The Messenger

To one he gave five talents of money, to another two talents, and to another one talent, each according to his ability. – Matthew 25:15 (NIV)

What’s a talent? If we have no concept of its purpose or knowledge of its meaning, the word “talent” in Jesus’ parable is of little value to us.

According to his book The Cure for the Common Life, Pastor and author Max Lucado says a talent represented the largest unit of accounting in the Greek currency – 10,000 denarii. According to Matthew 20:2 a denarius corresponded to a day’s fair wages. So if you made $30,000 and worked approximately 260 days out of the year you would be earning about $115 a day. A talent in your case is valued at 10,000 times $115 or $1,150,000. So in today’s currency, one to five talents would be a sizeable amount. We can now understand that having a few talents would have been a big deal back in Jesus’ day.

Today the word talent is no longer thought of in a monetary sense. According to the WordNet Electronic Lexical Database by Princeton University the word “talent” is defined as natural abilities or qualities, or a person who possesses an unusual innate ability in some field or activity. I find it interesting that, even though the definition has changed, “talent” still carries great value.

Just as the man is Jesus’ parable left and trusted his talents to his servants, Jesus left this earth and entrusted the Holy Spirit to provide you and I with God given talents.

A varying amount of money was given to each servant assuming each would use the money to the best of their ability. The master expected each of them to invest their share wisely.

God has blessed each of us in the same way with different kinds and varying levels of talents. Some of us might be very good at one thing; others may be skilful at several things. Individually, we have limited success but collectively we can do immeasurably more – so defines the body of Christ. As the apostle Paul said in 1 Corinthians 12:12 (NIV) The body is a unit, though it is made up of many parts; and though all its parts are many, they form one body. So it is with Christ.

Do you feel your abilities go unnoticed? Do you imagine your talents don’t matter? I know how you feel. Although I shouldn’t, I fall prey sometimes to Satan’s desire to see me fail at serving my Master and I think the same way. But God is omnipresent; continuously and simultaneously present throughout the whole of creation. Not a sparrow falls to earth that God doesn’t know. He surely sees everything we do every day. He loves what we do no matter how insignificant we think it is because it’s what He called you to do.

That’s when we need to remind ourselves; it’s not to our glory we work every day… but God’s. We are here to serve an audience of ONE.

If you stop and think about it, I think we will come to see that collectively, all the small deeds done in the name of Jesus exceed far and above what any one person or organization could ever accomplish. So don’t wait a minute longer… you’ve got talents, use them! – S.D.G.