Stewardship 2010 - Be Glad

This modified version of Psalm 118:24 has been the stewardship theme that we at St. John’s have chosen to guide us this fall, to rally us together in gladness, and to prepare us for THIS DAY, when we faithfully pledge our support for the year to come.

This verse reminds us that each day is a gift from God and that each day we make choices about how we will live, based on that knowledge. As Christians we are called to recognize and appreciate joy in our lives, to grow (in faith and other ways), to reach out to others, and to be glad in the blessings that have been bestowed upon us.

BE GLAD on this special All Saints Sunday, and enjoy this story shared by a St. John’s member:

My dad grew up in small-town Iowa during the Great Depression. When he was six years old, his dad died, leaving a wife and five kids in an age when women worked all the time … but not for money. My dad and his brother used to chase rabbits and beat them with sticks so they could have meat to eat. His sister recalled what Christmas was like for them: “We never had much and we never got much. Each one of us got the pair of blue jeans or the bib overalls that we had to wear all year long. I remember one time getting a pencil.”

A pencil. One pencil. She had just graduated from high school and was getting ready for college, and this gift stood out in her memory as something important. The more I thought about it, I realized how powerful a pencil is. For inside it is a story waiting to be told, an essay waiting to be written, a picture waiting to be sketched, an idea waiting to be doodled, an invention waiting to be drafted. Our hopes and dreams reside in the smallest things that we use every day, no matter what the circumstances of that day are. This is indeed the day that the Lord has made. Let us be glad in it.

Rejoice. Grow. Reach out. Be glad. Pledge faithfully, pledge generously, pledge gladly.