Dear People of St. John’s,

     One of my favorite writers and contemporary theologians is Robert Fulghum.  In his book, It Was On Fire When I Lay Down On It, Fulghum tells the story about an incident with his daughter, Molly.  One day, as Fulghum was ready to leave for work, Molly handed him two brown paper bags.  In one was his lunch.  What was in the other was kind of a mystery.  When Fulghum asked about the contents, Molly said, “It’s just some stuff.  Take it with you.”  At lunchtime, Fulghum tore open the bag, dumping its contents on the desk.  There he saw two hair ribbons, three small stones, a plastic dinosaur, a pencil stub, a tiny seashell, two animal crackers, a marble, a used tube of lipstick, a small doll, two chocolate kisses, and thirteen pennies.

     Later in the day, when Fulghum was cleaning off his desk before going home, he swiped the contents of Molly’s bag into the wastebasket.  As he said, “There wasn’t anything in there that I needed.”  That evening Molly asked her Dad to give back her bag.  He stammered a bit and told her that he had left it at his office.  He asked why she wanted it back?  Molly said, “Those are my things in the bag, Daddy, the ones I really like.  I thought you might like to play with them, but now I want them back.  You didn’t lose the bag did you, Daddy?”  Charles Fulghum, best-selling author and profound thinker, made a quick trip back to his office that evening, hoping to beat the janitor to a certain trash can.

     How do we handle the blessings that others entrust to us?  Sometimes those are seemingly insignificant things, but they may well represent value to the giver that we neither recognize nor understand.  I have come to believe that relationships must be based on a solid understanding of stewardship.  So often we think of stewardship as dealing only with money or material things.  Being good stewards of our relationships calls us to move to a spiritual realm.  The “other” is always a child of God.  This is the one for whom Jesus the Christ was willing to die.  That person, related to us in a greater or lesser degree, needs to know that we recognize the fact that because they are important in the sight of God, they are important to us.  We are tempted to see the “other” as a means to an end.  People must always be seen and related to as ends in themselves. 

          Temptations are always a lonely business.  Temptations always deal with taking shortcuts.  We want physical intimacy and take the shortcut that leads to just the opposite.  We desire financial security and take the shortcut into padded expense accounts, shady business practices, or those elected or appointed to positions of public service violate that trust and find spiritual bankruptcy. 

     We seek happiness and take the shortcut of giving into the seductive glitter of the things of this world and find ourselves neglecting those relationships that need to be nurtured and held tightly in a lasting commitment.  We conveniently forget that true happiness is a by-product of self-emptying service to God and God’s people.

     This lonely business of temptation will come to each one of us.  The shortcuts look so inviting.  We may have tried some of them.  But we have a way to deal with these temptations.  We find it in the fact that the Lord of this life and the life that is to come faced similar temptations and did not give in to the shortcuts.  That means there is an avenue open for forgiveness, we can find an encouraging word when we fall, and access to power to help us resist taking the shortcuts that lead to death.  In this season of Lent and as a way to show our gratitude for what He has done for us, we are invited to walk with him on this forty-day journey leading to Jerusalem.  There He will face the cross and will die for this conviction that there are no spiritual shortcuts.  On the third day He will rise from the dead in order that we may be made alive.

     May this Lent be a time for us to commit ourselves again to the stewardship of our relationships at all levels of life.  May we remember how blessed we are and how loved we are by God in Christ.  We are, after all, a child of God and one day God will want us back.

Peace,

                                                            Tom