Tuesday, February 23, 2016

Day 053: Producing Good

There are those who sow their own things and produce more things, and there are those who gather but have less.  Proverbs 11:23
This proverb reminds me of Jesus' parable of the talents, for the lesson in the parable was about putting the talents to good use.  Both speak to me about how we should grow in our faith.

God gives us so many things in our lives.  Those things come in the form of material things and wealth.  Others, though, come in the form of our abilities, our talents.  Whatever they are, though, we have an obligation to put them to some form of use.  That's where faith comes in.

On the one hand, we could just hide the gifts that we have from God, but, just as the parable shows, that will just leave us with less.  If we aren't putting any of what we have to good use, we are turning ourselves away from avenues that could connect us with more people in the world.  We could be turning ourselves away from many who want to hear the Gospel but can't just because of our selfishness.

On the other hand, we can put our gifts to good use, for God.  Of course, at first, it might be scary.  Sometimes that means investing our gifts into things that may or may not be successful.  It is always difficult to make an investment of any kind.  However, God's grace is there just for this reason.  God wants to help us, to make us successful, when we bring our offerings to God.  God the provider, is all loving and will help us in our endeavors.  All we need to do is to make the first step in the right direction.  Allow for this Lent to be a time for bringing your offerings to God, so that God can make them grow into greater things than we could ever have imagined.

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