The third servant had a low view of his master — and perhaps even of what he had received in comparison to the other servants — so he made no effort to multiply his talent. An extended season of singleness can present a similar temptation. We can think God has given us very little, so we do nothing with it. Despising the “one talent” of singleness, we don’t invest it to have something to show when He returns.  We don’t try to multiply what He’s bestowed; we ungratefully just put it in a hole in the ground, and sit down to have a pity party.

Our lack of trust is revealed in our lack of investment in the Lord’s dearly beloved body — the church. When we view God as a generous master (for that is the truth), we will embrace what He’s given us and will look forward to giving Him an account of what we’ve done with His gift. We’ll tell Him of the many ways we invested it in the church and got a return. We’ll tell Him about the lessons we taught in children’s ministry. We’ll tell Him about the tithes and offerings we gave. We’ll tell Him about our prayers for the sick. We’ll tell Him about all the people in our small groups that we helped. We’ll tell Him about the plans we administrated and the meetings we attended that were for outreaches that impacted our communities. None of this will be news to Him, of course, but what a joyous account that will be  — if we trust Him.

The parable of the talents reveals to us the sad consequences of not trusting God when He’s been generous to us. Precisely because the Lord is not a “harsh taskmaster,” He fully understands that there is suffering in living with deferred hopes. We can read His compassion in Proverbs 13:12 — “Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a desire fulfilled is a tree of life.” God’s Word recognizes how difficult it is to live with unfulfilled expectations. But this proverb simply notes the obvious. We can find the remedy for our sick hearts in what I call the “chain of hope” in Romans 5:3-6: “[W]e rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly.” (Emphasis added.)  

As we persevere in doing good, we find the endurance to continue by the grace of God. This perseverance produces that noble character in us, and noble character produces hope. Hope doesn’t put us to shame because we are hoping in a God who has shed His blood for us and poured His love into our hearts!

What we find here in Romans is that years of waiting on God should produce more hope, not less. Is that an upside-down thought to you? It’s certainly not the way we would rationally think about hope. Waiting on God often shifts the content of our hope. As we wait, we see the many ways He proves His faithfulness to us — starting with the Cross and ending with the bright promise of heaven — and all the big and little mercies in between.  That vista of grace can’t help but dwarf the outstanding request we have before God!