outside… etc. After all the conniving and bellyaching we still had to do our jobs. Each week the list rotated with our responsibility for the coming week. We all learned to do most tasks inside and outside our house. I think they were valuable lessons. As the years went by I could see the parallel with spiritual gifts and work.

In the spiritual realm we learned that it takes all the gifts to make the whole body. Though we may have an obviously often-used gift, it does not mean we don’t have others or that others don’t have others. Without the experience of Rotational Responsibility we become a body with one or two functions. That is an ill- functioning body or house. That is weird and religious.

If we are submitted to the Holy Spirit, I believe the Holy Spirit can and will gift us to do anything the Lord wants done in us and by us. The gift will be there. It will be rotated in. We just need Rotational Responsibility in our gifting. Our dominant gift might be doing laundry but we can easily do dishes when it is needed, or teaching or healing or miracles.

“Go and tell John what you have seen and heard: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, the poor have good news preached to them.” Jesus