I love basketball. For as long as I can remember, I’ve loved it. I love playing it. I love watching it. I tried (not successfully) to coach it. And for many basketball fans in the United States, March is a month of amazing basketball with the best colleges and universities fielding teams to compete for national championships.
Teams practice together for months before their regular season begins. Their performance in the regular season prepares them for conference tournaments. Their performance in conference tournaments influences if they are chosen to play in the national championship tournament. And at the highest level for both men’s and women’s basketball, half the teams chosen to play in that tournament will be headed back home after they play a single game.
A year of practice, coaching, training, preparation, game planning, scheming, visualizing, building trust and otherwise becoming better as a team can all go out the window after 40 minutes of play on the court.
No team wants to lose. But I’m always impressed with the teams that come up short and still manage to have a positive perspective on their outcome. I love to hear the stories of teams who were happy to make it as far as they did.
In mortality, we are not in this same kind of tournament. We aren’t fighting to beat each other to become Heavenly Father’s favorite or best child. Quite the opposite, He wants us to love each other — even our rivals and enemies.
As parents, my wife and I try to help our children prepare for the spiritual opponents they will face each day. And we wait with eager anticipation when we know we are sending them off to courageously face different challenges in life.
Regardless of the preparations we make together, the outcome of facing life’s challenges is never guaranteed. But as we do our best with the situation immediately in front of us, we can learn how to face a similar challenge better in the future.
In the Savior’s parable of the talents (see Matthew 25:14-30), we read that a man gave each of three servants five talents, two talents and one talent, respectively, according to their abilities. The fact that the scriptures say the servants received certain quantities based on ability suggests that they knew how to prepare and to work. Both of the first two went to work and doubled the amount they originally received. The only work done by the third servant was that of digging a hole to hide his single talent.
On the day of reckoning for these servants, their ultimate outcome was not based on raw totals of talents earned. The first two servants earned different quantities of talents but received the same commendation from their lord.
“Thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things: enter thou into the joy of thy lord,” he says to each of the first two servants.
But the third didn’t have anything additional to return to his lord to add upon the one talent he had been given. He didn’t even try. He dug a hole, dropped in the talent and waited for the lord’s return to be rid of the talent he was afraid to lose in the first place.
I wonder what that servant expected the lord’s reaction to be when he handed back the talent. Did he also expect some kind of commendation for not losing what he had been given? That was not what happened.
“Thou wicked and slothful servant” is not the introductory line to any kind of reward I want to receive. And having the little trust I was given be taken away and allocated to another? That’s not how I want things to go either.
Whatever my seed on the tournament line, whoever my opponent in this round or the next, regardless of how many talents those around me are given, I have to do the best with what I’ve been given.
Heavenly Father has blessed us with a Savior and the Holy Ghost and prophets and apostles and scriptures and priesthood power and covenants. That is a strong lineup of talents to be given.
I hope that we can all use those talents to build upon and receive an eternal reward from a God who promises that “unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance.”
— Jon Ryan Jensen is editor of the Church News.
