Stewarding Opportunity

With each reading, we discover more about the intriguing "Proverbs 31 woman" who I spoke about last Sunday.  If you're reading this for the first time, you may want to read the intro and the second post to understand why I'm using apostrophes.  Suffice it to say, this truly is a remarkable human being.  In this post, I look at how she uses her time and how much discernment she brings in choosing the type of work she does.

I once heard it said that Christians should have "both hands full".  I was uneasy with the statement as it suggested a lifestyle of being overworked.  In his book "Essentialism: the disciplined pursuit of Less", Greg McKeown asks the following questions:

• Have you ever found yourself stretched too thin at home, work (and church?)
• Do you feel overworked or underutilised?  
• Do you feel busy but not productive?  
• Do you ever feel constantly in motion but never getting anywhere?  

While you may have answered "yes" to some of these, I suspect our Proverbs 31 steward would not have

While we should indeed be exerting all our energy in the service of our master, we are not to do so indiscriminately.  While the steward described here "works with eager hands" (vs 13) she is very discerning in the tasks she sets out to do.  She "selects" wool and flax (vs 13), she carefully "considers a field" (vs 16) in which to invest her earnings for a fruitful return.  Once she has chosen her battles, she "sets about her work vigorously" (vs 17) safe in the knowledge that God alone - who has directed her to these specific undertakings - will fuel her efforts.

We too can live like this but we have to wait on God for clear guidance about where our energies are to best spent.  Once clear, we can joyfully exert all our energies without worrying we are misallocating them on the "wrong" types of projects.