Family Home Evening: New Year's Resolutions

We have family night every Monday evening. Last night we taught our boys about working on goals and personal improvement. We talked about what talents we are each good at and what we might want to work on this year. Angie felt that we should focus on improving something that we are already good at and really excel at it. Many other years we work on things we are weak at, trying to become better at something important. Both seem like good ideas to make a well-rounded person. I was actually pretty surprised at the suggestion, but it was a very great lesson and we set some really great goals.

Part of our lesson focused on saying what talents other family members have. It's great to praise others for what they bring to the family and to the world. Everyone feels special and important. It's also easy to see that we are all different. We are all created in the image of God who gave us these talents.

Then we taught the parable of the 10 talents to our boys. Jesus gave this parable to teach that we are all given different talents, or skills, and that we are responsible how we use them. We believe that we'll one day report to the Lord on how we used our talents. Here's the parable as we told it to our boys.

A rich man went on a trip for a long time. Before he left, he gave his servants some money. One servant was given five talents, the next two talents and the other one talent. The servants knew the master would come back and ask what they did with the money. The first servant worked really hard and earned another five talents. The second worked really hard and earned two more talents. The last guy was really nervous about losing his single talent and getting in trouble. He hid his talent so he could give it back when the master returned.

When the rich man returned from his trip, he asked his servants to report. Two men doubled what they had been given and were each blessed by their master. "Well done, good and faithful servant; thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things" (Matthew 25:23). The fearful servant gave the talent back to the master. He got quite the rude awakening. He thought he would be praised for not losing the money, but heard this reply. "Thou wicked and slothful servant" (Matthew 25:26).

Ouch.

The lesson we should learn from this parable is that we have all been born with different talents (and a different number of them). We will be blessed for using our talents and we should work at improving ourselves and earning/learning more talents. Imagine how amazing it will feel to hear these words from the Master, "Well done, good and faithful servant; thou has been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things" (Matthew 25:23).