Sunday, November 16, 2014

What the Servant with Two Talents Shows Us

Jesus gives us many lessons through the Parable of Talents.

He teaches us about servitude, expectations, judgement and hard work.  

But it dawned on me this weekend that we normally spend most of our reflections thinking about the superstar servant that delivered 10 talents back to his master, and the poor sap that only returned the one he was given.  

We never talk about the middle servant.

But he teaches us an important lesson about God.  

The middle servant only delivers his master 2 talents, versus 5 for his counterpart.  On a value basis, that is much less. 

But on a percentage basis it is exactly the same 100% return!  And if you notice, the master gives the exact same praise to him as he does the servant that returns 5 talents.   

The master did not give them all the same amount of talents (money) just as God does not give us all the same amount of talent (ability, skills, strengths, etc).  

But just like the master in the parable, God does not expect us to return the same total value to Him.  He does, however, expect us to deliver the most that we can based on what we were given.  

As a society, however, we tend to gauge how we are doing by comparing ourselves to others.  Are we going to church more than others?  Do we do more volunteer work than others?  Have we given as much as others?

But the middle servant reminds us that we should instead be determining if we are giving God a 100% return on what He has given us.

God Bless you.

1 comment:

Victor S E Moubarak said...

You make some very good points here, Michael. The master gave 5, 2 and 1 talent to the servants according to their ability. Some of us are good at sports, singing, dancing and so on; whilst others have only one skill, or no particular skill at all. We should all give our best according to out ability.

Thank you for the humourous comment you made on my Blog. God bless you always and reward your many talents.