Parable of the Gold Coins and M&M’s

Correlating the Parable of the Talents to peanut M&M’s may be tenuous at best, but I’m going to take a shot at it. In preparation to come to Nigeria, I purchased a few comfort (travel-friendly) foods to bring along on the journey including a large bag of peanut M&M’s. Ironically, I never buy nor eat peanut M&M’s when I’m in the US, but I do enjoy a regular sugar fix and peanut M&M’s seem to be a rather transportable (non-melting/spoiling/breaking) form of that.

Early on the trip, I opened this bag of M&M’s and sampled a very conservative number: 6. I wanted to make sure that these M&M’s would stretch a long way throughout my 5 week stay. Every few nights, for a week, I’d eat approximately six. Then, I left with the Iowa Team to the village of Bambur for a week. I debated bringing them along but decided they’d be an extra special treat when I returned back to Jalingo, so I left them behind.

You can imagine my disappointment when I returned to find LARGE ants had infiltrated the seemingly tightly-twisted closed bag. However, I’m far from squeamish when it comes to ants and I had really been looking forward to those M&M’s, so contemplated consumption for a short time while the thoughts of “Ants might carry disease. There’s probably ant poop all over these. Mom would NOT approve of eating these now.” swirled through my head. After the ants had been brushed off, I established that most of the candy-coated outsides were intact, so I decided I’d be okay. I ate a few and they were good, but the aforementioned thoughts somewhat detracted from the divine experience I had been anticipating upon return.

The day after arriving home from Bambur I immediately left for Gembu for 5 days. In my infinite wisdom, I decided to leave the M&M’s behind again to “save” them, this time in a recently-discovered zip-lock bag! I had high hopes that my candy would be intact (well, as intact as it could be after its first bout with ants). Sadly, I returned to find hundreds of ants poring over the now naked peanut M&M’s and deemed them officially inedible.

I think there’s a lesson in this situation about using and investing our resources instead of hiding them away. Jesus told this story about how a king gave 10 servants each a gold coin and asked them to invest them to make more money. When the king returned, he questioned the first three servants (random thought: I wonder what the other 7 servants did with theirs…the story doesn’t say!) on their return. The first one had made 10 more gold coins, the second one 5 more gold coins, but the third one said that he’d hid his under his handkerchief so as not to lose it. The king was annoyed and took away his one gold coin from him and gave it to the servant who had earned 10.

Now, investing M&M’s sounds downright silly, but is it? Instead of hiding them away to conserve them, what if I had brought them along to Bambur and shared them with the Iowa Team? Or, what if I had brought some with to each of my Nigerian friends I had visited and we had shared them together? What kind of “profit” might I have gained in terms of happy memories, shared experiences, or new foods to try in exchange? As it was, the ants had a feast. I hope they enjoyed!

Lessons Learned:
1. Bring extra zip-lock bags along when traveling and use them more often than seems necessary.
2. Share early and share often to receive a bigger say the partakers.
3. Investments come in many shapes and sizes. Keep your eyes open for the next opportunity.