The use of our natural or inborn gifts–whatever they may be–engage our joy, creativity and energy. Skills, on the other hand, are learned and deliberately developed. Skills, like gifts, can be absolutely anything, since one person’s skill could be another person’s gift.
Our inner resources can become drained when we exercise our skills too often; our internal reservoirs get emptied. But when we use our gifts more than our skills, we feel alive and energized; our inner resources seem boundless and constantly refilled. When we use our gifts more than our skills, we don’t burn out easily because in using our gifts, we are following God’s call. We are gratefully using the gifts given us by God to be who we are called to be, rather than trying to be something that we are not.
This message is adapted from the resource “Listening to God: A Guide to Discernment” written by Debra Farrington. Today we remember Boniface, bishop of Mainz, missionary to Germany, martyr, who died in 754.
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