Accepting Gifts

When we were kids and suffering from angst about the grades, athletic prowess, or popularity of our friends, my mom, (and probably her mother and grandmother before her) used to tell my sister and me,  “You do other things; you have other gifts.”  Of course, we didn’t understand or believe her.  Mothers say stuff like that. But it was good theology. True, we are all flawed and limited; but to use a biblical metaphor, we are only branches on the vine. 
 
Only God is perfect.  The rest of us are trying.
 
What was true in my family and in the whole church is true in community.  In fact, I have always liked is that I don’t have to have all the skills or strengths of others in community.  I don’t have to waste energy being everything everyone else is. Particularly as I age and am less able to do all that I used to do, I’m better at just saying, “Thank you.”  The trick is to be comfortable with my own talents.  Thomas Aquinas’s notion of humility involves an accurate valuation of one’s own ability.  And every human being has gifts.  We don’t have to grasp for them; they’re already God-given.

Win Morgan, OP
Madison, WI