How do you walk the delicate line between honing and refining the gifts God has given you and coveting or envying others’ gifts? For example, I fool around with the guitar occasionally. I really can’t go so far as to say I actually play it, but putting some chords together and singing a tune brings me some joy. Taking lessons, practicing, and really working on my playing skill would be a way to recognize and honor the gift of manual dexterity God has given me. Standing by and envying Lance’s guitar skills, and cursing the fact that I was not the singer or guitar player he is actually dishonors God’s gift. It says, in essence, “God, when you made me to be THIS, you made a total mistake. You should have made me someone or something else.”
Do you see the arrogance in that approach? We stand in our limited, finite human place in the universe and call God incompetent.
Instead Paul urges us to trust… trust that God has a deeper, more complete, and much more far-reaching vision of who we are in the world than we ever could have. Just because you are not able to see the fullness of that vision right now does not mean it is not there.
Pray today and ask God for patience and for faith; ask for the patience to wait and see God’s plan for your life unfold in its time, and the faith to trust that God does indeed have a plan… a plan to “prosper you and give you a future and a hope,” as the prophet Jeremiah reminds us.
It’s true you know!
