Mon, Jan 28
... Someday I'll get that camera...
I have made an incredibly momentous decision. I have decided that, since I need a new camera quite desperately, and since I am quite poor, I will save up my air miles until I can get one. Unfortunately, I only have 55 Air Miles, and a camera "costs" at least 700, depending on how nice of a camera I want. I've got a ways to go.
I lead such an entertaining life. Today, after I took my 45 minute catnap, I went to work and vacuumed. How exciting for me! Then I came home, watched a rerun of "Home Improvement," read some of my textbook, and am now sitting in front of my computer, writing boring drivel.
Last night, Daryl was talking about spiritual gifts, and about how God gifts everyone who has his Spirit. It's not an exclusive club. Anyways, I've thought about this before, but he brought it up again last night. Once you have the Spirit, it can't be taken away, and once you have him, you're given gifts, whichever they may be. Besides that, though, I've always wondered if your gifts can change. If God gives you certain gifts at one point in life, and then when you were able/ready/willing/mature enough, you're given a different gift.
Maybe it's not so much that you're given different gifts; maybe all it is is that the gifts are there, you just can't utilize them right away. Or maybe God does give you different gifts at different points in life. One example that comes to mind... when I was younger, I never would have said that my spiritual gift was hospitality. As I've gotten older, though, that's something that has developed. It wasn't something that could really be fully realized while I lived under my parents' rules and their restrictions for "company" or whatever, but since I've moved out, I'm seeing it come into its own more and more.
That's kind of a minor example, but what about someone with, say, gifts of prophecy, or healing, or something like that? Would God give them one gift as a less mature Christian, and then as they became more mature and more able to handle the responsibility that goes along with having a different gift, that gift is given later?
Or is it that all of the gifts that will ever be there are there at the beginning--as soon as the Holy Spirit is there--and the times when they're manifested are in proportion to faith and maturity, but the potential for them is there all along? I guess it doesn't really make that much of a difference. In one case, God knows when you're mature and ready to handle a "greater" gift; in the other, the gift is only revealed when you're ready for it to be. The timing would be the same, I guess. It's just an interesting thing to ponder.
infinite || abyss
posted at 9:19 p.m.
