"stewardship"

as most of my diligent blog-followers may have noticed, the trends in recent entries have alluded to and bluntly stated my monetary stresses and frustrations. knowing this, i'm sure you can understand how when we walked into church this morning and picked up the bulletin entitled "stewardship part 1" that i was less than thrilled. i think the one thing that turns me off from church more than politics becoming the topic of the sermon would have to be money.

i settled into my seat rather bummed that i'd gotten out of bed in order to be guilt-tripped and leave feeling bad about myself and my spending habits. fortunately, the pastor decided to approach money from a more biblical perspective. he talked about how christians have been "giving" out of guilt and duty for years. how the church has become the master of manipulation, and how perverted the giving has become (perverted in the truest sense of the word, meaning 'to turn away from'). he addressed how the nature of money is neutral, neither inherintly good nor evil and how the important thing is the condition of our hearts. how giving should be joyous, and how we're not supposed to be giving out of guilt, duty, or even desire for profit but instead out of an attitude of submission and joy for the One who has given us everything. he ended with, what i think is one of the coolest things God has done, by reminding us that in malachi, God says, "test me in this" and that if we are giving, we will be truly blessed. (the pastor was also sure to remind us that that does not mean you'll get back 100x what you give, as some people have said, because God does not tell us HOW we'll be blessed, but that giving will lead to us being at peace with our finances. there were a lot of other things in there, but i don't have time to recompose the sermon - i'm sure that if you are really interested, i could probably find a recording or transcript for you.

anyway, i was thinking about how, to give 10% of my paycheck would not be all that much money each month... and how our car-payment is practically double that... which means it's like 20% of my paycheck, which made me very sad! but also i thought about how prior to marriage, i really didn't think about money too much because i always knew i had more than i was spending, but once you're two people sharing money, living for a while off one salary for a while, i have sort of let the money-stress become a part of my life, way too big a part, and what i'd love would be to wake up and not worry about money. so andrew and i are going to think and talk about giving, and i know that with thoughtful consideration, discussion, and prayer, we'll end up making the right choices for ourselves and with our money.

on a totally unrelated note, i guess i should recap what we've been up to since new years'. not a whole lot, really. i was sick and spent most of the week lying on the couch. i went to the doctor, where they deduced i had a sinus infection and medicated me heavily. i missed a couple days of work at the vet, but i worked again friday and had a pretty good time. yesterday, we hung out with my mom for a while and then went to my parents' house for a few hours. it's always good to see them, and especially good when mom decides to make rice krispy treats! after that, we went to meghan's birthday celebration and mostly hung out with kim. meghan lives in a really cool apartment complex in cary, one of the ones that looks like it belongs in a big city where rich executives have "flats" or something. we had the run of the clubhouse complete with movie theater, video game room (with guitar hero!), a gym, card room, pool room, and a business office. obviously, we didn't use the gym or business office, but i was still amazed with the place! we had a good time and ended the night watching a movie in bed. so far, despite the sickness, 2008 is off to a pretty good start, and i'm excited to see how it will continue to unfold!