Perspective for April 2025
A Monthly Inspirational Viewpoint of Life’s Journeys with Sonia Wignall.
Episode Thirty Three
The Parable of the Talents, (Matthew 25:14–30),is a Biblical story of a business owner going on a journey and leaving his staff in charge to both manage the business in his absence, and invest the monetary gifts given to each of them before he left.
On face value, the story sounds transactional, but the context can be applied to any area of our lives.
Upon his return, the question then and now, as God speaks to us is “what have you done with what I have given you?”
Wow, excuse me, is God really saying to his people, “what have you done?” Really God? Is it necessary for us to have an answer? Are you really expecting us to do something?
What exactly did you give us? What are you expecting?
For many people this would be the standard question because they cannot see, discern, or honor, what they have been given. My dad used to call them “dead people with eyes. In other words their soul is not awake spiritually to receive understanding, or see the value in what they have been given.
God says, he knew us before we were even in our mother’s womb. He ordained us and sent us into the world with purpose. Yet many of us drift for years, landing by default in places we should not be. Never getting a revelation of our “Gifts or purpose.”
We are given one powerful gift, from that gift, like a tree, roots develop. We become stable. Our branches begin stretching out representing the many other sub-gifts within us. Over time, we begin to manifest, and come into the fullness of who we were created to be.
We must first however recognize that one gift and help our children recognize theirs also.
Helping our children recognize their “one gift”, or as some would say, their “super power” is a gift unto itself. We as parents have within us, the power to speak life and truth into our children, love them through words and deeds, then guide them in their journey of reconciliation and self-realization from one stage of life to another.
Many years ago I came across a book by Marian Wright Edelman, the Founder and President of the Children’s Defense Fund,an advocacy organization for children.
The book’s title is “The measure of our success: a letter to my children and yours,” It contains life lessons she learned along the way. Although I was not a parent at the time, the book title and content spoke to my spirit. I thought it was both beautiful and extraordinarily thoughtful for a mother to write these letters of love and wisdom to her children.
Although I never received a specific letter from my dad, (who was a single parent at that time), throughout my early life journey, especially while I was in college, he would write me small notes of wisdom and encouragement. Today I do the same for my son.
The Enotes summary of Marian’s book states that “she believes that we as adults are responsible — especially parents, educators, and religious leaders — to ensure that children “hear what we have learned from the lessons of life and. . .Hear over and over that we love them and that they are not alone.” In THE MEASURE OF OUR SUCCESS, Edelman offers the fruits of her own learning. Character, self-discipline, determination, attitude, and service are the substance of life, she says, and race and gender are only “shadows.” She especially emphasizes service, calling it “the rent we pay for living.”
In a recent podcast, one of the panelists said that power lies, not in what we know, but in what we do with what we know, or what we have.
Hence back to the Bible and the Parable of the Talents, as God asks us the question: “What have you done with what I have given you? What have you done with the children, the education, the life, the purpose, the gifts…, that I have given you?.
Or better yet, where is the “return” on God’s investment in us? We should all have an answer ready and available to give.
Are we working on the return of his investment in us, or have we expended or squandered the gifts he has given us on ourselves? Have we used the gifts he has given us to serve, influence, help, guide, love and change the lives of others and that of our children?
What seeds have we sown into the foundation of our children’s future
Like George Washington Carver, Corrie Ten Boom, Nelson Mandela, Mother Theresa, Ben Carson, Martha Stewart, Harriet Tubman and many others, we too have that one powerful gift manifesting through the force and humility of our experience. It is a gift given to us with the expectation and mandate to use, share and give back with a profitable return.
George Washington Carver was born a slave, Guided by God, in the 1900’s he used his gift of understanding, expanded his knowledge, and created 300 ways to use the peanut. He also became a prolifc artist, college educator, chemist, botanist. He turned the peanut into a crop that helped save the South’s farming economy.
Read More:
https://www.sciencing.com/list-things-dr-george-carver-invented-peanuts-5896/ during a time of
Sonia M. Wignall
Sonia M. Wignall is Co-Founder & Board Chair, Diaspora Global Foundation. www.leanintostem.org. She is also a Cultural and Lifestyle Writer. Her articles and monthly column “Perspective” can be found on Diaspora Digital News.
***Note: “I do not give permission for my writings to be used for AI purposes or content, unless my name is shown and the reference to my work is clear. My work is not AI written”. SMW