The nobleman called in ten of his servants and gave them ten gold coins. One of them gained ten more, and then took charge of ten cities. I think we can deduce that this emphasis on ten should remind us of the Ten…
Right. Commandments. We have a lot of friends in this life. But none of them help us more than our dear friends, the Ten Commandments.
The parable takes a little turn: we only hear about the success or failure of three of the servants. The other seven go without further mention.
Now, the hero of the parable turned a 1000% profit on his original endowment. The second hero earned 500%. The hapless, timorous, self-centered goat of the parable earned a big goose-egg.
Can we safely assume that the other seven earned somewhere between nothing and 500%? Can we assume that they gave it their best shot? But, not having heroic qualities, they turned a respectable, but unremarkable, quiet profit?
I hope I can accomplish that much. I give credit to all of you heroes who can accomplish so much more. All of us have endowments of some kind, and we can turn a profit for the glory of God by loving our neighbors fearlessly. If it’s only a 50% or 75% profit, maybe we won’t wind up in charge of any cities. But at least we will have loved God with all that we had.
God wants us to prosper and is not opposed to profit but encourages it. Not very Socialistic. Why didn’t they just give it to the poor?