When church people read the word stewardship, they immediately know they are going to be asked to give money to the church. It is strange to me that we call asking for money at the church a “stewardship drive” when stewardship is not at all about giving. The word means to carefully manage something for someone else.
Yes, I get it, we are to be good stewards of our money and give to the church, but that is tithing, not stewardship. We are called, from the beginning of the earth, to be good stewards. Having “dominion” over all is to have the responsibility for all that is on earth. It does not mean we can do whatever we want with it. Doing what we want is what got Adam and Eve kicked out of the Garden of Eden, where they were to be good stewards. That darn piece of fruit was the first act of willfulness, of going our own way.
When we put what we want before what we are called to do by God, that is called “sin”, missing the mark. Sin may or may not be evil, it is simply going our own way. Instead we are called to be stewards, to take care of something that is not ours. If you were to take that view about everything, from your car, to your house, to your kids, to your significant other, how would that change you?
When we live life in stewardship, we serve all of creation. When we are good stewards we take care of our car, our house, our relationships, and ourselves. That is one I have to work harder on, being a good steward of myself. You see I am not my own, I am “owned” by Another. To truly take care of myself means that I carefully manage myself because I don’t own me.
Apply this to your relationships, both with your significant other and your friends. Carefully managing relationships honors the other and makes both of you free from ownership, of having to control something. And then, let’s apply stewardship to our most important relationship, our personal relationship to God. Are we carefully managing that as well?
Being a good steward is not easy because it means that we realize we don’t control things, we only manage them for another. God is a good steward of his relationship to us, we call that Grace. And as stewards, are we offering back that grace to God? Sound crazy? It isn’t. God needs us, we are the expression of God in the world, so each time we offer love and stewardship to the world, we return our grace to God. Let us allow our stewardship for all things bless God.
TMM