How do you invest
the gifts God gives you?
In the Book of Proverbs, the worthy wife is deemed
an unfailing prize because she knows
how to use the gifts God has given her: wool and flax are worked with loving hands as she manipulates her
distaff and spindle. These gifts are put
to the Lord’s service: she is a woman who fears the Lord and will
receive a reward for her labors. The worthy
wife is open to God’s revelation in her life; she can achieve all that is
necessary, and more; like the psalmist in Psalm 128, she is open to God and
therefore finds blessing in the Lord: Blessed shall you be, and favored!
The parable Jesus
tells in Matthew’s Gospel reinforces this understanding of our gifts or
talents. The master in the parable entrusts
all three of his servants with a certain sum of money, but with vastly
different results. The first man is able
to double the sum he’s been given because he does not live from fear of
failure; rather, he is open to God, open to God’s gifts. He might be what Paul, in his letter to the
Thessalonians, calls a child of the light,
ready to serve God, alert and sober. The last man, however, is useless, burying his talents; he does
not know how to invest the gifts he has been given.
We don’t know all
of our talents; we discover them as they are revealed to us. But if we open to the gifts God has for us, then
all that we do will flow from our relationship with God, and we will be able to
serve both God and other. God entrusts
each of us with life, yet we can’t begin to plumb the depths of what that means
until we begin to share it, to invest it; only then will we bear fruit following the model of the good and faithful servant God calls us
to be.
This post is based
on Fr. Pat’s Scripture class.
Image source: Wordle
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