His master replied, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master’s happiness!’
Matthew 25:21 (NIV)
Come and Share His Happiness
The complaints window at the city building shuts at noon for forty minutes, and there’s a plastic sign that flips over to say so. She’s good at this. She gets the address out of people before they’re done being angry, she writes down what happened in the box marked for what happened, and she gives back a yellow slip with a number on it so they can call later and find out nothing has moved.
Most of what comes to her window is real and small: a culvert, a dead tree, a dog, a light out on a corner where kids cross. Most people have been passed to three other numbers before they reach her, so they arrive ready for a fight, and she’s the one who takes it. None of it gets fixed by her. It goes into a system with four departments in it and comes out months later, or it doesn’t.
The man who’d been given five bags of gold has come back with ten, and the master calls him good and faithful and then invites him in. Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master’s happiness. The gold was the master’s before the servant ever touched it, and so is the happiness, and he’s opening it from the inside. Then the man with two bags comes up with two more.
It’s a relief to me that a man gets called faithful over a few things.
A lot of people read this story as a ladder and count themselves behind on it. The parable hands out the gold before it asks anyone for anything. The master calls him good and faithful over a small amount, and he says the same words to the servant with two bags. He opens up his own gladness after that, and the reward turns out to be his own company.
At five to twelve a man in a windbreaker comes up to the window and she reaches for a slip before he’s said a word. He tells her the sidewalk on Ninth got poured in October. “I’m not filing anything,” he says. “I wanted whoever wrote it down to know it got done.”
A Prayer to Remember
There’s work of mine this week nobody will mention, and I’d like to do it as though it were for you. Give me enough of your gladness to run the day on. And when I start comparing, turn me back toward the one who gave me the work in the first place.
In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen.
