‘
She Gave Everything She Had
’
This past Sabbath as I was exiting the church I was visiting, I met a gentleman who reignited a desire to understand and share more clearly and more accurately a succinct vision and practical insight for stewardship. As I left, he gave me a couple of books he had written on the subject and asked me to get in touch with him once I read them. Let the learning begin.
What is stewardship? We often associate stewardship with money. However, stewardship is much more than just money. A steward is someone (anyone) who is responsible for taking care of something. This means we are all stewards.
We are all stewards of our health, time, gifts and talents, and our families. We are stewards at work, home, and our local church or school. We are also stewards in the local, state, national and global communities. Here is another big one. God gave all of humanity the responsibility to be stewards of the garden and of the earth in Genesis 2:15. However, these are just a few of our stewardship responsibilities.
Our greatest stewardship responsibility is our stewardship to God. The exciting and often under emphasized fact in the story of the widow’s offering recorded in Mark 12:41-44 and Luke 21:1-4 is that the widow gave “…everything she had”. But why? The book Desire of Ages, page 615, says,
“…A heart of faith and love is dearer to God than the most costly gift. …It was this unselfish spirit and childlike faith that won the Savior’s commendation.”
In large part, it was her consistent, faithful stewardship in life that produced this perfect gift to God. I now have been challenged to review and renew my stewardship. How about you?
