It thrills God to entrust us with His stuff. He then deliberately steps back into the shadows to watch what we do with our lives.

Somebody told me that the true test of a person’s character is how he acts when he thinks nobody’s watching. In the parable of the talents, Jesus gives us a peek into some of the mysteries of human existence. When he says “kingdom of heaven,” Jesus means, “Here is how God interacts with people and his goals for our lives. Here is how the King gathers people into his kingdom.”

The kingdom of heaven “will be like a man going on a journey, who called his servants and entrusted his property to them” (Matthew 25:14).

The wealthy man in the story is God. All believers in Christ, forgiven and restored, now work for him.

This verse presents two challenges to us sinners. First, everything we have—our money; our families; our jobs; our community; and especially our dearest treasure, the gospel of Christ—is a gift from God. How gratifying it is to our egos to suppose that we earned and built it ourselves. But how healthy it is to give the Creator and Giver our praise for the wealth we have.

The second challenge is to remember that God’s “absence” in our world is not because he’s weak, uninterested, or dead. The truth? It thrills him to entrust us with his stuff. He then deliberately steps back into the shadows to watch and see what we do with our lives. He is intensely interested in what we do.