Do Better!

Depending on which half of the world you live in, it’ll be Sunday or Monday for you…

DUH! But I’m going to talk about Sunday’s gospel reading. Yes, I’m Catholic.

The Gospel was the parable of the talents.

It’s a pretty harsh Gospel too, if you think about it childishly.
It’s Matthew Chapter 25, verses 14-30 if you don’t know what it is.

What seems to be particularly harsh is:

“Does this mean the rich become richer and the poor poorer?”
No 🤦🏻‍♂️. Oy, that went over your head, didn’t it?

The lesson of the gospel-

didn’t have anything to do with the amount of “talents” the man gave to his servants. Nor the difference in amount.

It had to do with the fact that you have to do something with what you’re given.

this ties into my last blog post about The Boys Table.

The point of that post was that if you purport to have the “connections” and the supposed “power”, why can’t you use opportunities of conversation to brainstorm and come up with solutions to the problems you seem to know everything about? Instead of participating in directionless talk and truthiness.

I heard the same call from the gospel. I think it’s safe to say that if the servants who had more talents did the same as the ones who had the least, they would’ve been punished worse.

We’ve all had opportunities given to us.

I’ve heard of opportunities given to my grandparents on both sides that they didn’t take because of some stupid oversight they had. Had they taken them, our families would’ve taken a completely different trajectory. I probably wouldn’t have been born lololol.

But what if you don’t have opportunities? First of all, everyone has them, it’s only a matter of looking. Second, we all have gifts. Natural & acquired.

The more one is gifted, the more he CAN better his life. The lesser one is gifted, the lesser he can.

But note the word “can”. We don’t live deterministic lives. We have free will, whether you believe in a god or not. We have a choice. At the end of the day, if you refuse to do what you can with what you have, it and more will be taken from you. It may not seem like it now, but it’ll creep, slowly, like an evening’s darkness that you never notice outside because you’re too busy looking in.

This is a call to action, to me, to you, to everyone. Take hold of what you’ve been given and use it to do more. Even if it’s just one talent. Do Better!