Thinking about stewardship this week, it occurred to me that true stewardship doesn’t

happen by accident or through serendipity. True stewardship is intentional. One must decide

how and what to invest one’s time, talents and efforts into, and only then can the fruits or

product of those decisions be deemed the result of good stewardship.

And also true is that stewardship isn’t just about money.

Stewardship can just as much be about giving and sharing other forms of value with those

people around us whom we love and care about. For example, we can be called good stewards

of our experience and knowledge for sharing stories and life examples with our children and

grandchildren, if those stories help them learn something important or even avoid making

mistakes that we have learned from.

 

Another very encouraging example of stewardship is in the many people who gave donations of food for those in need with the recent Squamish Thanksgiving Food Bank drive.

 

While toiling in my garden this past weekend, it occurred to me that I was probably employing

good stewardship of my time and labour. How so? Well, I could have just as easily decided to

go fishing or enjoy some other sort of outdoor recreation, but instead I felt it was important to

tear up and till some ground so that I could be ready to plant some garlic at the end of this

month. In what ways will that stewardship bear fruit? Well, I certainly hope that after another

9 months or so, I will be pulling up a bunch of garlic heads and then will be sharing them with

friends and family.

 

In a similar manner, my wife and I both expend certain efforts to maintain a healthy and happy

brood of chickens. It takes a bit of work, cleaning out the coop, making sure they have fresh

clean water and feed. And the results are wonderful, fresh, and unmedicated eggs, which we

are able to share with our family throughout the year.

 

I think the challenge with intentional stewardship is that we can tend to fall into a rut and get

complacent, following routines that have become comfortable for us. We really should

periodically re-examine all of our talents, and consider how we can best put them to use, for

ourselves, our family, friends, Church and community. This is the time of year when we reflect

on our stewardship goals. I hope that all of us at St. John’s will take some time and think very

carefully about all that God has given each of us, and consider what kind of fruit we would like

to see from our intentional stewardship decisions.