I’ve had reason to wonder lately whether there is a ceiling to my talent and (shudder) whether I have reached it.<\/p>\n
It wasn’t during my most optimistic week. I was trying new things and not meeting joyous success. Maybe you can relate.<\/p>\n
From a more optimistic perspective, the ceiling is a myth. Our development is open-ended. How far we take it is only limited by time, how much time we put into it, and finally our time ending.<\/p>\n
That’s the positive side.<\/p>\n
On the other side, there are limits, starting with the inherent quantity of our gifting at birth.<\/p>\n
It’s in Jesus’ parable of the talents that I find both truths: \u201climits\u201d and \u201cnon-limits.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n You remember the story. Before going away the master gave out talents; to one he gave five, to another two, to the third, one.<\/p>\n The first two doubled the investments and were rewarded for their faithfulness. By inference, so could have the third but, making excuses, didn’t.<\/p>\n One of his excuses could have been, \u201cI sensed there was a ceiling.\u201d<\/p>\n The fact is, maybe there was.<\/p>\n Note the small phrase at the beginning of the story where the master divvied out the talents “according to their abilities.”<\/em><\/p>\n Ceilings! The one-talent person would never be able to perform at the level of the two-talent person, or the two at the level of the five.<\/p>\n On the other hand, neither would they be judged against the other person, but only against their own potential.<\/p>\n And likely, with enough time, even that potential would never be reached.<\/p>\n In other words, even if there are ceilings, it doesn’t matter.\u00a0There’s always more to explore and do within the confines of our own room.<\/p>\n There’s still plenty of headroom.<\/p>\n So, back to work.<\/p>\n You too.<\/p>\n ______________ It’s a question about life, whether there is a ceiling to our abilities . . . and whether it matters. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hyattmoore.com\/blank-slate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7220"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hyattmoore.com\/blank-slate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hyattmoore.com\/blank-slate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hyattmoore.com\/blank-slate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hyattmoore.com\/blank-slate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7220"}],"version-history":[{"count":26,"href":"https:\/\/www.hyattmoore.com\/blank-slate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7220\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10702,"href":"https:\/\/www.hyattmoore.com\/blank-slate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7220\/revisions\/10702"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hyattmoore.com\/blank-slate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7220"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hyattmoore.com\/blank-slate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7220"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hyattmoore.com\/blank-slate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7220"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nMatthew 25:14-30<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"