Attending readings like tonight's always bring up all sorts of questions for me:
If I've been endowed with any sort of talent (literary, artistic, or otherwise), am I really exercising it? Am I cultivating it? Trying to improve that skill in me? Or do I refuse to try to create? Out of a fear of failure, out of my feeble attempts to share my heart, out of fear my heart will be rejected? And, while I certainly appreciate the talent all of my friends share, and applaud and congratulate them for it, what does talent mean? How did God decide to divy up talents, and gifts, natural, and spiritual? Just because I perceive myself as having little talent, does that mean that God loves me less than those He has endowed with greater gifts, who are, somehow, inherently better than me? Who have greater goodness, inner resources, or acuity of perception? I'll never quite understand. I have to reassure myself with the words of 1 Corinthians 12
22On the contrary, those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, 23and the parts that we think are less honorable we treat with special honor. And the parts that are unpresentable are treated with special modesty, 24while our presentable parts need no special treatment. But God has combined the members of the body and has given greater honor to the parts that lacked it, 25so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other. 26If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it.

Hmm. Is my desire, in wanting greater talent, to bring glory to God, or to prove my worth in His sight? Is it a way for me to shirk the often difficult work of creating? Am I making excuses for not caring, for not living?

A good, rather wise friend of mine asked what the point would be of doing anything if someone was always better at it than someone else? And that very obvious question begs an answer.
One day, I will be called to account on my use of my talents. I must exercise them in some way, some probably very insignificant way for the work of His Kingdom. Why do I feel as if I must deny what God has created me to be, and how He takes pleasure in things I enjoy and excel at doing? Why must I denigrate myself, and make myself invisible, so that the more talented can always take the stage? I do not want to glorify myself; I must continually remind myself that any good thing I am or have is only because of the creative work of God in His design of me, and in His presence in my daily life.