We live within creation’s cage: the double twins of space and time, matter and energy. Their impartial rule treats us all alike. Money, hours, and strength go only until spent. Do the taxes, wash clothes, or hold your honey? Choose one. You can take enough fuel to go the distance, but what cargo stays behind? You can make the extra landing for the patient, but sunset will stop the flight short of the hospital. Limits dog life. Neither desire nor worthy need gains their attention. Their hard places define humanness and teach the brutal lesson quickly: There is not enough to go around. Get yours while you can.

God, on the other hand, lavishes. He pours Himself out, shamelessly ignoring conservation, moderation, and budgets. If limits define neither His character nor His nature, how do we reconcile the humanness we’re trapped in with His call to live in the Spirit now?

He calls it stewardship—constraining ourselves to mortality’s limits in order to minister eternity. He didn’t call us to hide our talents in holes, fearful that they might run out or evaporate. Instead, He tells us to administer His grace that feeds thousands from a kid’s small lunch with such wild exuberance, celebration, and abandon that even the dead wake up.

So, what’s it like swimming in the torrent of His blessing?

Matthew 6:1-4; Matthew 25:14-30; Ephesians 1:3; Luke 6:37-38; Luke 14:25-33; 1 Peter 4:10-11; John 6:5-13