Happiness

Posted: November 30th, 2010   Category: christian

Happiness is a highly sought after, uniquely human emotion. The Parable of the Talents is a 2000 year old story with a remarkable contemporary application, the recipe for happiness. In fact, this important parable (Matthew 25:14-30), is one of only five references in the entire bible and the only one in the New Testament (NIV) specifically addressing “happiness.”

In this story told by Jesus, Talents refer to something of great value.  In the metaphoric story, God is the master and we are the servants. The story uses a monetary value (a Talent was worth about $1,000 by today’s standard). Remarkably, 2000 years later, the greatest value that each of us still carry around with us, is conveyed by that same word. Our Talents are specialized abilities of much greater worth than money, which are provided to us by God. The Master in the parable, entrusted each of three servants with a different number of Talents, and then he left on a long journey. When he returned he checked back with his servants to hear what they had done with their Talents. Two of the three had used their entrusted Talents to better serve their master’s interests, making him very “happy”, and they in turn were blessed to share in the rewards of His happiness. The third servant, thought only of hiding his entrusted Talent, to preserve it’s value and not risk his master’s anger should it be lost or wasted. This made the master unhappy, for the Talent had yielded no value, served no good purpose and in no way furthered the interests of either the master, servant or anyone else. There was no happiness to be shared with the third servant.

God entrusts each of us with one or more Talents. All Talents are of great value, but only when used to advance the interests of the giver. To enjoy happiness, we must selflessly employ our natural endowments, those unique abilities of superior quality that God entrusted unto each of us. God already handed us the ingredients and the recipe for happiness, all we need to do is combine and use them, and He in turn he will share His happiness with us (Ecclesiastes 2:26). The only ways to waste Talents are to ignore, hide or use them selfishly.

JC CALKINS with COMMON SENSE 4 UNCOMMON PEOPLE

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