This is the first of a series of reflections I hope to offer as part of my service with the Stewardship Ministry at Shepherd of the Hills Lutheran Church, Hickman, Neb., where Anne and I are members.

One of the fond memories I have of the times I spent with my grandfather was “helping” him clean his tools after he had finished digging the vegetable garden for my grandmother. We sat on the back steps, facing the yard and the garden, with the shovel and rake and hoe. Grandpa also had a bucket full of water, a scrub brush, a wire bristle brush, a rag, and some oil. We’d sit there and clean the tools—one by one. First we washed off the soil with the water and the scrub brush. If there were any dull spots, we’d use the wire bristle brush. Then we let the air and the sun dry the metal surfaces. Finally we’d put some oil on the rag and rub it into the blades of the shovel and hoe, the tines of the rake.

In the end, the metal business-ends of the tools glistened and the wooden handles were smooth and clean. Grandpa would say, “Never put your tools away dirty. If you clean them, they’ll work better and they’ll be ready the next time you need them.”

As I recall that memory, it strikes me that Grandpa never mentioned the word “stewardship,” but that is exactly what he was teaching me to do. He was showing me how to take care of what I had been given.

Stewardship is really that simple. Our calling as Christians is to take care of what we have been given. And so we ask, “What have we received and how do we take care of it?”

Really briefly, the answer would be, “Everything and carefully.” But when we stop to ponder a fuller and deeper reply, we come to realize that the answer goes something like this: “God our Father has given us his whole creation. He blesses us with the gifts of the Holy Spirit, so that we may care for his world in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ.”

Another way to look at our calling is to remember the familiar words of the offertory prayer:

Merciful Father, we offer with joy and thanksgiving what you have first given us—our selves, our time, and our possessions—signs of your gracious love. Receive them for the sake of him who offered himself for us, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
(Lutheran Book of Worship, p. 67)

These are simple and well-known words, yet we haven’t worn them out.

We can pray them when we put our hands to the tools we use each day: the hammers and keyboards, spatulas and tractors. These words can help us to remember that God our Father has given us everything. Life, the air we breathe, all that we touch—they’re all good gifts. And they can help us to recall that we have received a wonderful responsibility to go with those gifts—to use them to give back to our Father what we make of them for the sake of his Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. It’s as simple as cleaning off the dirt from our tools, polishing them with oil, and taking care of those gifts for tomorrow’s work in our Father’s garden, this world.

David M. Frye, Stewardship Ministry