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Return to Home PageOwnership or Stewardship
Deeply imbedded in the human psyche is the thought of ownership. It manifests itself with infants just learning to speak. You’ve watched them at play, snatching toys from one another with the incessant refrain, “Mine, mine!” Woe to the one who dares to take issue. Feelings of ownership seem to come early and retire late.
It may have been a parable, but it was not a flighty one. It was grounded in reality. That reality remains firm some 2,000 years later. Jesus told it. We’ve all read it. The man thought to himself, “My crops, my barns, my grain, my goods, my soul.” You can’t miss it. He stamped “ownership” on everything. He was mature and successful, or was he? Jesus didn’t think so. One of the most dangerous things in the world is to confuse ownership and stewardship. You remember how the story ends. “But God said to him, ‘Fool! This night your soul is required of you; and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’ So is he who lays up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God.”
It is our misfortune, and our sin, to think we are owners, when in reality we are only stewards, stewards who must account. Everything belongs to God. He made it all, gives it all, and has entrusted it to us for a season. “Occupy till I come.”
As a native born Texan, I didn’t admire Daniel Webster’s opposition to the annexation of Texas, but I have often pondered his remark about responsibility: “The most important thought I ever had was that of my individual responsibility to God.” John Gipson
As a native born Texan, I didn’t admire Daniel Webster’s opposition to the annexation of Texas, but I have often pondered his remark about responsibility: “The most important thought I ever had was that of my individual responsibility to God.” John Gipson