He used to write, actually write, the kind of writing that made people stop and ask where he had learned to put words together that way. Somewhere in his late twenties he stopped, not dramatically, not through any single decision, just a slow drift into believing his writing was not good enough to justify the time it took, not practical enough to matter next to the more obviously useful things he could be doing instead. The notebook sat in a drawer for years. He told himself he would come back to it once life settled down, and life never quite settled down enough to make the return feel justified.
We tend to think of buried potential as a dramatic, one-time failure, a person who never even tried. In reality, it usually happens exactly the way it happened to him, gradually, through years of quiet deferral, each single choice reasonable on its own, the sum of them adding up to a gift left completely unused. We convince ourselves we are being responsible by setting the gift aside for something more practical, and we rarely notice that the setting aside has become permanent rather than temporary.
Jesus tells a parable about a master who entrusts three servants with talents before going on a journey, and the servant given the least buries his in the ground rather than risking it.
The Parable of the Bags of Gold
14 “Again, it will be like a man going on a journey, who called his servants and entrusted his wealth to them. 15 To one he gave five bags of gold, to another two bags, and to another one bag, each according to his ability. Then he went on his journey. 16 The man who had received five bags of gold went at once and put his money to work and gained five bags more. 17 So also, the one with two bags of gold gained two more. 18 But the man who had received one bag went off, dug a hole in the ground and hid his master’s money.
19 “After a long time the master of those servants returned and settled accounts with them. 20 The man who had received five bags of gold brought the other five. ‘Master,’ he said, ‘you entrusted me with five bags of gold. See, I have gained five more.’
21 “His master replied, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master’s happiness!’
22 “The man with two bags of gold also came. ‘Master,’ he said, ‘you entrusted me with two bags of gold; see, I have gained two more.’
23 “His master replied, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master’s happiness!’
24 “Then the man who had received one bag of gold 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. 25 So I was afraid and went out and hid your gold in the ground. See, here is what belongs to you.’
26 “His master replied, ‘You wicked, lazy servant! So you knew that I harvest where I have not sown and gather where I have not scattered seed? 27 Well then, you should have put my money on deposit with the bankers, so that when I returned I would have received it back with interest.
28 “‘So take the bag of gold from him and give it to the one who has ten bags. 29 For whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them. 30 And throw that worthless servant outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’
Matthew 25:14-30 New International Version
What stands out in this parable is not simply that the servant did nothing productive with what he was given. It is why he says he did nothing. He tells his master plainly that he was afraid, knowing the master to be a hard man, and hid the talent out of that fear rather than out of laziness or disinterest. Fear, not indifference, is what buried the gift, and this detail matters big time for anyone who has quietly set aside something they were genuinely capable of doing.
What We Are Actually Afraid Of
Fear rarely announces itself honestly when it buries a gift. It usually dresses itself up as practicality, as humility, as simply waiting for a better season. We tell ourselves the timing is not right, that other responsibilities matter more right now, that pursuing the gift would be self-indulgent when there are more obviously useful things to attend to. Some of this reasoning is genuinely true some of the time. But if we are honest, much of it is fear wearing a more respectable costume, afraid that using the gift publicly might reveal it is not as good as we hoped, or afraid that using it well might ask more of us than we are currently willing to give.
Peter writes that each of us should use whatever gift we have received to serve one another, as good stewards of God’s varied grace.
10 Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others, as faithful stewards of God’s grace in its various forms.
1 Peter 4:10 New International Version
This instruction assumes the gift was given specifically to be used, not preserved carefully against the risk of ever failing with it. A buried talent is, in a real sense, a form of stewardship failure, not because the person lacked the gift, but because stewardship was never actually about protecting a resource from all possible risk. It was about putting the resource to work, even imperfectly, even with real risk of failure attached.
Why This Connects to Everything Else Written Here
This connects directly to something I have already written on this blog about our own bodies not being projects to optimize but things entrusted to us for faithful care regardless of output. A creative gift works the same way. It was never entrusted to us so that we could produce a flawless, risk-free result before anyone was allowed to see it. It was entrusted to us to be used, faithfully, in whatever imperfect form that use actually takes. The servant with two talents in the parable is commended exactly as warmly as the servant with five, not because their output matched, but because both took the risk of putting what they had to work rather than burying it out of fear.
This reframes what faithfulness with a buried gift actually requires. It does not require us to suddenly become excellent at something we have neglected for years. It requires us to stop hiding it and start using it, however small and imperfect that use looks at first. A person who buried their writing for a decade is not called to produce a masterpiece on the first attempt back. They are called simply to stop burying it, to write one honest page again, and to trust that faithfulness with the small, tentative return matters more than the impressive result we have been quietly waiting to feel ready for.
What This Can Look Like This Week
Practically, unburying a gift rarely requires a dramatic life change. It usually requires one small, specific act that breaks the pattern of deferral we have settled into. This might mean opening the old notebook and writing one page, badly if necessary, simply to prove to ourselves that the gift still exists underneath the years of neglect. It might mean sharing something we made with one trusted person instead of no one, accepting the vulnerability of that single small exposure rather than waiting for a version polished enough to feel safe.
It also helps to notice when the old fear reasserts itself, telling us this is not the right season, that other things matter more right now. Sometimes that voice is genuinely wise. Often, though, it is the same fear that buried the talent in the first place, simply finding a new, more respectable reason to keep it buried a little longer. Learning to tell the difference between wise timing and fear dressed as wisdom is itself part of what it means to steward a gift faithfully rather than protectively.
Read Also: What It Means to Redeem the Time
Read Also: The Danger of Living for the Next Season Instead of This One
Read Also: The Quiet Cost of Never Being Fully Off Duty as a Parent
Conclusion
He opened the notebook again on an ordinary evening, years after he had stopped believing he ever would, and the first page he wrote was clumsy, nothing like the writing he remembered being capable of. He wrote a second page anyway the following week, then a third, none of it especially good yet, all of it genuinely his again. The gift had not disappeared during the years it sat buried. It had simply been waiting, the way the parable’s talent waited in the ground, for someone to finally decide the risk of using it was worth taking.
