Talent part 2
This is one of my favorite memory verses (and yes I know I say that about most of, if not all of, them): "And whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord, and not unto men" (Colossians 3:23). And to me, doing things heartily means two things. 1. Doing things to the best of our ability. 2. Doing things because they are in our hearts to do them. And, to me, that's a big part of what it means to use our talent. Just doing what is in our hearts. Doing those things that make us... us. And doing them with love. Doing them as unto the Lord. As unto love. Because God IS love, right? Anything we do unto Him, we do unto love. And anything we do UNTO love we have to do BECAUSE of love. WITH love. THROUGH love. IN love. What I'm trying to say is, love is our talent. All we do should be an expression of that talent. An expression of that love! Whatsoever we do. Because it doesn't matter what your talent is. We focus so much on what we CAN'T do that we end up not even doing what we can. We seem to think some talents are more valuable than others. Look at society. Professional athletes make hundreds of millions of dollars. We put celebrities on pedestals. We judge "success" by bank accounts and how much stuff you have. I think the most successful thing you can do in your life is to love somebody. To give someone the love that they need. That's what matters. If someone needs an ear, and you listen to them... I think you've succeeded in life. You've used a talent to help someone else. And, yes, money can be used to help people. Because living is expensive. But I don't want to fixate on that. When I Ranted about treasure I tried to move us past just always thinking about money, money, money. You can't serve God and mammon. One (mammon) is about getting. The other (God, love) is about giving. You can't do both at the same time. They are mutually exclusive. And when you understand that you have what you need--to give--you can stop trying to get. You can stop wasting your talent in the pursuit of meaningless things. If you give what you've got, you're too busy to try to get what you think you haven't got. I remember once saying (or, more likely, writing) "Distracting yourself from the wrong thing is not as important as focusing on the right thing." It's a mindset shift. Instead of focusing on--or even trying to distract yourself from--what you don't have... just enjoy what you do have. By giving it away. By sharing it. Don't be mad because someone has a talent you don't. Just use your talent. Don't be mad because you're not someone else. Just be yourself. You are fearfully and wonderfully made. You are who you're supposed to be. You are who God made you to be. So don't worry about the talent you don't have. I can't draw. At all. Under any circumstances. So I don't. I do what I CAN do instead of lamenting what I can't do. I focus on being the best ME I can be instead of struggling to be who I'm not. I do what I can do. Heartily. To the best of my ability. Because it's in my heart to do it!