Still Saturday::on measuring gifts...

We would like God's ways to be like our ways, his judgments to be like our judgments. It is hard for us to understand that he lavishly gives enormous talents to people we would consider unworthy, that he chooses his artists with as calm a disregard of surface moral qualifications as he chooses his saints.

Often we forget that he has a special gift for each one of us because we tend to weigh and measure such gifts with the coin of the world's marketplace. The widow's mite was worth more than all the rich men's gold because it represented the focus of her life. Her poverty was rich because all she had belonged to the living Lord. 

Some unheard-of Elizabethan woman who led a life of selfless love may well on be brought before the throne of God ahead of Shakespeare, for such a person may be a greater force for good than someone on whom God's blessings seem to have dropped more generously.

Madeleine L'Engle, Walking on Water, Reflections on Faith and Art, p. 26