A gift is a thing we do not get by our own efforts. We cannot buy it; we cannot acquire it through an act of will. It is bestowed upon us. Thus we rightly speak of “talent” as a “gift,” for although a talent can be perfected through an effort of the will, no effort in the world can cause its initial appearance. – Lewis Hyde, The Gift: Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World
Like it or not, we all excel at different things. I have a son with a keen mathematical mind. I can understand math to a certain extent. I did through Calculus II with him as part of his homeschool program. Please note – I wasn’t teaching him in any way. He simply wanted me to sit with him while we watched videos and struggled through the problems together. While I could scrape together some rudimentary idea of the concepts, his brain could see the problems and understand the solutions in a way I never could. I rejoiced when he moved onto college math classes with professors who share his gift, and every bit of math that I struggled to understand with him promptly fell out of my brain. While I could muddle through and made as much of an effort as I could, math is not my gift; it is his. By the same token, the writing that comes so easily to me is a struggle for him.
God has given each of us our own unique gifts. We may not even realize that they are gifts. Especially as children, we simply see those things that we are good at as part of who we are. We are an athlete or an artist or good at school. These things are part of our identity. As we grow, we realize that not everyone is good at the same things we are. We realize that we excel in different areas, that some things come much easier to us than others. It is those areas that are our natural talents, our gifts from God. We should not take them for granted. We need to acknowledge that they come from God and thank God for those gifts. It is then up to us to work at them, to improve on them, and to use them to the best of our abilities.
Prayer
Dear God, thank you for all the gifts that you have given to me. I’m sorry for the times that I have taken them for granted and not acknowledged that my talents come from you.
Action
What talents do you have that you have taken for granted? Make a special effort to thank God for them today. Do you have talents that you are not cultivating in any way? What can you do to nurture those gifts?
This is an excerpt from The Work of Our Hands. (Amazon affiliate link)
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