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BY LILLIE REED

My friend is in a hospital bed with an infection in her foot that scares even the nurses. Walking is an excruciating exercise. So, instead, my friend leans back and dreams of dancing.

This is who she is. She believes that if angels tell you, "Fear not," you should be brave. If God calls you to live abundantly, you should set a generous table and invite everyone you know. And if grace invites you to dance – you should dance.

So even in her hospital bed, her spirit dances. It's almost as if she can't help it.

There's an element of her theology of audacious generosity in the story in Matthew 25:14-30, in which three slaves are entrusted with coins. Two of the slaves invest the money with bankers and are able to take a profit back to their master. The third, afraid of losing the money, buries his for safekeeping. The master praises the first two and condemns the third and gives the coins to one of the others, declaring, "To all those who have, more will be given."

Often in the church, this is read as a stewardship passage, encouraging people to wise investment and giving. But this passage is more than just a pep talk to encourage us to take risks in our faith. It's also a glimpse into the nature of God.

Early Christians would have been flabbergasted at someone entrusting slaves with a significant amount of money. In this story, commentators say, the coins total the equivalent of 120 years of their daily wages. Readers would also have been taken aback that the master applauded the practice of usury, or making money from money, which was condemned in the law.

With the parable, Jesus began to focus on what God is ready to entrust to us and the new reality God has created for us, through Christ. This new way calls us, as it says in 1 Thessalonians 5:5, to live as children of the light – certain of the love and promise of God.

In her hospital bed, my friend cries with the pain she's experiencing. Her foot is swollen and seeping and horrible. She knows she has no business dancing, or even dreaming of dancing. But she also knows God calls the least, the last and the lost to accomplish astounding things. She knows that God is a fan of scoundrels and calls the most unlikely of characters to answer God's call. So, why not her?

She'll never star in Swan Lake, but she's pretty sure that with the help of a walker, and with a bit more healing, she could humbly trip the light fantastic. Why not? God calls for our best efforts, for our joy, for our audacity and our ridiculous belief that, with faith, all things really might be possible.

So she closes her eyes and in her imagination does a little cha-cha. Grace dances alongside her and the pain fades for a while.

God, she thinks, has given her a treasure – a spirit to live fully. It's her delight to invest it as best she can.