Stewardship Today

For Sunday school today, Nicole I decided to skip ahead a week to cover Doctrine & Covenants 42. It's the section people in Kirtland called "The Law": we wanted to make sure to cover it because it was such a big deal for them. 

We talked about the moral, economic, and spiritual passages of the section as examples of the principle of stewardship. If our relationships, our property, and even our spiritual gifts are trusts from God, what does it mean to be good stewards over them? 

Then we asked the class if there are parts of our lives that are different from the Kirtland Saints' that we might think about as stewardships. 

Got some really interesting answers. One class member talked about how relatively few of us farm now, and shared what it had felt like for her to see her job as a stewardship to God. 

Another class member brought up retirement. Improvements in health and structures for saving over the past two centuries have given millions of people the opportunity to stop working for an extended period of their lives. He talked about what it is meant to him to view his retirement years as a trust from God to serve others. 

We mentioned other aspects of life. How we are stewards now over the technology in our lives. How we have more tools for thinking about how to be good stewards over the environment. And it just really moves me to see people thinking in terms of what they can do to use the resources and skills and knowledge around them to serve. 

That mindset of consecration is good religion. We can't do everything, but I love to watch people think about what they can do in their sphere.