A Nagging Question Bites the Dust

For most of us, Jesus' parable of the talents in Matthew 25 is quite familiar. A master is leaving on a journey and calls to himself his slaves. The three appear, and he entrusts his possessions to them. The possessions are not divided up equally, but actually according to each one's ability. The first receives five talents; the second receives two talents; and the third slave receives one.

Upon the master's return, he settles accounts with each one. The first two slaves have each doubled what they had been entrusted. To each of theses slaves the master responds, "Well done, good and faithful slave; you were faithful with a few things, I will put you in charge of many things, enter into the joy of your master." The third slave confesses his fear of the master, so he simply went and hid his master's talent and now proudly returns it to him. The master's response to this third slave is quite different from the first two slaves. The master begins his response to this slave with, "You wicked, lazy slave...."

Now, I can tell that the third slave did something different from the first two. I can also conclude from the parable that what the third slave did(or not did) was wrong, even eternally wrong.

Even though there is a lot that I can understand about this parable, there still remains a nagging, bothering question. My question is, and I have actually had it for a long time, "Show me a 'picture' of what that third slave did?" In other words, "What does '...going away and hiding your talent in the ground' looks like?"

Well, last week, I was shown 'the picture'.

Last Friday, April 22nd was also Earth Day. The company I now work for strongly encourages daily practices to become a GREEN-er place. One challenge set before us this past week was to bring in, for recycling purposes, as many plastic shopping bags as possible. As incentive, the participants with the highest number of bags donated would be rewarded.

I actually placed third, and received a nice prize. The co-worker who contributed the most brought in 147 plastic bags for the Grand Prize.

'The picture', however, began to be revealed to me when another co-worker told me that he could have won, because he had 200 plastic bags crammed into the cabinet beneath his kitchen sink. In the next ten to fifteen minutes, he proceeded to repeat this two more times. "My wife and I have 200 of these plastic bags underneath my kitchen sink." "I just did not bring them in." "If I would have, I would have won first prize."

He had the means;
He was given an opportunity;
He simply did not follow through.

Now I realize that saving and contributing plastic shopping bags to a company project is not an eternal matter. However, the principle established by this mindset, this way of thinking, and this lack of action is very, very dangerous according to this parable.

The point of the parable is this:

The slave had been given the means according to his ability;
Unlike the other two slaves, the third slave could not see the opportunities;
Therefore, his means(talent) remained buried and hidden.

If I, first, do not recognize and understand what my God-given talents and abilities are; and secondly, if I do not fully understand that God will send opportunities in my path to use those given talents and abilities; and finally, if I do not faithfully step into those opportunities that come my way; then I too have taken away my God-given talents and abilities and hidden them in the ground!

And, those 200 plastic shopping bags will remain 'buried' inside that cabinet until....?


Thank you Father for using something as simple as plastic shopping bags to answer a nagging question of mine!