How much...

You'll be glad to know that God and I are back on speaking terms. Actually, I have a sneaking suspicion that God never really stopped talking. It was just me who stopped listening. (Ever notice how hard it is to hear while you're having a good rant?) At any rate, "it is by grace that you are saved; and this is not your own doing. It is the gift of God." Thanks, God...and thanks be to God.

But that's not what's on my mind today.

I was reading a newsletter from another parish...something one of our folks dropped off. This other parish, like us (and like every other mainline Christian congregation, it seems) are all in a toot about stewardship. That is to say: we're struggling to pay the bills and give faithfully to mission, and we need to figure out how to encourage people to be more generous. Most of the programs and campaigns we try focus on one thing...how to help people figure out how much to give and then, how to give more.

So this approach comes out of left field...but it seems to have more than a mere kernal of truth behind it. (I'm going to paraphrase rather than quote since the original sentence structure seemed a bit clunky):

As long as we continue to ask "what shall I give" we'll always be battling a myriad of reasons why we can't give more. The assumption behind the question is that what I have is mine to start with. And since it's mine, I get to decide what to give away. Instead, we need to change the question to: "what shall I keep?" Here's a different assumption...that what we have is a gift given to us in the first place. It recognizes that our wealth originates outside of us...and for Christians, we know where that is: in the grace and mercy of God.

You may think that the difference here is all too subtle...just word play. (And you may be right!) But then again: it might do us good to remember that what we have is not first of all ours. And it just might encourage us (if we're willing to be honest) to examine more carefully what we're keeping our resources for. It's one thing to just pay the MasterCard bill every month and give the church what's left over. It's quite another thing to examine what's on that bill and to ask the question "do I really need this?" The change in perspective could open the door to that kind of analysis, and to a more faithful response to the call of God.