“‘So I was afraid and went out and hid your talent in the ground. See, here is what belongs to you.’ His master replied, …’Take the talent from him and give it to the one who has the ten talents. For everyone who has will be given more, and he will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken from him.’”1
“Unamuno, the Spanish philosopher, tells about the Roman aqueduct at Segovia, in his native Spain. It was built in AD109 For eighteen hundred years, it carried cool water from the mountains to the hot and thirsty city. Nearly sixty generations of men drank from its flow.
“Then came another generation, a recent one, who said, ‘This aqueduct is so great a marvel that it ought to be preserved for our children, as a museum piece. We shall relieve it of its centuries-long labor.’ They did; they laid modern iron pipes. They gave the ancient bricks and mortar a reverent rest. And the aqueduct began to fall apart. The sun beating on the dry mortar caused it to crumble. The bricks and stone sagged and threatened to fall. What ages of service could not destroy idleness disintegrated.”2
God has given everyone at least one talent. While some people may have ten talents and others only one, we are all responsible for what we do with what we have been given. The important thing is to develop whatever talent/s we have and to use them wisely, and to invest them in things of eternal value, for we will reap what we sow.
Suggested prayer: “Dear God, thank you for the talent/s you have given to me. Please help me to know what my best talent/s is/are, to get the training I need to develop it/them, and find a place where I can use it/them to the best of my ability in the work of your Kingdom here on earth. Thank you for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully, in Jesus’ name, amen.”
1. Matthew 25:25-26, 28-29 (NIV).
2. Resource, Sept./ Oct., 1992, p. 4.
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