Full Performance

The Parable of the Talents is more than a parable, it is a law of life that shapes a person to the size and capacity that he sets for himself by his willingness or unwillingness to use the gifts and opportunities God has given. There are those who slow down, who refuse to work as well as they can, who refuse to produce, refuse to perform as fully as they can. But this is a self-defeating process by which we limit and reduce ourselves, and become less than we could. But there is another side of this subject: some are held back by the attitudes or decisions of others⎯as for example in the learning process, when someone decides that all students should move at the same pace. It isn’t easy for the teacher to change the pattern or the pace for all the differences in individual aptitudes. But if we reconcile ourselves to say that since we can’t speed up the slow ones we must slow down the fast ones, the waste and frustration cannot be calculated. All have their gifts, their strengths, their weaknesses, their different abilities and capacities, and progress comes with freedom to move forward and not from holding back. Some would slow down thinking; some would slow down working; some would seem to want to slow down any process of improvement. But if people hadn’t been permitted to use their free and forward-moving powers, life would be much less. Every man should give full measure, and so receive, and not withhold himself or slow down his thought, his abilities, his full powers of performance. Every man should become the best he can become, and make what he can make, and do what he can do. Every child, every student should be permitted to move forward freely, constructively, to the best of his ability. And he who holds back in his learning, in his teaching, in serving, in doing, will, like the unprofitable servant, lose much he might have had. God help us to go ahead in freedom, with the gifts and talents and opportunities He has given, and not be less than the best we can become.