By Robin M. Caldwell

John and I have been blessed with many gifts.  We both were raised by parents who took us to church each Sunday with at least one parent very active in the Presbyterian Church.  I can recall my first plane ride at around age 5, peering at the window and yelling "Hello, Jesus!" (must have made my parents proud😊).

Eventually, I found my way to the Episcopal Church which felt like home to me, and John was confirmed after we were married.  When JCPenney transferred us to Plano, I began attending an Episcopal Church in Plano and a few years later they strongly encouraged tithing during the fall stewardship campaign.  Oddly enough, I had never been invited to, much less heard the word, "tithe" from a church.  It was when we were asked to move up to a tithe that we really began to count our blessings…to listen to God.  Up to that point, we just lived our busy lives day to day.  And it was around this time that we had our son, our son who was only born due to the prayers of The Mustard Seeds, our church small group, and our fertility doctor.  The more we thought and prayed about it, the more we acknowledged that our many blessings had very little to do with our personal achievements.

We had no part in determining our lineage, our parents, the country we were born in or the gifts that we were born with.  I trust that we are not squandering many of those gifts.  I was raised with the words of Luke "to whom much has been given, much will be required," or as The Message simplifies it: "Great gifts mean great responsibilities, greater gifts, greater responsibilities!"

Everything comes from and belongs to God, and we are two of God's many stewards in this world…entrusting us to do God's will…to become God's hands.   After years of managing our finances, we were learning to release them.  We were giving back to God what was God's in the first place.  And I was giving more of my time and skills to Transfiguration and the Episcopal Church.

Our "mission" is to use any gifts that we are given to better God's world.  I am very aware that an accident, a tragedy, a medical emergency, a market decline could take them all away in a second.  But at this time, we continue to be blessed and we are (in my mind) commanded by God to give back so that others can have blessings that they may not have been born with, and that these blessings should continue after we have passed to the next world.

We are aware that we have more yesterdays than tomorrows.  We find that we don't need as much.  That we have more to share with others who have more needs.  As one of my brothers has said, your last suit does not need pockets.