Stewardship

a website related to uk.religion.christian

Posted by Annabel Smyth on 2000-06-30
In a message on Fri, 30 Jun 2000, Chris Lambert wrote:

>roland@spider.com (Roland Watson) formed some 1s and 0s into a
>coherent pattern to say to uk.religion.christian: 
>
>>I do not see how buying a sandwich at lunchtime out of our income is
>>furthering His work.
>
>If we die we starve (when we don't have to) we probaly aren't helping 
>much.
>
I also think that sometimes we get into a "mindset of meanness".
We recognise, quite rightly, that all that we have is the Lord's and
that it behoves us to be good stewards thereof.  That's absolutely
right, it is and it does!  

However, what then tends to happen is that we are utterly niggardly
with what we have, always buying the cheapest clothes, food, etc,
running the cheapest car - if, indeed, we run a car at all - never going
on holiday, or only if one can be had for nothing - and generally
acting as though God were the meanest Scrooge, rather than the
incredibly generous, nay even extravagant God that he is!

Look at the Scriptures for a moment - when Jesus provided for the
five thousand, he didn't provide just barely enough, so that everyone
had the minimum amount, did he?  When he turned water into wine,
it wasn't just a few bottles to eke out the end of the wedding, was it?
I worked out once that in our measurements he produced something
like 640 bottles of the best quality wine, which would have Customs
asking a few questions if you brought that lot in to Dover in a white
van!

And not just the Scriptures - look at the natural world!  We haven't
even finished categorising all the plants and animals there are on our
own planet, and you just have to glance at the night sky to see how
many zillions of other suns there are, any or all of which might have
planets round them, any or all of which might have life on them!  

God, mean?  Do us a favour.........

Sorry, this is one of my bandwagons!  Having been taught to believe
that Christians should simply *never* spend any money on that
which was not strictly necessary, including food - no avocado pears
or strawberries when plain floppy round lettuce and woolly apples
would do - it was such a delight to realise that we are almost
insulting our loving Father who owns the cattle on a thousand hills....