When I was a little girl, my mother taught me to be sure to thank anyone who gave me a gift. She told me that people would get their feelings hurt if they thought I was ungrateful for gifts they had given me. I tried to remember, and if I forgot, my mother reminded me. I remember well when she came to me asking on behalf of one of her friends if I had ever received the gift she sent me for high school graduation. Mother knew that I had received it, and Mother was not taking forgetfulness for a justification of my failure to send a thank-you note.

 Parents often tell their children that if they forget to say thank you, they might not get any more presents. That idea is okay as far as it goes, if you are dealing with a three-year-old. It doesn’t carry much water when you become an adult.

 In the USA today, the economy is a major topic of discussion. At the level of the politicians, it appears that government action is needed and that the actions of government so far must not have been the right ones, so we need to try again. At the personal level, people have lost jobs or taken pay cuts or now feel trapped in undesirable jobs because there are no better jobs to be had. Families talk about cutting back on gifts at Christmas or they drive the old car another year and so forth. There are all kinds of tips and tricks on the internet and in the news to help families “live within their budget” or “pinch pennies.” Parents tell children that vacations and new clothes and other non-essentials will be reduced or eliminated, because Mother doesn’t have a job any more or Daddy’s hours were cut.

 Just writing the words in the paragraph above made me angry. It makes the people involved angry, too. There is a national sense that we have lost something, that we are deprived and put upon. There are certainly political issues involved, but I don’t plan to discuss those issues. I want to talk about the way we cope. Using the language of deprivation and giving up and doing without makes anyone angry. Think how you felt the last time you heard from your boss at work that you need to “do more with less” or “we’re going to be lean and mean.” When a person feels that he has lost something he used to have or that he must give up something he thought he was entitled to, it creates anger, not to mention fear, maybe humiliation, and jealousy. Who got what I was supposed to have?

 This is not the way God intended for us to live. In the reality where God is on his throne, God gives gifts to all, the righteous and the unrighteous. Everyone gets sun and rain and winter and summer. For that matter, at the personal level, you could say that in a family faced with less money this year than last, it is still right to recognize that all good gifts and all perfect gifts come from God. Job had it right, and we all need to remember it: The Lord gives and the Lord takes away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. [Job 1:21]

 There is another way to look at life, and it applies whether you have much or little, whether you just got a raise or just got laid off. This way of dealing with the economy does not create anger or jealousy. This way of living avoids putting the emphasis on pinching pennies or cutting back or living within a smaller budget. It involves all the disciplines of good money management, but its perspective builds satisfaction, peace and happiness rather than the sense that you can’t wait for this crisis to be over so you can get back to normal. This way of looking at life works all the time. It defuses any sense that you are in crisis, because it starts with the recognition that God’s providence is always adequate, it builds on gratefulness, and it asks completely different questions about the use of God’s provision for our needs.

 If you are pinching pennies or trying to fit your budget, you start with the question, where can I cut back? If you are living in gratefulness for God’s provision, you start with the question, how can I use what God has provided in ways that show him how grateful I am?

 For example, you may have children whose allowances must be reduced after one parent loses a job. If you tell your children, “Well, you just have to get used to it,” you can be sure they are going to their rooms to implode over that whole idea. They don’t want to get used to it, and they may never actually do that. As long as this is the way money is handled, it is sure to create problems. If you start with the attitude that in God’s providence, the current family income is sure to be enough for everyone, then you can ask everyone, “what can we do to show God how thankful we are for what he has provided us?”

 My children are grown and gone, and I don’t have to deal with that problem these days. I do, however, have to deal with the fact that grocery prices are increasing while my income is not. I have to ask myself what I can actually buy with the money I have. If I think that I must “make do” with less desirable cuts of meat or only eat asparagus on special occasions, those thoughts make me unhappy. They make me ask, “when does this end?” However, if I start by thanking God that I have an income, and if I then recall that he has never failed me in all my life, then I can ask for the wisdom to use what he has provided. I can give thanks even before I buy anything for the flavor, color, aroma, texture and delight I will enjoy at every meal. When there are only a few peas left after dinner, I might be tempted to discard them rather than store them away, but if I ask myself, what can I do that shows God I am grateful for these peas, then I am likely to store them and use them the next day in soup.

 I won’t try to tell you a lot of tips and tricks for showing your gratitude. That whole idea sort of flies in the face of the concept. After all, everything I do is an expression of the life I live, not your life. One of God’s most wonderful gifts is our freedom to be ourselves, with our unique dreams, visions, and talents. For me to say that you should always save your peas for soup as an act of grateful living, turns that act into checklist morality. It becomes compliance with a guideline or a rule rather than the outgrowth of relationship.

 Which is the real point. Relationship. We live in relationship with God, and when we build that relationship by getting to know him better and by becoming more and more aware of his constant blessings and gifts to us, then our attitudes toward things will change. That is when we will see his unique gifts to us, be it money or the ability to draw or curly hair, as part of our heritage of blessing. That is when we will grow to know and love God so deeply that when we use something he has given us – money, food, songs, etc. – we will do it in gratitude and honor toward him. Then we will forget all about being deprived and cutting back and doing without.

 If we live with this attitude at all times, then “good” times or “bad” times become alike to us. All times are times to recognize God’s gifts and give thanks to him. No time is the right time to complain that he has failed us. Every day is the “day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.” [Psalm 118:24]

When I was a little girl, I vividly remember the annual stewardship drives conducted by the various churches where we were members. These programs began with a presentation of an ambitious budget for the church, and then focused on ways for members to calculate the correct amount to give to support that budget. Children like me often received little “piggy” banks shaped like churches where we could put money away for Sunday morning. I don’t know about the other kids, but I rarely had anything to put in that bank. I received my nickel for the offering every Sunday morning tied up in the corner of a handkerchief, which I proudly stuffed into my red patent leather “going to church” purse. I felt completely disconnected from all the excitement as the pledges were counted, but I really liked the annual banquet where we ate baked ham and green beans and scalloped potatoes. I grew up with the impression that when a church used the word “stewardship” it was code language for “be sure you give at least a tithe to the church.” I attended church training every Sunday evening, and that is where they taught us how to calculate the tithe. It was a lot like the IRS code – monumental, demanding, and impossible to do right. We all felt doomed, and we mostly went around apologizing inside, if not aloud, for failing to give God his tithe. We felt guilty, because even though a tithe was a tenth (there was no dispute about that), we were never quite sure what it was a tenth of. Gross income? Gifts? Change found in the couch cushions? In retrospect, as I recall those training sessions, I am always reminded of the Pharisees. Jesus said that they were so good at tithing that they even tithed the herbs in their gardens. Yet they were so good at religious money management that they found ways to avoid helping their aging parents and they could walk right by an assault victim on the highway because helping him would make them late for worship. Jesus was not impressed by anyone’s ability to calculate a tithe. That little formula is about counting money. Jesus wanted people to live in a relationship with him that required a complete commitment of their lives, not a bag of money that was exactly, not one penny less than and not one penny more than, a tithe. Jesus taught that stewardship is not about money, but rather, about the heart. When a rich man came to him hoping to be praised for his obedience to the law, including the tithe, Jesus ignored all that legal compliance and asked him to forget the money and give God his life. The man could not do it. Jesus told a story about a rich man who gave his stewards different amounts of money to use in his name. When he came back, he didn’t condemn the man with one talent for not making it into ten talents; he condemned him for not realizing that the talent was in his possession, not to hoard, but rather to use in service to the man who owned it. Here is the real meaning of stewardship. Stewardship is our recognition that we own nothing and God owns everything. Every crumb of food we eat, every sunrise we enjoy, every penny we earn, every blanket that keeps us warm in winter – everything is God’s gift to us, and we ought to use it gratefully in his service. We owe God our gratitude for everything, and we need to remember to use everything the way God does. We don’t need to pinch pennies or develop complicated formulas for tithing. We must simply be grateful to God for all that we receive, and put our faith in him. We need to get over the fear that if we give something away, we will be poor. Oh, how I hate the word “ought.” That is the word used freely by people who want to impose an obligation on others. They tell us we “ought” to tithe, and they tell us we “ought” to give over and above. The problem is that tithing and giving and serving and financing the kingdom are not at all things we “ought” to undertake, like it or not. Rather, if there is anything we “ought” to do, we “ought” to pray to grow in our relationship into a maturity that will guide our use of all the blessings, material or otherwise, that we receive from the Lord. Do you remember how it felt the first time you began to grasp what Christ had done for you? Do you remember when that load of guilt that built such a wall between you and God was lifted as if it had never existed at all? Did you not want to shout your thanks and share with everyone this wonderful experience? What shut you down? Our salvation is the greatest blessing any of us ever receives from the Lord, and we give thanks for it privately, but what keeps us from tithing that blessing? Why can’t we share the blessing of salvation with other people? It is the same thing that makes it hard for us to share our money, our food, and our time. We think we need everything we have. We think that when we let go of anything, it is gone, and we do without. We see that we could use even more than we possess. We don’t think of using everything we possess in ways that express our gratitude to God for his provision. This is the secret. When we acknowledge that everything we have belongs to God, then those tough calculations are out the window. We can’t possibly figure out how much we “owe” God if all of it belongs to him. Everything changes when we accept that we are stewards of God’s gifts. If God gives me the use of his great gifts, then all I need to do is figure out what use of those gifts shows God my great gratitude. When I accept that I am the steward of all these gifts, not the owner, then it is a lot easier to pass the gifts I receive to others in need. The tithe in the Bible is a lesson and a model for us as stewards of gifts that do not belong to us. Stewardship is not compliance with some law that requires us to give God a tenth. Stewardship is the act of love that says “thank you” to God by using his provision for our families and sharing those gifts in gratitude for the way God provides for everything. When we live in a servant relationship with the God who loves us, our giving is not like paying off the IRS. It is more like a ticket to fulltime happiness.