89 cent chicken and stewarding what we have

In the last post, I wrote about ways that I've been preparing whole chickens I get for 89 cents a pound. And then I thought to myself, "Why's it so important to me that the chicken is 89 cents a pound?" As it turns out, this is actually related to the year of "doing less". Doing less doesn't mean we're doing nothing. What I'm finding is that we're being drawn back over and over again to "stewarding what we have".

It's tax time here at our place and this ends up being our annual tally up how much we gave away assessment. We try to give away 15% of our gross income every year, but stuff comes up and we may give away more.

89 cent chicken instead of $3.99 chicken helps us to support:
Our local church that invests in us and our community
Friends who invested in us and are now missionaries in Thailand
A child in South America through Compassion Intl.
Friends who have been working to get kids off the streets in Tanzania
Friends who invested in me when I was a college student. One couple is now investing in post-college people and new teachers across the US and another is investing in college kids in Hungary.
Friends who work with the urban poor off my college campus.

I like doing this annual tally because I'm reminded why we didn't buy a fancier house, cooler, new gadgets, and hip furniture and why we do drive older cars and look for ways to spend less. Would it be nice to have our lives "tricked out"? Probably, for a while. But what means more to us is having relationships that are meaningful. We're not the most relationally savvy folk around, so we're grateful to the folk that have poured into us. And I think that's a good thing and something the Apostle Paul encouraged. We want to help them out as we can and right now that's financially. We have money and when we steward our money well, we get to participate in extending the kingdom of God far beyond what we could do with our own two hands and two feet.

Those are the thoughts for the day, more on doing less and stewarding what we have later.