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This morning the Lenten devotional took me to Matthew 25:14-30, the parable about a rich man going on a trip and leaving his money in the care of three of his servants.  To the first he gave five bags of gold, to the second he gave two bags of gold, and to the third he gave one bag of gold.  After some time, the man returned to settle accounts with his servants.  The servant that was given five bags of gold had ten bags for his master, the one that was given two bags had four bags for his master.  The master was pleased with these two servants, telling them they had done well and been faithful and rewarded them.  The third servant had hidden away the one bag of gold and had not gained any more, he returned the one bag to his master.  The rich man was furious and said:  ‘You wicked, lazy servant! So you knew that I harvest where I have not sown and gather where I have not scattered seed?  Well then, you should have put my money on deposit with the bankers, so that when I returned I would have received it back with interest.

I struggle with parables.  I will admit, I read between the lines when I shouldn’t and when I should I can’t see anything there.  A parable is a simple story used to illustrate a moral or spiritual lesson.  With this particular parable, I could not understand why he was angry with the servant that buried the bag of gold.  He made sure it wouldn’t be stolen or lost.  The others had “invested” their bags and luckily they increased.  Granted, they must have invested them wisely to have them double in size, but I still looked at it as a risk.  In going to the study note I found this:  ‘The bags of gold represent any kind of resource we are given. God gives us time, gifts, and other resources according to our abilities, and he expects us to invest them wisely until he returns. We are responsible to use well what God has given us. The issue is not how much we have but how well we use what we have.’

Some versions refer to the gold as “talents”.  The author of the devotional went on to say that a single talent is worth over sixteen years of income.  That’s a lot of money!  This led me to do a google search where I found this definition:  tal·ent  noun  1. natural aptitude or skill   2. a former weight and unit of currency, used especially by ancient Romans and Greeks. 

I then found myself pondering the first definition.  As it takes several members to make up one body, it takes several talents to accomplish everything that needs to be done.  I’ve often wished I had a musical talent.  I wasn’t given the opportunity at a young age to learn to play a musical instrument, and as an adult have never taken the first step needed to see if I even had that talent.  Although I love to sing,  I can’t carry a tune in a bucket.  Our choir director once told me that when the sound gets to heaven, it’s beautiful in God’s ears.  I’m not convinced.

God gives us our skills too, our talents, as in the first definition.  Those that have a musical talent can share the news about God through music.  All you have to do is sit in a pew on Sunday morning and hear praise from the choir, tune in to a Christian radio station and hear God’s loved expressed.  People with the ability to speak in large crowds can spread the good news through ministry or evangelism.  People who can teach guide us through Bible studies, and people who can write have books published, movie scripts sold, or even ………………………… write blogs!!!

Deuteronomy 18 tells us “You shall therefore impress these words of mine on your heart and on your soul; and you shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontals on your forehead.  You shall teach them to your sons, talking of them when you sit in your house and when you walk along the road and when you lie down and when you rise up. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates”  

As my pondering continued, I thought about membership in our churches declining.  Social media and the internet have no lack of people sharing their opinions; most of which are not true, they are hurtful, critical, or even degrading.  Perhaps we should be flooding those areas with the good news, and stop giving people reasons to be angry.  We need to use our words for good in the places where the people are if you can’t get them in that pew.  It’s our responsibility to keep trying to get the word out, not bury it in the realms of our own mind.  I’m confident my need to ponder is God’s way of keeping my mind from the pain of this secular world.