Our Stewardship

By Bernadette A. Moyer

What will you leave behind? What will your legacy be once you have departed this life? It surely won’t be about “things” but rather about other people and our relationships. Did we leave this place better than how we found it?

Did we give more than we took? Did we make a positive contribution to society and to others? Did we practice love and forgiveness? What will our stewardship say about us?

We are mere stewards in this lifetime; we own nothing because if we did the U-Haul would be following the hearse to our final destination.  “For we brought nothing into the world, and we cannot take anything out of the world.” From Luke 12:42-46

Remember the Kansas song Dust in the Wind and the line “all we are is dust in the wind” and “nothin’ lasts forever but the earth and sky.”

On the date that my “Other Mother” turned 80 years old another friend lost her battle with cancer. She had just celebrated her 56th birthday. My “Other Mother” has acquired many possessions in her lifetime, the friend’s departure drives home how nothing will go with her into the next life.

We take nothing with us when we leave this life we return “home” the same way that we arrived with no earthly possessions. In this lifetime we are merely the stewards of “things” and “property” and “material possessions.”

Our relationships transform or transition or they die. How we took care of them will determine their fate.  How do we want to be remembered? What legacy do we wish to leave behind?

Everything that we are given is one day returned. We are stewards for all living things; for our children, our animals, our family and our friends. Our employment and our career path also afford us the opportunity for stewardship too.

How we take care of the land and the people and all living things is a direct reflection on how we practiced our stewardship.

“A society is defined not only by what it creates but by what it refuses to destroy.” John Sawhill