I am Jennifer Pavia, your Director of Children’s Ministries. I have brought the 3-5 graders up with me this morning to cheer me on!

Rev. Nate asked me to share some thoughts with you about my experience with stewardship. I told him that I was probably not a great choice, but he is my boss, and I do trust him. My husband of 20 years Dan and I have two super girls, an 11 year old and a 19 year old banana slug up at UC Santa Cruz. Both were baptized as babies here with you all, brought up surrounded by your love and guidance. And like all families we know, we are busily engaged in our children’s lives, our work, and our community here and where we live.

We consider ourselves to be grateful and generous, so stewardship shouldn’t be a struggle. But it is so fraught in our family even though it starts out pretty simple. We make financial decisions together as a couple, and are almost always on the same page with money matters. Except when it comes to giving. And the more I think about it, I suspect we aren’t the only ones. There is a Biblical precedent of course. God entrusted Adam and Eve as stewards of the Garden…at least we can’t mess it up as badly as they did! But we really struggle…with each other and with our own fears. Fears that hold one or the other of us back from the deep recognition that that everything we have belongs to God. That we have been entrusted with whatever we have to provide for ourselves and others in a way that respects everyone’s human dignity.

We have been commanded to love our neighbors as ourselves. And we don’t argue with this; it is why our family spends so much time in this place. But then one of us reaches for the checkbook and the other says no, that’s too much…after all we have college tuition, and big medical bills, and retirement, and emergency savings, and music lessons and aging parents, all of the everyday realities of life.

We are faced with the very real fears of not enough…it will never be enough. And so we struggle with each other, and we argue, and we compromise. But I do know that God is right there with us in this mess. Little by little loosening that vice-grip of fear and scarcity that rules much of our thinking and decision-making. Opening our hearts little by little to each other as partners in this God-given life, and to the reality that it is not only already enough, it is more than enough.