Gifts, Expectations, and Joy

The word “talent” may immediately suggest a gift for creating music, poetry, or visual arts. More thoughtful consideration includes such abilities as working well with people or responding effectively to certain spiritual challenges. This usage of the term developed from the Savior’s parable of the talents.

Weight of a Gift

Many of today’s readers underestimate the bounty of the wealthy master who went into a far country. In Hebrew measurement, a talent of silver consisted of 3,000 shekels (see Exodus 38:25­–26), equal in weight to just over 75 pounds. An article in the Ensign by Richard Tice explains that in New Testament usage the talent was worth what would be $4,080 today.

In the Savior’s parable of the talents (Matthew 25:15ff), three individuals received different measurements of talents: The first received five, the second received two, and the third received one. These gifts were based on their ability. The word translated in the parable  as “ability” is from the Greek dynamin, meaning “miraculous power.”

As he gave each a gift, the Lord may have made an investment in each person based on the individual’s unique strengths or divine power. Those who pity the one-talent servant may need to consider the value of the one talent in New Testament culture and circumstance. It would have represented over 19 years of 6-day-a-week labor (Tice). What an investment the Lord made in his least-talented servant!

Gifts and Expectations

Even if a single talent had been a gift of  a small amount, as in the similar parable of the pounds in Luke 19 (an equivalent of about $19 in Greek), we know how much the Savior could do with very little. Remember that from a young boy’s five loaves and two fishes he fed 5,000 hungry listeners (John 6:9).

Unfortunately, “[the servant] that had received one [talent] went and digged in the earth, and hid his lord’s money” (Matthew 25:18). This is probably the source of the metaphor “burying one’s talent.” Although in the time of the parable burying treasure in the earth was a common way of securing it when one needed to travel, this individual left it there. In “The Law of the Harvest,” Sterling W. Sill expanded on this parable of a gift lost in neglect:

The third servant’s] loss was not because he did anything wrong, but rather because his fear had prevented him [from] doing anything at all. Yet this is the process by which most of our blessings are lost . . . When one fails to use the muscles of his arm he loses his strength. . . . When we don’t develop our abilities, we lose our abilities. When the people in past ages have not honored the Priesthood, it has been taken from them. . . . Neither spiritual, mental nor physical talents develop while they are buried in the earth.

Gifts and Gratitude

The servant with the single talent, as well as the servant with the single pound, feared the wrath of a master who would expect accountability. Many of those neglecting spiritual, mental, and physical talents through the ages, and possibly those neglecting the Priesthood, have allowed various fears or discouraging circumstances to affect their behavior.

We know that the parables address all of Heavenly Father’s children. In the article “Rejoice!” Quentin L. Cook advised us to find joy in gratitude as we develop our talents.

The growth in our own talents is the best measure of personal progress. . . . [but] comparing blessings is almost certain to drive out joy. We cannot be grateful and envious at the same time. If we truly want to have the Spirit of the Lord and experience joy and happiness, we should rejoice in our blessings and be grateful.

Please understand that the Lord has made an investment in you! Each talent you are given can be a gift with miraculous power! Even if you feel like you have only five loaves or two fishes worth of ability, the Savior can help you to serve a multitude.