Each of us is made to be a gift to world. We ourselves are God's gifts to each other, and the art and the beauty and the vision that he gives us are also God's gift to us. (One reason, it seems, that God creates some people who reject his salvation, is because the gift that their lives are to the rest of us, during the time that they are alive, is something that makes the world better.) (Side-side note: on the topic of each of us being more than our worst action. We know intuitively that the good that someone does is worth vastly more than even the most horrible instance of evil. And so the art of a Paul Gaugin may outweigh his disgusting personal habits.)
And so the art that flows through my hands is something that I am responsible to let flow downstream. It is a debt that I owe. It is not mine to hold in some personal resevoir.
It can still be truly mine while I do this. And it may be gift to only one person. It may be gift to nothing that I can visibly see. It may only serve toward the artistic compost for the next generation. But life giving way to more life is still a gift.
This is a debt that I owe more than money. Equally with service. It is service of another sort. Whoever I am, whoever God made me to be, he made me to be poured out.
