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I am a "cradle Anglican" and have been a committed Christian for my life. My grandfather was an Anglo-Catholic priest, and therefore being a part of a faithful community and participating in church community activities in a myriad of ways have been a constant for me. As such practicing stewardship, in its many forms has been a norm for my life's journey.
I have always held that we are given the gift of life through the grace of God... and that our journey of life is from God and back to God. As such, every moment and experience is laden with opportunities to "pay forward" from our gifts and of our time, talent and resources.....to honor that which we have been taught, that "from those whom much is given, much is expected."(a section of Luke 12.48, paraphrased wildly for impact.)
And so, it is not an option to give or not to give, to share or not to share, but it is our God given responsibility to find ourselves involved and thoroughly generous in every manner, willing to dig deeper, go farther and share more without question...as followers it is our duty, our obligation and our joy...
There is a hymn by the Marantha Singers, whose chorus is
"Freely, Freely you have received,
now freely, freely give.
Go in My name and because you believe, others will know that I live"
To me, this is another way of saying the same thing: we have received so much love through the grace of God, we are so blessed in so many ways through the grace of God, and we have so many opportunities to be present to and helpful toward others, by the grace of GOD....that the only question might be 'what else is needed from me this day?'
May we always be inspired to be generous to every person and in every situation, allowing our gifts to freely flow through us outward and onward to bless those put on our path or on our spirits for any reason. It is to be a mantra of our journey as disciples.
October is the month in which we celebrate the holiday of Thanksgiving. We take special time and energy to gather as friends and family and to give thanks for the abundance of the harvest, and the blessings of the season just completed... There is great joy in all of the festivities and it is indeed a special day. The symbol of such blessing is the cornucopia or the horn of plenty.
I believe that we live with such a cornucopia of spiritual blessings daily, and that our Christian response to such abundance always before us on our journey, is one of constant and deep prayer of thankfulness and gratefulness.
In other words, Thanksgiving is not but one day of the year, but our spiritual response to this life we live, and the many blessings which are ours with every breath we take.
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