Quotes about Gifts

We are not responsible for our endowments or natural abilities, but we are responsible for the strategic use of time.

We are so unbelievably blessed to have all the things we have, all the opportunities and ideas and people and tasks and interests and experiences and responsibilities - choosing to freak out about it all, rather than enjoying the living of our lives, is like throwing pearls before swine. Such a waste of such a glorious gift.

How is more money going to add value to your life? How will getting rich change who you're being in the world? Which of your gifts are you the most excited to share in exchange for money? Where do you feel you bring the most value to your fellow earthlings? How does it feel to share your biggest, badassiest self with others?

Come Christmas Eve, we usually go to my mom and dad's. Everybody brings one gift and then we play that game when we all steal it from each other. Some are really cool, others are useful and some are a bit out there.

On Sabbaths we are called to enjoy and delight in creation and its gifts. We are to slow down and pay attention to our food, smelling and tasting its riches. We are to take the time to see the beauty of a tree, a leaf, a flower, the sky that has been created with great care by our God. He has given us the ability to see, hear, taste, smell, and touch, that we might feast with our senses on the miraculousness of life.

God has shaped and crafted us internally—with a unique personality, thoughts, dreams, temperament, feelings, talents, gifts, and desires. He has planted "true seeds of self" inside of us. They make up the authentic "us." We are also deeply loved. We are a treasure.

In Exodus 31 God sanctifies a wide spectrum of artistic gifts by blessing "all kinds of craftsmanship.

The composer Igor Stravinsky wisely said, "I take no pride in my artistic talents; they are God-given and I see absolutely no reason to become puffed up over something that one has received."3

It is impossible, Bible in hand, to limit Christ's Church to one's own little community. It is everywhere, in all parts of the world; and whatever its external form, frequently changing, often impure, yet the gifts wherever received increase our riches.

My Best Friend is a person who will give me a book I have not read.

Dear young people: What will you leave to the next generation? Are you building your lives on firm foundations? Are you living in a way that opens a space for the Spirit in the midst of a world that wants to forget God, or even rejects him in the name of a falsely-conceived freedom? How are you using the gifts you have been given, the 'power' that the Holy Spirit is even now prepared to release within you?

Both sexes are equal. Both bear the image of God and are equal in their standing and in their spiritual gifts for service.