“Well done, my good and faithful servant. Since you were faithful in small matters, I will give you great responsibilities. Come, share your master's joy.” Matthew 25:21
I have found myself today humming to the beat of this song by Will Reagan titled “Nothing I Hold Onto.” The reason is probably that we have been singing it for the past few weeks at the beginning of our Bible class, and it’s one of those songs that sticks with you, especially because you repeat the words, “there’s nothing I hold onto” eight times. My favorite verse, though, is “I give it all to you God, trusting that you’ll make something beautiful out of me.”
I have a tendency to become very attached to my possessions, and I tend to forget that nothing I have truly belongs to me. Everything I have belongs to God. I’m just borrowing it for a little while. Last Sunday’s reading reminded me of that. It was the parable of the talents from Matthew 25:14-30. A man entrusted his servants with his possessions while he went on a journey. One servant received five talents, another one two and a third received one talent. By the way, a talent in Jesus’ time was a very valuable coin, worth today about $28,000. The first two servants invested their master’s talents and when he returned they had doubled their value. But the third servant, buried the one talent, and when the master returned, he was furious with the servant because he had been lazy and wicked.
All I have, both possessions and abilities, belong to God. I cannot hold onto them and bury them like the lazy servant. When God comes knocking at my door, I will need to leave all my possessions behind. There’s nothing I can hold onto and take it with me to my next destination. And my talents need to be invested in God’s kingdom. If my talent was singing, I would need to sing for God. It is not. I was kicked out of the choir for singing completely out of tune. But I have other abilities, and I need to give them to God trusting that He will make something beautiful out of me. Of course, this requires faith. Faith is the ability to share in God’s creative power. Faith gives us the courage not to hide our talents. We all have talents. The question is: What are we going to do with them?
Sometimes we wish we could have other people’s talents, but that’s because we fail to see our own. We need to be grateful to God for the talents that He has entrusted to us. Maybe our talent is public speaking. We need to speak up and spread His message. If our talent is teaching then we need to teach others His Word. Some people are great at bringing comfort to others. Others are good with numbers. They can help people get their finances in order. There’s a lady I met recently that is teaching people with mental illness how to do a budget and manage their finances. And she does this for free.
One of my passions is writing. I wouldn’t call it a talent because I know I’m not great at it. If I was, my blog would have thousands of followers, and my book would have caught the attention of a publisher. Sometimes I get discouraged that nobody really cares about what I write. But when that happens, God sends me someone to let me know that something I wrote really helped her. And thus, I keep writing. Even if it only touches one person, then it was worth it. And I say this prayer: “I give all my thoughts and words to you God, trusting that You’ll make something beautiful out of them.”
Copyright © 2023 Christy Romero. All rights reserved.
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