To one he gave five talents; to another, two; to a third, one--
to each according to his ability.
The Lord entrusts gifts to us because he knows that we can put them to good use. But this does not happen automatically. No matter the gift we can choose to use it or to bury it. Using our gifts means confronting our fear because we make use of them in the marketplace of the world. We trade them to increase our profit. But in trading them there is a sense in which must take our hands off of them and trust in their innate value. We can't both hold tightly onto our gifts and use them as they are intended to be used.
When we encounter fear let us be like the one who received five talents. Let us go "[i]mmediately". It is in hesitation that fear has time to work on us. We need the firm purpose of the one given the five talents to ensure that we can imitate his ability to trade the large sum he was entrusted.
If you are not firm in faith, you will not be firm at all (see Isaiah 7:9).
You keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you, because he trusts in you (Isaiah 26:3).
If we don't have this firm purpose that is ready to act immediately on the Lord's will we end up hesitating. And hesitation in situations like this can be dangerous. The longer we delay our obedience the more time the enemy has to work on us. When we do not respond immediately we give fear room to paralyze us entirely.
so out of fear I went off and buried your talent in the ground.
This parable of the talents describes how we grow as we walk in faith but also how we can backslide if we chose to let fear dictate how we live. When we live by the faith we have our faith grows and we become rich. When we chose to believe fear instead of faith even the little faith we can be taken from us as fear seems to become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
The starting place for success in the use of our talents is a recognition of our identity. We are not merely fallen creatures, who failed before, and are doomed to fail again. We are instead a new creation in Christ, who is the light of the world. Without light the darkness of perils known and unknown make us fear. But if we remember who we are, fear loses it power over us.
For all of you are children of the light
and children of the day.
We are not of the night or of darkness.
A worthy wife is a value beyond pearls. To be such a person is possible when the many talents entrusted to her by the Lord are put to use. We see the world is constant in its attacks on the identity of one with such aspirations, though of course the world will attack any attempt to ground our identities in truth. The world attacks identity by saying that living what the Lord proposes is too hard, to burdensome, to difficult to sustain long term. It presents a counterproposal of fleeting alternatives such as charm and beauty. If we let fear dominate we will tend to treasure these fleeting things too much, because they can briefly help live up to what we think others expect of us. To avoid this temptation we must fear the LORD and not the world. He is the one who can help us to trust so deeply in the identity he has given that all of our actions issue from it immediately and continue unabated, sustained by constant faith.
Your wife shall be like a fruitful vine
in the recesses of your home;
Your children like olive plants
around your table.
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