One evening at my house the skies were filled with intense lightning, and rain was pounding the windows. So the TV along with all the other electronics were turned off, including the lights, and the blinds were lifted so we could watch the event further unfold. My wife mentioned a family in our neighborhood that had recently lost everything in a house fire caused by a lighting strike. She asked all of us in the family, “What would you run and get if we had to leave the house due to a lightning strike?”
I mentioned that I would grab my laptop, but that was only so I could communicate with the outside world. I thought about my books, guitars, sports collectibles, clothes, electronic toys, etcetera. I realized that there wasn’t anything I was that attached to that I felt I needed to save. Then I thought of the financial debt I have incurred because of all that stuff and it made me wonder how that happened.
The reality is that most of us who are trying to live a stewardship way of life have been Christians much longer than good stewards. I thought I knew what being a disciple of Jesus Christ meant years ago. I had two theology degrees so I thought I already got it. Before I began taking the stewardship message to heart, I would have answered my wife’s question differently.
The reality is that good stewards will see their money, time, and talent as investments in what lasts. I will need a few years to pay off my poor investment in things that were temporal and, in fact, many of them are already gone. Stewardship is a way of life that doesn’t happen overnight. But when God calls us to something that requires us to leave all things behind, be sure that you own nothing that owns you.
Tracy Earl Welliver, MTS
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