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Feeling Guilty About Being Good

May 31, 2013

For a long time, I would feel guilty because certain things seem to come easy to me. It felt as if I was cheating because my own natural talents allowed me to do certain things faster and better than others. It also made it much easier to slack off on certain things…or at least I thought it did.

However, during a recent conversation with some good friends I was reminded of Sunday’s Scripture from Romans 5. Here is a portion, “We also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.”

I’d found out the word boast, in this context, may be paraphrased to mean “lift up to God as an offering.” And now the light bulb has gone off once more.

Only in recent years have I been more open about my personal medical problems. None of them are life threatening but they do make it difficult for me to do certain things. It’s only by an act of grace that I can sit down with others for a few hours without having to get up. I also have other issues, that for someone in my profession, make it much more difficult.

So, while thinking on the Romans passage, I have to say my natural gifts…those things granted to me by God…are necessary. Without them, I’d never be able to do anything. I’ve also found that pride takes over and I attribute these gifts to myself when my health is going great.

So, this suffering of illness has led me to endurance and has helped increase my character. My illness has helped me hone my natural gifts and spend more time making strange and often synchronistic connections.

In the end, I take these talents and gifts and “boast” in them by giving them back to God as an offering. Ever remembering that the treasures I’ve been gifted with are not to be hoarded but shared with the world around me.

Pax