Hello, my friends.
Last week I reflected with you on my “ah-ha” moment and some of the questions that have helped me to better understand my relationship to money. This week I want to reflect on my understanding of stewardship and making a commitment from a place of joy and abundance rather than shame or fear.
My personal understanding and practice of stewardship has changed a lot over the years. For a good part of my growing up I understood stewardship solely as a monetary offering. It was something that you just did no matter what – I watched my parents put an offering in the plate every Sunday even during seasons when we struggled day-to-day. When I returned to Church as a young adult, I remember still having this understanding stewardship while also barely being able to make ends meet. And when I say barely, I mean having your bill auto-pay go through and then praying you have enough gas in your car to get to work for the week because you don’t get paid again until the following week – and if you can’t get to work, you don’t get paid. I had absolutely no money to give. And my own experience deepened my own sense of financial shame and perpetuated my anxious relationship with money.
However, my faith community helped radically transform my understanding of stewardship and offering. I learned in that season of my life the main offering I could give was found not in a commitment of money, but in a commitment of time and offering my personal skills and gifts towards furthering our shared mission. When I could, I would give financially, but my ability to give or not financially did not make me more or less part of our shared vision and mission in living out our discipleship as a community. This is the understanding of stewardship I took with me to seminary, that God values all offerings and gifts and that each of us are all invited to make commitments in different ways at different times. And my “ah-ha” moment has led me into a time of deeper discernment and reflection that has helped me also recognize that I am in a new season and God is inviting me to make new commitments.
While my experience names financial shame and anxiety, I felt drawn to this week’s meditation because no matter what kind of commitment God invites each of us into this stewardship season, to say yes – yes to offering our time, our talents, and/or our treasure – is to say yes to God’s abundance. Here is a breathing mediation from #blackliturgies, created by Cole Arthur Riley.
Be well,
Deacon Megan
God of Abundance, breathing meditation
Scarcity is a myth perpetuated by the greed of tyrants. Don’t accept crumbs.
There is enough for you.
There is enough for you.
Inhale:
I was not meant for scarcity.
Exhale:
There’s enough for me.
Inhale:
God of abundance.
Exhale:
Help me accept it.
What does stewardship mean to you?
Where might God be inviting you to make a commitment to our communal vision and mission? How does it feel to imagine accepting God’s abundance, saying yes?