[This reflection was published in the weekly news bulletin of Horley Baptist Church, 13/February/2022]
Recently a friend at Thursday Group said that she didn’t feel that she was doing anything to serve the Lord; especially when she thought about what other Christians were doing because they were more able and gifted than her. I sympathised with her feeling this way, but I shared with her the many things she did for the Lord that others wouldn’t notice.
The parable of the talents that Jesus told came into my mind [Matt. 25:14-30], and I said how it was important that we use the talents we are given by Jesus even if we feel they are little compared with others, which she found helpful.
It may be in the parable that the servant with one talent thought it wasn’t worth using it because the others had so many more talents to use, and so he buried his talent – he just didn’t use it.
I thought afterwards that this was emphasised by the true story that Jesus told about how He watched people giving large sums of money for God’s work in the temple. He then saw a poor widow insignificantly give two small coins as her gift, following which He said a most amazing thing.
“I tell you the truth, this poor widow has put in more than all the others. All these people gave their gifts out of their wealth; but she out of her poverty put in all she had to live on.” [Luke 21:3-5]
Jesus wasn’t saying that the rich people were wrong to give what they did, but that the widow gave much more because it was all that she had. This is a challenge to each one of us, because we may feel that we can’t do anything compared with what we see other friends doing in the church. But that’s not true. We must take actions for the Lord in the church and in the world around us to the utmost of our abilities strengthened by His Holy Spirit. If we don’t do this we are burying our talents.
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Contributed by Michael Goble; © the Author
