During the month of October we as a church spend time reflecting on stewardship. Christian stewardship is the understanding that everything we have and are is a gift from God. Our response as faithful stewards is gratitude and generosity. We seek to use the gifts and resources we are entrusted with to love God and neighbor and to care for God’s creation.
The words of the offering hymn capture the heart of stewardship: “We give thee but thine own, what’er the gift may be; all that we have is thine alone, a trust, O Lord, from thee.”
We are each entrusted with different gifts and opportunities to use them-our time, talents, and treasure. The challenge is to acknowledge what we’ve been given, to see it as a treasure, and to share it in a way that honors God’s intent in giving it to us in the first place. It is easy to be overconfident about our treasure, thinking of it as ours alone and keeping it for ourselves and our own desires. It is also easy to be under confident about our treasure, undervaluing the gift God has given us and so not sharing it in the ways God intended.
Our faith calls us to use the treasures we have been given to bring about God’s kin-dom on earth as it is in heaven, to join with God in creating a world of peace, justice, and love.
While we are each given different treasures and ways and places to use them, the common place they connect is in hope. When we use what we have been given to love God and neighbor and to care for and bless God’s creation, it is then that we embody hope as individuals and as a church.
This Sunday we are talking about giving and how our giving through Hyde Park helps us experience and embody hope. Hope grows within us as we share our treasures with the church. Hope is embodied as we utilize these resources to build community, to share the good news of God’s love and grace in Jesus, and to live that out through service and working for justice, love, and peace in our world.
What treasures has God entrusted to you? Will you share a portion of them, the Bible suggests 10%, with the church as we strive to embody and share hope in all that we do?
Jesus says, “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Mt. 6:21).
May our hearts rest fully in the love of Jesus as we share our treasure so that all will know an embodied hope.
Blessings!
Pastor Suzanne