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Credit where credit's due

If you’ve grown up in church, you may have had a situation similar to mine occur at least once: someone gets up to sing a special. Occasionally afterwards you wonder to yourself who ever told this person they should be singing in public, but you keep the comment to yourself. In the words of Tim Hawkin, a Christian comedian, you want to tell the person who probably is claiming that “God gave me this song” that maybe you should give it back. But in a more positive light, you step into a church service where the individual singing the special is truly blessed by God and obviously put a lot of hard work into developing their gift. And if you’ve been around “church people” enough, there’s usually the one talented special singer who humbly responds to every compliment with “I can’t take any credit. I owe it all to God.”

While I’m not downplaying the important of giving credit where credit’s due and being aware that ultimately everything we have is from God (James 1:17), we are individually responsible for what we do with what God gives us. Stewardship is a very biblical principle and I believe it also applies to humbly taking credit for the hard work we put into whatever we do in life. God ultimately and indirectly gives us everything we have in life, but we are directly responsible for how we make use of those things (Col. 3: 22-24). Food for thought.

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