Whether we have many resources or few resources, we all have freedom in determining how to wield what we’ve been given.
For Christians, there are two general principles behind our decisions of allocation. First, resources are finite; we cannot create them out of nothing. And second, our resources aren’t ours alone; we must share them.
The biblical name for resource allocation is stewardship. While the word “stewardship” doesn’t appear in the Bible, we can look to the Garden of Eden to better understand what it means.
In Genesis 2, we read that God placed humanity in the Garden to “tend and watch over” it (NLT). But Adam and Eve did not create Eden themselves. This leads us to the first principle of stewardship: Nothing on earth is truly ours. We own nothing. In Psalm 24:1 we read, “The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it” (NIV). Instead of being the creators or owners of the Garden, Adam and Eve were called to be managers or stewards of the Garden. They didn’t own it, but they were responsible for it.
C.S. Lewis powerfully expressed this understanding of stewardship in his book Mere Christianity, when he wrote,
“Every faculty you have, your power of thinking or of moving your limbs from moment to moment, is given you by God. If you devoted every moment of your whole life exclusively to His service you could not give Him anything that was not in a sense His own already.”¹
When we understand that this world is temporary and that we are called, as Christ followers, to manage for a short time the resources we are entrusted with, we are motivated to invest in areas with an eternal yield rather than in simply acquiring possessions that “moth and rust destroy” (Matthew 6:19 NASB).
As the apostle Paul reminds us in 1 Corinthians 4:2, “A person who is put in charge as a manager must be faithful” (NLT). When we take this to heart, we joyfully provide for our families and friends. We give generously to those who have needs. We live with open hands, because we know that we are not owners but temporary managers of the resources entrusted to us by the Lord.
¹C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (HarperOne, 2001), 143.
