Editor’s Note: Throughout 2019, the West Virginia Conference Stewardship Team will offer a brief reflection for each season which contains three seeds:
- A theme for the season
- A scriptural reflection
- A story bearing witness to stewardship
The following is the second installment in this seasonal stewardship series.
By George Webb,
Conference Stewardship Coordinator
Season of Weeding, Season of Growth.
Yes, I have heard the verses of the hazy and lazy days of summer.
However, in relating stewardship for summer has a little different message.
It is the time to grow. Making sure that which we have planted in Spring has the growing season it needs.
The Word for The Summer
Matthew 13:1-9 (The Parable of the Sower)
The Summer Witness: “We-deeding”
We work and plant those cotton-picking things about stewardship with our “three to a hill” theology on planting…faith, hope and charity…Father, Son and Holy Ghost. During the summer is when we need to see things get past the sprouting and begin to form a living plant.
But, as much as I hated it out on Heizer Creek on that acre or so of corn popping up that Dad had planted, you gotta weed it. Weeding was getting down on your hands and knees and pulling out wild grass and weeds that were living in the same ground as where the corn was coming up.
“We planted corn, not weeds. Where in the darnation did they come from?” I wondered at age 12. Four or five hours later we were finished, and it was like the corn stalks were on steroids the next few days…they sprouted then spurted.
Stewardship takes some work, too. Gotta plant those cotton-picking things about holiness, and love, and giving. The weeding is about a combination of “we” and “deeding.” “We” are us, Jesus’ disciples, and “deeding” is what we do with what we are given.
It is tough sometimes to find joy in it. It is probably about separating the things that hinder us from doing good and from what is best.
Holy Spirit, help me get on my hands and knees again to pull weeds praying. Lord, I rededicate myself to you this summer in my stewardship. Not just my money, but myself.