"Inception"- The power of an idea

"Then the man who had received the one talent came. 'Master,' he said, 'I knew that you are a hard man, harvesting where you have not sown and gathering where you have not scattered seed. So I was afraid and went out and hid your talent in the ground. See, here is what belongs to you.' "His master replied, 'You wicked, lazy servant!..." (Matthew 25:22-26a)

I have not written for about a week now, because I am in some in depth learning session:-) I spend every waking hour that I am not at work trying to grasp what a walk in holiness means. You might think "that's a bit extreme", but for me it's not, because ever since I understood that holiness is walking in a way that pleases God and brings Him delight, I want to walk that way every moment of my life. You see, God loves words, He uses them a lot to communicate. He could have left us anything to guide us in our journey, but He left us a book:-) At the same time however, He knows that we are fickle creatures and we proved to Him time and time again that hardly ever can He trust our words. So the way to show God my love is by what I do not what I say and I want Him to know that I love Him...

One of the things I keep coming back to so far, is the Parable of the Talents in Matthew 25. Again very famous parable, tells the story of a rich man going away and leaving three of his servants with some coins to invest them. He gives the first one 5, the second one 2 and the third one 1 coin. The first one "went at once", the parable says, and invested the coins bringing double the profit. The second one did the same and obtained four coins instead. The third one went and buried his coin. "After a long time", the master comes back and summons his servants. He commends the first two for the good job they have done and rewards them. But when he gets to the third he has a surprise, his servant pretty much waisted all that time doing nothing with his coin. Why?

That's a good question and when I realised the answer it scarred me how much I saw myself in the third servant. Because we heard this parable so many times, we tend to read it out of habit and not pay attention to details such as:

The first servant "went at once" and did his best. He acted right way, as if his master would have come tomorrow. Or the fact that the master came back "after a long time" giving the servants equal opportunity to do something about what has been entrusted to them.
But what I missed the most in reading this parable before, was the reasons, the third servant didn't do anything about his coin. He tells the master "I knew you were a hard man" and "I was afraid"

Why aren't we doing something with what has been entrusted to us? We either stopped expecting Him with excitement, as if He would come tomorrow or we see His grace which gives us time as delay in fulfilling His promises (2 Peter 3:9), or we have a wrong image of Him and live in fear.

"I knew you were a hard man"-How many people still picture God as an angry old man overly zealous in administering punishments. How could you ever approach such a God, not to mention serve Him and doing your best to bring Him joy? Still, if you seek Him you will find Him.

A Chinese girl was telling a story of how when she was a little girl she got very poorly. Her parents got so desperate of praying to all the ancestors that they ended up dedicating the girl to the God who heals, not knowing who that God was. The girl got healed. Later on in her life whilst living in the West, she was invited to a prayer meeting by a friend. There she heard someone praying to the God who heals and she knew she found her God. Etty Hillesum, a Jewish girl who didn't want to have anything to do with institutionalised religion, started to look for beauty all around her. One morning whilst in her bathroom she found herself kneeling on a coconut mat and praying for the first time in her life because she realised WHO beauty was. Neither one of these girls were born in a Christian home or went to Sunday school. Etty never went to the Synagogue, still because she looked for Him she ended up finding El Elohe Israel (The God of Israel). And until the moment she was killed in Aushwitz, Etty guarded God inside her, as her greatest treasure. The only way you will never find Him is by assuming you already know Him or by never even bothering.

"I was afraid" said the third servant in presenting his cause. But the master doesn't seem to be impressed by his excuse. He calls the servant "wicked and lazy". Why? I mean the poor man could not help being afraid, could he?
I think the servan'ts fear was a direct result of his wrong image of the master. Time and time again all through the Bible, God tells us "Fear not for I am with you". But what do I do when I think the one who is with me is actually the one out to get me? I either run from Him, stay there paralysed with fear or overcome my fear and stretch my hand to get to know the one besides me. There's no simple way around this. If I ended up being lied to time and time again about God, the only way I will break free is to overcome my fear and actually approach Him. Perhaps I'm not afraid of God. Perhaps I'm afraid of failure, pain, future. Again, the only way I'll make it, is by facing my fear. One day I discovered a great advice "When you're afraid, picture the worst that can happen and learn to handle it inside you, once you've accepted it, take the first step. By the end of it you'll realise it wasn't as bad as you actually thought." When faced with fear the first thing I do is ask for courage, I picture the worst, allow my mind to accept it and then move on, not only because I do not want to hear at the end "you wicked lazy servant", but because stopping there paralysed with fear, is a slap in the face of The One who did not give up for my sake.

This parable taught me, the first step to living in holiness is actually taking the first step. When I begin to seek God, everything will conspire to stop me. My thoughts will ridicule me, my friends will think me odd, my life will change and many times I will be misunderstood and judged. But will this stop me? When fear comes under any shape or form, will I face it? Will I try to see what the root is, or just accept it as part of who I am and stop there.
I went to see the movie "Inception". What a movie!!! One thing the movies presents in an amazing way is the power of an idea planted in your head. If it's done skillfully enough you will end up accepting it as your own, as part of who you are. Fear plants many ideas in our heads. The question is will I accept them or get to the root and if rotten pull it out?

Emanuela