Your life is important

reframing the story of the talents

The story of the talents is not about how you use your talents.

I grew up in churches where that story was used to get someone to show up and serve donuts for Sunday morning church.

I’m sorry for my language, but that’s bullshit.

The story about the talents is about your life.

You can spend your life trying to protect yourself from pain, failure, embarrassment, and rejection. You can bury your own life in the sand. But, in your attempt to protect yourself from certain kinds of discomfort, you will significantly increase a much deeper discomfort — a nagging feeling in your gut that you aren’t really living your life.

In the end, you may have prevented yourself from experiencing certain kinds of discomfort, but you will also have prevented yourself from experiencing life.

Maybe worse, you will have prevented the world from experiencing your life.

That is what the story of the talents is about. It’s important because your life is important.

Beware of those (and there are many) who use that story, or ones like it, to convince you to fill a role in their story.

You are a full story. A full life. You are an emanation of the infinite beauty of God. A ray of sunlight. You’re not here to make other rays look more bright. You’re here to shine.

You’re here to be fully you, which is not only enough… it is abundantly beautiful, powerful, resourceful, and valuable.

The reason the story of the talents is so important is because you are important.

To be clear, this is not to say that community is unimportant. In fact, community is the means for you to be fully who you are. And it is the means for the fullness of light which shines through you and the fullness of light which shines through me to combine as sunshine which can cover the earth!

This kind of community requires, and supports, each person to be whole. It is not a hierarchy where the role of some is to amplify others. We come together to support each — and every — other. Because each ray contains the fullness. You contain the fullness.

Ultimately, the only one responsible for you living your life is you. Don’t be surprised when others try to use you to make themselves appear brighter — that’s their own insecurity about their own light… and it’s none of your business. You, and only you, are responsible to invest the life you have been given.

Go all in. Invest it all. For your sake and for ours.

Your life is so important.