I have been looking my whole life for a larger story to come under. Some epic adventure to be part of, some hero’s quest. But I don’t want some ear tickling fairytale. The story needs to reckon with the reality of a world that is at once bursting with beauty and broken with pain and suffering.

After a lot of dead end searching, I have found the story of God in the Bible to be large enough to hold both of these in tension. I believe that through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ I can be reconciled to God and reclaim the relationship I was made to have with my Creator.

And yet I have always struggled to understand how to go on living my day-to-day life. If in the moment I believed in Jesus I just teleported to be with Him forever, that’s simple. But if I am still here on Earth in the same job with the same shoes on the same couch, what do I do with myself? How does the Gospel transform how I think about my time on Earth?

Much of my life has been spent on the sidelines consuming music and teachings in the church, even criticizing it! My default ways of thinking have been so shaped by my culture, I just thought I could sprinkle some Jesus on top of an otherwise normal American life and expect things to feel different. I thought the best humans could do was just not mess things up and my role was just to cheer God on and live out my days beep bopping around because they didn’t matter much, then in the end take my golden ticket to an unimagined afterlife in the clouds somewhere and hope I told enough people about Him.

I was at peace with God, but I was bored.

The lens of stewardship has changed all of this for me, it has reframed my purpose while I am still here. Let’s go back to the beginning of the story with fresh eyes and see how God reclaimed this epic role that was lost.

God created humans in his image to be his partners in making something together out of his abundant world. Creation was good but not done, full of potential to bring forth. Gardens to grow, rivers to chart, animals to reign in, and much to leave wild. He gave us raw materials and a charter - manage it well, go invent beautiful and useful things - and stick with me. We were to be stewards of all that he made, a tremendously high and exciting call. A responsibility to grow into, an epic story to live with God. Why he chose humans instead of doing it himself is beyond me, but clearly he wants to partner with humans to carry his creation project forward.

You don’t have to read far in the Bible to see how we decided we could do it better ourselves. We broke away from this union with our creator and things were never the same. God handed us the keys to learn to drive with Him, but we stole the car, crashed it in ditch and ran away. Shame sought to clothe us in our separation. We wandered long and hard, unable to crawl our way back to a Holy God.

But God remained on the move. He knew no amount of good intentions on our part would mend the chasm between his perfection and our rebellion. So he did a most unexpected thing and became one of us. He took on newborn skin, born in the dust to a teenager. Jesus laughed and ate and got tired just like us. He healed people, heard people, and drew them in. Everywhere he went crowds packed in to hear him talk. They thought this was their long awaited king, the one who would finally break the shackles of Rome. But this king would choose a different crown. On a hill he created he was murdered for claiming to be the Son of God. He bled out as his friends scattered with the last of the little hope that remained. Days went by, it seemed all was over. The fishermen started to pick up the nets they had once left behind to follow him.

But God was not done. Just like he said he would, he came back. The same mangled corpse that once got tucked away and guarded was now walking, talking, laughing again! Touch my scars and see for yourself, he said. He had done it! God had brought Jesus back, defeating the power of sin and death that had enslaved us since the early break up, paying the unpayable debt in full. The original intent - the ongoing relationship with God through which all things were to flow - was made possible once again.

Let’s reclaim the role that God won back for us. Let us become stewards of God’s abundant world.