I’ve been meditating on a passage from the Bible:
What have you that you did not receive? If then you received it, why do you boast as if it were not a gift? (1 Corinthians 4.1; RSV)
It occurred to me that most of my own vices come from the desire to have something that is my own, something that I have accomplished by my own power or that I have made for myself. But since my very life is a gift, and my ability to do anything at all – to think or to work with my hands, to say nothing of the availability of the internet or even of language – all this is something given to me, not something I have made or could have made on my own, then I have no grounds for claiming anything in the world as entirely my own.
I have contributed to many good things. I have used my gifts well (and badly too, but that’s another post). But none of it is mine in the sense that I desire it to be. And that’s because my desire is out of step with reality.
Instead, it is mine as a gift to me. It is mine as something I have received, whether from my parents or from my friends or from the society that I live in or from God. So, instead of claiming it as my own, I will practice being grateful for it. After all, that’s the proper attitude toward a gift.



