Stewarding our Vocations

For Meditation

"Vocational Stewardship is the intentional and strategic deployment of our vocational power -- knowledge, platform, networks, position, influence, skills and reputation -- to advance foretastes of God's Kingdom."  Amy Sherman

We’ve learned so far in our Entrusted series that God creates a good and glorious world, and then entrusts the ongoing work of subduing and ruling creation to his image bearers. But how we do that? One way is through creation care (week 2). But another major way we do that is through our vocations. God is a gardener, a builder, an architect; and he creates men and women to join him in this work of ordering creation.

We learn some vital things here in Genesis 1 and 2 about vocational stewardship:

• Work is good. In almost all the ancient accounts of creation the gods create the world and enlist humans as their slaves. Work was seen as bad- and to be free of work was to become like the gods, who lived in leisure. But in the Bible, God is a worker with his own hands in the dirt, therefore dignifying human work not as an effect of the fall but as something that is built into the goodness of creation. This ennobles every form of work because it mirrors the labor of our King.

• Work images God. Doing work is one of the way we most reflect God and his own creativity. God is a maker, a creator. Work that images God does the same. Business, Art, Management, Teaching, Medicine, Engineering, Parenting- all good work brings about something new, takes order out of chaos. Look at your gifts and abilities and ask how has God made you to mirror him.

• Work is for the common good. Work is one of the most powerful ways we love. Work is for the caring of fellow human beings, not principally for our own gain and glory. Stewardship means taking what doesn’t belong to you (your work, your gifts and your abilities) and employing it for the good of others and the common good of humanity, making the world more just, beautiful, equitable, holy – bringing the world more in line with God’s Kingdom for the benefit of all. How are you deploying your “vocational power” to advance foretastes of God’s kingdom?

Genesis 1:26-27; 2:8-9, 15-20

Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”

27 So God created mankind in his own image,
    in the image of God he created them;
    male and female he created them.

Genesis 2:8-9, 15-20

8 Now the Lord God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man he had formed. 9 The Lord God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground—trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

15 The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. 16 And the Lord God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; 17 but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.”

18 The Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.”

19 Now the Lord God had formed out of the ground all the wild animals and all the birds in the sky. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. 20 So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds in the sky and all the wild animals.

But for Adam no suitable helper was found.