To really understand intentional living we must first identify what good stewards do:
- Accepting the responsibility for safeguarding, investing in, and nurturing material and human resources
- Using resources for the highest and best use
- Giving time, talent, and treasure in a generous but focused way
The best stewards recognize God as the origin of life, giver of freedom, and source of all things. As good stewards, we are grateful and eager to use all things entrusted to us to show our love for our Creator, for one another, and for ourselves.
Being a successful steward means we:
- Receive our creator’s gifts gratefully, joyful appreciating, protecting and preserving the God-given beauty and wonder of nature;
- Respect human life—shielding life from threat and assault, doing everything that can be done to enhance this gift and make life flourish;
- Develop this world through noble human effort—physical labor, the trades and professions, the arts and sciences. Such effort is called work and, work is a fulfilling human vocation.
- Share the gifts we steward lovingly in justice with others, and
- Employ them with increase.
How will you steward the resources in your care?