The Surgeon Who Almost Wasn't

When Ben Carson was thirteen years old, he was the worst student in his fifth-grade class at Higgins Elementary in Detroit. His classmates called him "dummy." He believed them. His single mother, Sonya, who could barely read herself, looked at her son and saw something he couldn't see — not a failure, but a future. She turned off the television, handed him a library card, and required two book reports a week. She couldn't even check his work, but she checked his heart.

Within two years, Carson went from the bottom of his class to the top. By 1987, he led the surgical team at Johns Hopkins that performed the first successful separation of twins conjoined at the head. The boy the world dismissed as "dummy" held the lives of children in his hands.

God spoke to Jeremiah with that same knowing certainty: "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart." When Jeremiah protested — "I do not know how to speak; I am too young" — the Almighty didn't argue with his résumé. He touched his mouth and said, "I have put my words in your mouth."

Your inadequacy is not the final word. The One who formed you already placed the calling inside you before you ever drew breath. He does not call the equipped. He equips the called.