I often tell people that perhaps my favorite author on stewardship is usually not thought of as a stewardship writer at all: Catherine Doherty. She was like a Russian-Canadian Dorothy Day, starting the Madonna House Apostolate of lay men and women and clergy who work with and live with the poor. Doherty wrote about a spiritual life where God permeates our everyday lives. Of course, this resonates with me and my writing about everyday stewardship spirituality. She wrote, “Yes, stewardship pertains to everything, and I am responsible for my part of that everything.” This sense of responsibility for our own little slice of God’s universe is so very important in an imperfect reality of human life. The consequence of not taking care of our little “part of that everything” is that those who could have heard or witnessed the good news of Jesus Christ might not get that chance. We are created so uniquely, it is folly to always assume that someone else can take care of things if we choose to bow out. We sometimes even fall into a trap where we say, “It is God who touches people’s hearts, not me,” because it may very well be that God’s plan was to touch them through you. There are many implications of Paul’s use of body imagery in his First Letter to the Corinthians. Yes, the body of Christ has many parts and they are all unique. All of us baptized into his body have been called to be an active part in that body. But if we choose to neglect our role or we don’t feel responsible to be the best member of that body we can be, the body cannot function as it needs to. Good stewardship spirituality sees all the gifts in that body as precious. For our important role, we are called to grow and cultivate our part of that body.
Tracy Earl Welliver, MTS