Parable of the Talents

A friend of mine recently shared a letter she had written to a friend in prison. In it she talked about the parable of the talents with kind of a twist added to it. She had done a lot of research on different words, their roots and meanings and came up with the idea that possibly the talent referred to was not monetary but could possibly refer to challenges we were sent to this life to deal with. (That is a way simplified, condensed version of the letter.) She had asked me for my thoughts on the letter. This was my reply.

At the very basic you are putting a new spin the the parable of the talents. Saying that we are all sent here with . . . abilities, disabilities, challenges, strengths and weaknesses. Our challenge in life is to make a life in spite of all of this. To meet the challenges head on, learn from them what we were sent here to learn. Possibly the subjects with the 5 talents and 2 talents did this, they learned, they grew, maybe even learned from their weaknesses thereby turning them into strengths. The subject with the one talent basically chose to bury his head in the sand. (my own thought coming up here) Maybe the one talent (challenge, trial ,struggle, etc) was so overwhelming to him he just didn't see a way to ever deal with it honorably. He couldn't deal with it within the confines and restrictions of his beliefs and culture, all he had been taught to be true. He obviously displeased his master. Would he have been better off to . . . explore other avenues? Would he have been judged just as harshly had he chosen to go outside his comfort zone, outside the box he was raised in, to magnify his talent. To learn to not only live with it but to thrive, be happy, to find ways to make life better for himself and those around him.

I stopped at this point. This wasn't the direction I had intended to take this. I thought about this for two days before I responded and pretty much had it all mapped out in my mind what I would say and the points I wanted to make. When I got to this point I couldn't remember what I had originally intended to say or the points I wanted to make. I still can't, and it was all so clear to me before I started to write. I am still a bit baffled.