A Faithful Servant?

This morning I read Matthew 25, the theme of which is basically being ready for Christ's return and what it means to be faithful. I've read it lots of times, but this morning, reading the parable of the talents, I was struck, not by the end result of the servants' faithfulness/unfaithfulness, but by the fact that the master gives out unequal numbers of talents. He gives 5 to one, 2 to another and just 1 to the last guy. Each one is expected to be faithful with what he has, but the master doesn't expect the guy with 2 to end up with 10. He gives the exact same commendation to the servant who is wise with 2 and ends up with 4 as he gives to the servant who is wise with 5 and has 10 in the end, even though servant #2 ends up with less than servant #1 had in the beginning. And one can assume that had servant #3 been faithful to invest his 1 talent and ended with 2, he also would have heard "Well done, good and faithful servant." (A similar comment is made in Matthew 13:8, 23 in the parable of the sower when Jesus says that some of the good seeds produced "a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty", but all bear fruit and are "good seeds".)

Why is this important? It seems to me that many of us are far more preoccupied with how MUCH we do rather than how WELL we do. I know as a stay-at-home wife and mother, I often struggle with feeling ungodly, unfaithful and ineffective because I look at the people (often singles) around me who seem to be involved in like 43 different ministries and have seen 150 people come to Christ through their witness, and I think, "Man, all I do all day is care for my daughter and cook dinner and vacuum, and if I have time, maybe I make someone an outfit for their new baby. Compared to so-and-so, I'm hardly even a Christian! I'd better get involved in more ministry!" I think of being faithful to God in terms of being involved in lots of stuff and producing lots of visible fruit. But the real question in God's eyes is not "How much is she doing?" but "Is she being faithful to the tasks I have given her to do?" I need to be more concerned with faithfulness to the responsibilities God has already given me, not with how much He has given someone else to do.

What has God given me to do? I know without a doubt that I am called to be a wife to Nathan and a mother to Susanna. And there are a few other smaller things. The wife and mother things take a great deal of time and energy, which doesn't leave a lot of wiggle room to be responsibly involved in lots of other ministries. So the question I need to be asking first is not "What more can I do?" but "Am I being faithful to do my very best work (by God's grace) in my marriage and in parenting?" If in the end, God asks what I have done with the 2 talents he gave me, and I am shown to have been faithful with those, He will not rebuke me for not having as much as the one to whom He gave 5 talents, but will say to both of us equally, "Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master." (Matt. 25: 21,23). This is incredibly freeing!