I am in the Gospel of Luke this week. I was reading today about the parable of the Minas.

Do you know the story?

A nobleman went into a far country to receive a kingdom for himself and return.

Before he leaves he calls ten servants and tells them to do business till he returns, and he gives them each a mina.

We read that his citizens hated him and sent a delegation after him saying he would not reign over them.

So the first servant turns the one into ten, the second servant turns the one into five. The third one hides his mina. In a handkerchief.

The nobleman returns, and he rewards those who made more out of what he gave them.

I have always heard this passage taught this way…Multiply what God has given you and he will reward you.

It is true, but today I am seeing a different picture.

When the man who hid his mina returns it to the nobleman, he says, I feared you, you are austere, you collect what you did not deposit and reap what you did not sow. The nobleman calls him wicked, not because he hid the mina but because he did it with what he believed about the nobleman. The nobleman says the servant’s own words judge him, because if he believed that, then he should have put it into the bank and earned interest.

It is not just our activities that God judges.

He looks at what our heart believes to be true about him, then sees if our actions line up with that, and then he rewards or disciplines.

I wish I had parented my children with this insight.

How we act on what we believe…is us judging ourselves. It is our choice to align with what we believe or to shrink from it, or to deny it.

What a good note to begin the day!

Selah.