Dana Reardon - A day off? That's just good stewardship

A day off? That's just good stewardship

I spent a day this week doing very little. I took a real Sabbath. I would like to say I got up and watched the sun rise and gave thanks, but I slept in.

An amazing thing happened. The sun rose without me. God provided for people without my help.

One of the best understandings I have heard of Sabbath is that we take a day off every week to remember what God gives us, but also to notice that we are not God. The commandment says Remember the Sabbath Day to keep it holy. And Holy means other. It means strange. It means a day not like other days. It is a day that we notice that God is God and we are not. One of the best ways to notice that is by doing nothing.

We get so busy that we think that the world cannot revolve without us. We who consider ourselves good stewards of God's creation sometimes thing we are indispensable. Okay, that is wrong and it is sin, but what is worse, when we start thinking that way then the whole stewardship thing falls apart.

Stewardship begins as response. It begins in thankfulness for all that has been done for us and without any help from us. We give thanks for creation and salvation. Being thankful motivates us to want to share what we have been given.

When we get too busy we forget all that. We begin innocently enough by wanting to do more for God's people, but we get so involved in all of it that somehow we lose the connection to the source. It is like trying to water the lawn without carrying the bucket all the way back to the well.

We get dried up. We get burned out like a summer lawn. And then it gets too hard to be God's people because we start to think we have to do it all.

Sabbath began as a gift from God and even that can somehow become one more thing to do properly. So don't worry about properly. Take a day off. Discover many things. Discover all that happens even without your doing a thing. Your heart beats and so do others. You breath without effort. The sun rises and sets and crops grow.

Give thanks and renew the cycle that always begins with thanks giving and then with giving in thanks for all that we receive from God.

Lord,

We thank you for being God and relieving us of the responsibility. We thank you for all of it and for giving us time as a gift. Help us to remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy.

Amen

The Rev. Dana Reardon is pastor at St. Paul Evangelical Lutheran Church, Warwick, RI. A lifelong Lutheran, she came to ordained ministry after 21 years in nursing, mostly in pediatric intensive care. She graduated from Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia in 1998 and served 4 ½ years in Upstate New York before becoming a New Englander. She is still trying to understand the accent. While in the Upstate New York Synod she chaired the Stewardship Team. That began her fascination with what makes stewards -- and more, what makes for generosity. She has three amazing daughters: Pastor Reardon says much of what she knows of life she learned from them.