What does your weekly shopping list look like? However long your list, it’s almost certain that it pales into insignificance compared to the weekly shop done by Penny Culliford, Chaplain at YMCA Thames Gateway.
Two women: both Christian writers, both married to clergy, both mothers of four children. And both adoptive parents.
As Christmas approaches, they shared some of the ways they’re looking forward to living out generosity at home and in their communities, as well as the truths about giving that they’ve learnt since adopting.
Based in Glasgow, which has one of the highest numbers of drug-related deaths in the UK, Street Connect offers support to those struggling with homelessness, mental health issues, addiction, poverty and trauma of all kinds.
“People avoided me and things were difficult with my family because of my drug taking. Donald and June treated me like a normal person, and their willingness to sit down with me and get me whatever I needed showed me what transformational generosity looked like.”
Receiving an unexpected gift is a wonderful blessing. Shakespeare had something to say about how we should respond to one in Twelfth Night: ‘I can no answer make but thanks and thanks and ever thanks...’
As Christians, we give because God asks us to. We don’t do it for thanks, but out of gratitude for everything that we’ve been given by him. Responding with thanks for the gifts with which we’re blessed is not only biblical, but common sense. Who doesn’t love a thank you?
Since his cancer diagnosis seven years ago, Jeremy Marshall has discovered his own wonder drug. It’s not a treatment plan, nor a mental attitude. It is simply and wholly this: generosity.
No less a person than William Wordsworth once said that poetry is emotion recollected in tranquillity. This has certainly been the experience of Paul Bebbington, part time civil servant and poet. Twelve years ago, his friend Mark Darvell invited him to be his travel companion on a church trip to Romania. Neither traveller had any inkling of the changes that would come as a result of their journey.
Support comes in many forms. Armed with a basket of rainbow-coloured wool and apparently bionic knitting needles, this is the story of a retired granny in West Yorkshire who’s touching the lives of young girls and their babies thousands of miles away in Kenya.
For most of us, Dolly Parton had it right with her classic song about being a slave to the alarm clock, Nine to Five. As the songstress says: “Working nine to five, what a way to earn a living, barely getting by, it’s all taking and no giving.” By the time most people hit retirement age, they’re more than ready to give up the early mornings, rushed breakfasts and commutes to work in favour of a quieter life, pruning the roses, ambling round garden centres and looking after grandchildren.
When I was at school in the 1970s, the word “slavery” meant the TV series “Roots.” We were all glued to it, open-mouthed at the successive generations of enslaved people who made up writer Alex Haley’s family. Today, in 2018, modern slavery is everywhere, its toxic fingers reaching into every country and community. People are still forced to work against their will by cruel masters.
blogs by the Stewardship team and selected guest writers.
Stewardship is the operating name of Stewardship Services (UKET) Limited. Established in 1906.
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