Stewards of creation

As stewards of the creation we recognise that its ownership resides with God and that we are accountable, in the final analysis, to the Creator for our use of the creation. Therefore, we confess that any wanton misuse or destruction of creation -- whether the good creational gifts of land, plants, water, air and atoms, or aesthetic life, family and scholarship -- is a misuse of our stewardship, a squandering of our creational inheritance, and, therefore, a sin to the creation, to future generations, and ultimately to the Creator himself.

Brian WalshSubversive Christianity

Start with the soul...

Start with the soul and perhaps the temporal gifts I want to exercise will have their chance, and if they do not, I have the best in my hands already, the only thing really needed. God must be in all my work. 

Flannery O'Connor in A Prayer Journal, pages 20/21

Former mercies

From the additional notes to Charles Spurgeon's The Treasury of David, Psalm 119. 

Verse. 65. Thou hast dealt well with thy servant, O Lord, according unto thy word 

He knew that God's gifts are without repentance, and that he is not weary of well doing, but will finish the thing he hath begun; and therefore he pleads past favours. Nothing is more forcible to obtain mercy than to lay God's former mercies before him. Here are two grounds, First. If he dealt well with him when he was not regenerate, how much more will he now? and Secondly, all the gifts of God shall be perfectly finished, therefore he will go on to deal well with his servant. Here is a difference between faith and an accusing conscience: the accusing conscience is afraid to ask more, because it hath abused the former mercies: but faith, assuring us that all God's benefits are tokens of his love bestowed on us according to his word, is bold to ask for more. — Richard Greenham

God the economist

As God's economist, Jesus reveals a way of being in the world both economic and spiritual. Economically, he signals that redistribution of resources in the direction of those in need of them should be a normal and even central concern for a person growing in spiritual maturity. Why? Precisely for theological reasons: our lack of final ownership of our resources is rooted in our lack of ownership of the God who ultimately creates all. God is not at our disposal. As the trusted mystery, God is the uncontrollable. As the gracious Creator on whom our goods depend, our goods participate in God's uncontrollability. As in the encounter with that power on which we all depend, we can only render ourselves faithful stewards of our gifts.

Tom Beaudoin

Consuming Faith