What are your 'gifts'?

Tweet

We have skills - 'gifts' - which we have achieved and honed through hard work and dedication to goals: skills which we usually feel justified in having reward from. We also have skills - talents which are things we seem to be naturally good at or things we have a natural inclination for (we may be good at singing or swimming or crosswords or dealing with people). Those may strongly influence our choices of what we study or work at but they are INNATE - faculties we seem to be born with. Another kind of 'gift' is the quality that we may ask for (wisdom, forbearance, strength in adversity, the ability to win or love, for example) ... things that we realise we are short on and ask [whoever] for more strength in those things. If you have ever asked for something like that, were your prayers answered? Yet another kind of 'gift' is the gift of something like money (when we needed it), a particular job (that we desired), or the fulfilment of a dream (perhaps something we had longed to do or an ideal partner or friend). Sometimes we don't consciously ask for such things but when they happen, we regard them as a gift [from heaven/God/the gods/fortune]. Jesus said, "Ask and it shall be given unto you". Does that, for you, imply that it only works if you love and follow Him or do you think of it is a universal rule? Jesus also has several parables about 'hiding our light [under a bushel = a pail or bucket or some such cover]' and of investing talents (or using them) in order to 'show a profit'. What do you think 'gifts' or 'talents' are? How should we regard them - as things which we were somehow given at birth, as something 'earned' by our (relative) goodness or worthiness, or as things which are there, freely, for us to take as we need them (or as we recognise our use for them)? I believe that there are two parts to this. First, that we have many talents or 'special skills' that we are born with. We may or may not recognise them until somebody else points out or we feel ourselves that we are especially good at something. Then, maybe, we act on that opinion and make that talent into something that benefits ourselves and others. Second, there are 'opportunites' which are flowing past us constantly. It takes a certain kind of mind to recognise the ones that are useful to us and to grab them and act on them as they fly past. It is the people who have that kind of mind who we perceive as 'lucky' or 'good businessmen' or 'entrpreneurial'. Do you think that it is 'good' to develop our sensibility or skills (as is certainly possible) to behave in the second way?