Monday, May 17, 2021

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Katie Snipes Lancaster

Scripture: 1 Corinthians 4:2
Moreover, it is required of stewards that they be found faithful.

Spiritual Practice: Stewardship
Stewardship means to care for that which has been entrusted to you. It means planning, managing, and safe keeping. It means tending, guiding, deciding, and creating an environment of thriving. We steward our financial resources. We steward land. In community, we steward the very air we breathe. We ensure its survival beyond our own existence.

The spiritual practice of stewardship does sometimes mean generosity: giving from your own wealth so that something might thrive. That’s how we sometimes use the word stewardship in the church: generosity of individuals for the thriving of the church as a whole.

As a spiritual practice the work of stewardship can have many different threads in your life. You want the church to thrive, you want the community to thrive, you want your family to thrive, and you want the earth itself to thrive. And so you practice intentional planning, managing, safe keeping, tending, guiding, and deciding. I think there is something poignant about intentionality in relationship to the work of stewardship. And intentionality gives us a chance to rest deep in the presence of God, as we seek God as the source of our intentional practices.

Daily Prayer
God, give us a heart for stewardship:
The work of planning, managing, safekeeping,
The work of tending, guiding, deciding.
The work of caring, ensuring, being trusted.
Help us. Be with us.
Let us hear you echoed in our own intentional practices.
Amen.