In Matthew 25, we read the Parable of the Talents. One servant is given five talents and through his hard work and good fortune, he is able to turn that five talents into ten. One servant is given two talents and also is able to double his talents. The third servant is too afraid to try developing his talent. Maybe his fear came from the fact that he had only one talent. If he took that talent and invested it into some enterprise that failed, he would have nothing to fall back on. Maybe he saw the success of his fellow servants and rightly or wrongly assumed that they were just inherently better or luckier than he was, or the fact that they had been given more meant that their lord trusted them more than him. But what would have happened if the servant with one talent had been brave and worked hard and trusted in providence and by the time that the Lord came to check on him, he had only managed to scrape together one and a half talents out of his initial investment? Would the Lord have accused the servant of laziness or foolishness or weakness of character because he hadn’t managed to double his talent like his fellow servants had done? Or would the Lord have seen his progress and told him the same thing he told the others? “Well done, thou good and faithful servant: thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things: enter thou into the joy of thy lord.” (Matthew 25:21). The Lord honored the offering of the widow with her two mites. He healed the woman who could only bring herself to touch the hem of his robe. It is not our successes but our efforts that the Lord is interested in. He doesn’t care if we grow our talents ten times or by only ten percent, just as long as we are growing. We need to stop beating ourselves up if we are not doubling our talents as fast as we think we ought to. We also do not need to assume that just because we tried something and failed and lost some of the talent that the Lord blessed us with, that this somehow means we have permanently wrecked our chances to be considered a good and faithful servant. The Lord has plenty of talents. If we are anxiously engaged in a good cause and use up all of the talents that He has given us, then we can turn back to Him and plead for another opportunity, and as long as we are sincere in our desires and willing to exercise our faith and put in the work, He will give us talent after talent. I hope that whether we’ve managed to make five talents or only half a talent, we will not give up hope of someday being called a good and faithful servant.
