Taking Care of Church Business

Things pile up in my head.  It’s kind of like having a mental squirrel that finds nuts of information and thoughts and emotions and stuffs them in the empty spaces of my mind.  I wouldn’t mind this so much if the squirrel didn’t do it all higglety-pigglety so that it all appears to be trivia rather than actual knowledge.  Sometimes he buries those nuts and forgets where he put them.  Then when I need them, I can’t find them.  An organized squirrel – that’s what I need.

In spite of my squirrel’s disarray, occasionally he piles things close enough together that they start to take on some meaning.  A stray word here and there and suddenly, it’s as if two bits of information join hands and start jumping up and down waving and yelling “here I am!!!”  I don’t know if that makes me smart, intuitive, or just crazy, but once in a while, all those things come together to make sense.

The word that started this whole thought process this time is stewardship.  Every year, someone takes charge of stewardship and writes you a letter or talks to you asking you to search your heart and make a financial pledge to the church.  Beverly Spencer did a wonderful job of that last year.  When I received her letter, I sat right down and took a realistic look at my finances and figured out what I could pledge to give every week, including the weeks I wasn’t here so that I could write a check to cover those days as well without worrying about it.  Her words inspired me to do it. 

In all honesty, I’d never made a pledge to a church before.  When the plate was passed, I put in whatever I could afford to put in that day, but it was never something I planned for or made a conscious effort to continue.  Beverly’s words made me realize that not only did they want me to pledge, but that it was IMPORTANT.  I don’t know how I got to this somewhat advanced age without thinking about things like how the light bill got paid or the rugs vacuumed or even how the priest’s paycheck came about. 

Here’s the part where the squirrel pile in my head started making some sense.

Have you ever heard the phrase “I wish you enough?”  It’s from a story I heard a long time ago.  I don’t remember if it was on the radio or the internet, but my squirrel loved that story and gathered it up to stick in a far corner of my mind.  It goes something like this:

A man in an airport overheard a man and his grown daughter talking at the gate.  They expressed their love for each other and their sadness at parting, and as she left, her father said “I wish you enough.” When the door to the ramp closed, the man asked the father about the phrase.  He said “This has been our way of saying goodbye in my family for a long time.  This is the last time I will say goodbye to my daughter – she lives far away and I am old.  The next time she returns, it will probably be for my funeral.

“When we said ‘I wish you enough,” we were wanting the other person to have a life filled with enough good things to sustain them,” and turning his gaze from the departing plane to me, he shared the following as if reciting from memory…  “I wish you enough sun to keep your attitude bright.  I wish you enough rain to appreciate the sun more.  I wish you enough happiness to keep your spirit alive.  I wish you enough pain so that the smallest joys in life appear much bigger.  I wish you enough gain to satisfy your wanting.  I wish you enough loss to appreciate all that you possess.  I wish you enough hellos to get you through the final goodbye.”

It’s a powerful phrase, isn’t it?  I wish you enough.

It occurs to me that the church wishes me enough.  It is a place and a gathering of people whose worship of God seems to center around these very thoughts.  We come together to celebrate the joys of life – marriages, new babies, children coming of age in their understandings of the church and the teachings of Christ.  The good times we have together help us face the sad times we have together – when we lose a member of this parish to death or when someone leaves this family to move far away, literally or figuratively.  And the hope is that by coming together in joy, we are strong enough to face the bad things – and to appreciate the good just a bit more.

Stewardship.  It’s not just money, though money is how we pay for what we need.  It’s the things we do to take care of our church.  It’s planting flowers and writing to someone who needs to know someone cares.  It’s baking cookies for social minute or washing table clothes after a Senior Luncheon.  It’s pulling together to put on a funeral reception when we lose one of our own.  And yes, it is money in the plate that helps buy a new organ so we can make our joyful noise with a powerful instrument or a new HVAC so we can stay cool in the summer and warm in the winter.

When I think about my finances, I think about my family and my home.  I don’t make a lot of money, so I really have to make my dollars work for me.  I’ve got a mortgage and utility bills.  A car that uses gas. I have to buy food – note the now taller-than-me son.  Sometimes it seems like there’s a conveyor belt between my fridge and his mouth - and don’t get me started on how fast he outgrows his shoes.  My pocketbook has to keep up with the things that stay pretty much the same AND the things that change.

This church is my second home.  Like my home, it needs money to function.  There’s a mortgage and utility bills.  Like my house, there’s always something that needs fixing – the AC, a toilet, the leak under the sink – or replacing, like the roof.  This place is so much bigger than my house.  It holds a lot more people too.  Lucky for us – between all of us – we can support this place.  Everyone contributes to the upkeep of the building and grounds and the well-being of the people who work and live here.   We need to keep ahead of the surprises that can spring up like trees that fall and to maintain what we have already. 

I’ve sat through a number of stewardship talks that say “give ‘til it hurts” – but I’m not sure that’s right thinking.  Maybe it’s better to give until it feels good – because you know that it’s enough to make sure we can take care of what needs to be taken care of.  Everyone’s number is different, but I feel confident that if we all gave until it felt right and good, this church would be doing just fine.

God blesses each and every one of us with so much.  It is not so much to ask that we, in turn, bless this church and each other with our support.  Amen.