What Can I Do? (Part 2/2) #30

Balance

Your gift is also in one of these categories. I hope this explanation has given you more clues to locate your gift. I think you have understood that no gift is superior to another, because we need each other (the world has been designed such that no one is totally independent of others). However, your gift may well be physical, but that doesn’t prevent you from investing in your spiritual life — that doesn’t prevent you from learning about psychology, if there is a knowledge you need for your life.

Athletes always have psychologists with them who help them work on their minds, because you can be physically strong, but if your mind doesn’t follow, you can’t accomplish anything. Likewise, you can be strong mentally, but some problems have their origin in the spiritual world, so if you neglect your spiritual life because it is not the domain of your gift, you will suffer.

Knowing the area of your gift should lead you to know the area where you need to focus most, knowing that this is where you will be most useful to others. It also allows you to identify other people’s areas of gifting so that you know where to turn when you need help in an area that is not your own.

My gift is mental. You may have noticed while reading my articles how I also use psychology and philosophy to help you understand certain theological areas. Besides that, I am good at mathematics and anything that refers to numbers. However, that doesn’t prevent me from asking God to give me the explanation when I dream a dream, although this is now in the spiritual realm. Also, I don’t neglect to do sports, even if it is in the physical realm, because I am aware of the importance of sports for good health.

You can do well in areas that are not your own, but only occasionally. Let’s take the example of a soccer team. You may be a forward, but if you notice a hole in your defense because one of your defenders has gone offside, you can come back to defense because if you concede, the entire team will suffer, including you. By the way, what I want people to understand is that if you notice a void, even in an area that is not your gift, you can temporarily assist your community, even if you are not as good as the people whose area it is. It’s just important to understand that you shouldn’t make it your field, just because there is no one else doing it.

You will only be accountable for the gifts you have received

Before traveling, a master called his 3 servants, and gave the first 5 talents (or silver coins), the second 2 talents, and the third just one. So he set out on his journey, hoping that these servants would give him a good report when he returns.

On the very day of his return, the master called his 3 servants to give him an account of what they had done with the talents he had given them before he left. The first came to him and said, “Master, I have worked with the 5 talents you left me, and behold, I have doubled them. So here are 10 talents for you.’’ Happy, the master blessed him and asked him to enter his glory. Then the second came near and said, “Behold, my master, you gave me 2 talents and after I had invested them, I generated 2 more. So here are 4 talents for you, my master.’’ As for the first one, the master congratulated him and asked him to enter his glory.

Then the third one approached, the one who had received only one talent. He spoke up and said, “My master, I know you are not a merciful master who tolerates that anything can be done with what you give, so to avoid problems I just hid the talent you gave me, so that I would not risk losing it and incur your wrath.’’ Unlike the other two servants, when this one finished his speech the master was angry and asked that he be thrown in jail (1).

We can learn 2 lessons from this story. First, when the second servant came with 4 talents, the master did not get angry and asked him why he did not bring 10 talents like the first one. The master knew well that the first one had received 5 talents, so it was quite normal that he brought more than the one who had received only 2 to begin with. In the previous story, we have talked about the gifts we receive from birth to serve humanity. And since each of us not only receives gifts of different but also in different amounts (some have received more gifts than others), the person who gives these gifts (God) does not expect exactly the same return for each of us.

You will be accountable only for the gifts given to you — both in the gift's nature and in the amount of the gifts you received. If you have received the gift of singing, you will only be accountable for that gift, even if you have spent your life cooking for people. Imagine that you hire someone to improve the quality of your company’s product and he spends all his time marketing the existing product. Marketing is not bad for your company, but it’s not their responsibility, so I don’t think you’ll be happy with their performance.

Although we have talked about assisting in areas that are not ours in case we see it is an important area but there is no one taking care of it (maybe the person who has the gift does not take responsibility for it), we will be more accountable for the areas that are of our own responsibility.

Also, we are used to envying people who have received many gifts, people who are good at many things, but it is also important to know that they will be more accountable, a bit like the servant who received 5 talents. If he had brought only 4 more talents for a total of 9, his master would not have been fully satisfied with him, because that would have meant that he worked with only 4 of the 5 talents he had received, and the fifth was unused. Coming with 10 talents means that he had multiplied all the 5 talents he had received, and that is why his master was fully satisfied with him.

Also, people with a lot of gifts often wonder which one to focus on first, as it can be difficult to work on all the gifts at the same time. Explaining exactly how to do this is the subject of another article, but here I can tell you that when you know where you are going in life (which we will talk about in the next story), what your mission on earth is, it will be easier for you to identify which of your gifts is dominant, and which ones should serve that dominant gift.

For example, let’s say you are called to be a teacher and you have the gift of sharing knowledge, doing business, and understanding human psychology. In this case, your guiding gift is your ability to pass on your knowledge, commonly referred to as pedagogy. Your gift of doing business can serve the gift of pedagogy by allowing you to create a school, for example, because a school is a business and you need business knowledge to manage it well.

And your gift of understanding human psychology can help you conduct research aimed at finding answers to psychological issues where others wonder but find no answers. So these discoveries give you even more to teach, in your field of course. I hope the example has been clear enough to help you understand how to manage multiple gifts.

The second lesson of the story is that, I believe you noticed the master was not angry with the last servant because he had lost the talent that had been entrusted to him, but because he had done nothing about it. By the way, that is the equivalent of someone who comes to earth with a gift and dies without serving the world. As we have seen in this story, you may well be a good person, kind, loving and so on, but if you do not serve your gift to the world, you will be unaccountable to the one who gave you the gift(s).

My prayer is that after reading this story and the previous one, you now know what you can do to help make this world a better place.

If you know someone who can be helped by this story, please share it with them. You can also follow my account, to not miss my next stories on the subject.

May the Grace of God help us obey his Law.

Thank you for reading me.

Resource

(1) Mathew 25: 14–30