Trade for More

Trade for More

A young teacher in an underfunded school had one bag of gold: a gift for storytelling and a genuine love for her students. She used it every single day. Former students wrote to her decades later: 'You made us believe we could learn.' She won no prizes. She worked at the same school for forty years. At her retirement celebration, seven of her former students — now doctors, engineers, teachers, and artists — spoke. The multiplied return on one bag of gold, invested faithfully, was immeasurable. She had traded her one talent for the thirty-year yield that no one had calculated when she started.

The parable of the talents is calibrated by ability from the beginning: 'each according to his ability.' The master does not expect the one-talent servant to produce five; he expects the one-talent servant to trade with what he has. The sin of the third servant was not inadequate production — it was non-investment: he buried what was given rather than putting it to work. Whatever you have been given — however little it seems — is meant to be invested. The return on a well-used small gift often exceeds the return on a neglected large one. Your one talent, faithfully traded, is worth more than five talents buried in the ground.