Most of us have a junk drawer. It is that place we accumulate everything we might want to grab one day, but seldom do. Mine has always been in the kitchen. I was looking in it the other day, hunting a twist tie for a bag of bread. I found plenty of things—toothpicks, a few rubber bands, old charger cables, a small can of play-dough, some aging hair bands (I think they belonged to my daughter but now are there for my granddaughters), a container of hardened glue, some string, an assortment of pens that don’t work well, a few paper clips, a sock which mysteriously disappeared long ago, a package of yeast (don’t ask me how), two chip clips, several scraps of paper that must have been important once, and an assortment of other items that have fossilized since deposited.
About the only thing on God’s green earth I didn’t find was a twist tie. Of course.
Sometimes life can feel like that junk drawer. The glut of things we seldom need, or don’t need, block our ability to find the things we do need. We add so many things to our to-do list we don’t know whether we are coming or going—when we want a quiet moment we can’t find one. We buy cars and toys and electronics and take-out—when we need some extra money, it isn’t there. We fill our minds with social media—when we seek peace it feels buried in the wrath and wrangling. We accumulate so many things, and spend so much time, hoping for our own fulfillment—when someone needs us to help them, we can’t find the servants heart inside of us.
And somewhere in that drawer is God’s gentle presence and grace—buried in all our stuff.
Ecclesiastes 3:6 reminds us: “There is a time to keep, and a time to throw away…” Stewardship is the right rendering of your keeping and your throwing. It is the vigilance of making sure that things that are important are available. It is keeping the things that build our faith, and the things that express our faith, out from under the junk of life. Stewardship gives our faith real-life structure, and because it does, it makes our faith ready when we reach for it.
Take a look through your junk drawer this week. You just might find an old sock that needs to make room for something better.
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Glenn Howell
Director of Development
United Methodist Foundation of Indiana
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