Article June 25, 1984 Issue

"For the master's use"

SUE S. DUNLAP

Every time we have an idle thought, we are among the unemployed. Every idle thought contributes to the problem of unemployment instead of helping to heal it.

In the parable of the talents in the Bible,^{See Matt. 25:14–30 .} Christ Jesus tells of a man about to travel to a distant country. Before his departure, he gave his servants different sums of money: five talents to one, two to another, and one to a third servant. Upon his return, he found that the first servant had used his money to make five more talents. The second servant had also doubled his money. The third servant, however, had buried his in the ground, so he was not allowed to keep even that one talent.

Our "talents" are God's qualities. Our work is to use these talents, to express them, to employ them. Goodness, integrity, joy, intelligence, are inherent in each of us because we are, in truth, made in God's image and likeness. Recognizing our actual spiritual selfhood as the image of God, we experience the coming of the Christ to consciousness. And as we discern these Godlike qualities and claim them as our own, we express them. But if we bury these talents in the ground, in materiality, they are lost. Mrs. Eddy writes in Science and Health, "In order to apprehend more, we must put into practice what we already know." And later in the paragraph she refers to Jesus' parable: "If 'faithful over a few things,' we shall be made rulers over many; but the one unused talent decays and is lost."^{Science and Health, p. 323.}