In the parable of the talents, Jesus tells us about three men who were entrusted with 5, 2 and 1 talent respectively. 'Talent' here was a unit of money in those days and not what we usually understand these days. However, it represents the resources that the Master has entrusted us with and using which He expect us to work and produce fruit. The man with five talents made five more, and the one with two made two more. But the one with one talent did not even attempt to work with it. His opinion about the master was that he was a hard man who demanded more from people than they could do (Mt.25:24).
His opinion was completely wrong. What the master did was to give different amounts to his servants 'according to each one's ability'. He knew more about this servant than the servant knew himself! The master knew that this servant could not be trusted to handle more than one talent, and even there this servant failed him.
As I thought about this servant, it occurred to me that perhaps his problem was that he saw that the master had not given him as much as he had given the other two servants. Perhaps he thought that he would not be able to produce as much results as the other two, and that he would cut a sorry figure in front of the master when he returned and asked for accounts. He assumed that the master would ask him why he had not produced as much output as the others. This made him so upset that he did not feel like doing anything for the master!
Actually, what happened at the end was that the master was more than just. He appreciated both the man with five talents for producing five more and the man with two talents who produced two more, in exactly the same way (v.21). In other words, his appreciation was not based on the quantity of the output but the faithfulness each one had shown with what they had received. If the man with one talent had made just one more, he would have received the same appreciation!
The problem is when we compare ourselves with others, instead of trying to be faithful with whatever we have. Then many of us can feel just like the one talent man and think that because we can't do what others can do, then we can't do anything at all. But God is not asking us to do more than what we can, but to do just what He has given us to do. We may not have the abilities or the opportunities that some others have. But there are certainly things we can do.
Do we feel like this? Do we look at what others are doing and get discouraged because we can't do what they can? Let us remember that the Lord created us the way we are because He wanted someone just like us! If He wanted us to be like someone else and do what they do, He could have easily created us to be like that. What we all need to do is to stop comparing ourselves with others but to see how we can do things better each time in order to be faithful to the Lord. If we don't do our part, the body of Christ will lack that much (Col.1:24).