Saturday – 21st Week in Ordinary Time (revisited)
Gospel – Matthew 25:14-30
Building Our House
Building Our Home
An
elderly carpenter was ready to retire. He told his employer-contractor of his
plans to leave the house building business and live a more leisurely life with
his wife enjoying his extended family.
He would miss the paycheck, but he needed to retire. They could get by. The
contractor was sorry to see his good worker go and asked if he could build just
one more house as a personal favor. The carpenter said yes, but in time it was
easy to see that his heart was not in his work. He resorted to shoddy workmanship
and used inferior materials. It was an unfortunate way to end his career.
When the carpenter finished his work and the builder came to inspect the house,
the contractor handed the front-door key to the carpenter. "This is your
house," he said, "my gift to you."
What a shock! What a shame! If he had only known he was building his own house,
he would have done it all so differently. Now he had to live in the home he had
built none too well.
So it is with us. We build our lives in a distracted way, reacting rather than
acting, willing to put up less than the best. At important points we do not
give the job our best effort. Then with a shock we look at the situation we
have created and find that we are now living in the house we have built. If we
had realized that we would have done it differently.
Just
like that carpenter, every day we build our own house, we build our lives. Every day we hammer a nail, set up a wall,
paint a room. Sometimes we even make
plans, select a layout, choose options and build a brand-new home! And sometimes we don’t do a very good
job. We get lazy, we get forgetful and
distracted. And some days we just give
up, thinking we don’t have the will or the right tools for the job. Sometimes we doubt our abilities, our
TALENTS! And some days we just choose to
take the easy path and ignore our God-given gifts!
And
other times, we follow the path of those 2 servants who invested their talents
and gained a profit. They took a risk, a
leap of faith, and saw their talents increase.
And that first servant? He was
afraid to lose what he had! He gave in
to fear instead of faith.
The lesson is clear! In order to ‘share the Master’s joy”, we must use our God-given talents, not bury them in the sand. We must work diligently and faithfully and, yes, sometimes even take a risk in order to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Keep the faith! Share the faith!
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