Saturday, August 30, 2014 - What are the talents that God has given you personally? How will you use them for his greater glory today?

To read the texts click on the texts: 1 Cor 1:26-31; Mt 25:14-30

A talent is a large sum of money, equal to the wages of a day labourer for fifteen years. (In Luke 19:12-28, the figures are much smaller. There are ten servants and each receives a “mina” which was only one sixtieth of a talent, and worth 100 denarii and translated “pound”) In Matthew, however, there are three servants and they receive different amounts. 

The first receives five, the second two, and the third, one. The first and the second use the money to earn similar amounts in return. The third, buries it in the ground. The point that the parable seems to make here is that we are called not merely to “passive waiting” or strict obedience to clear instructions, but active responsibility that take initiative and risk. Each must decide how to use what he/she has been given.

Often times, our understanding of Christianity has been one in which we are content if we have not done “any wrong”, but rarely ask whether we have done “any right”. We are content like the third servant to give only grudgingly, and not with the freedom that we are meant to have.