Last week, Julia introduced Team LIFE’s 2022 stewardship education plan, with its theme, Rooted in Our Neighborhood, Branching Out in Love. This week we focus on L, for labor. One definition of stewardship is “everything we do with everything we have” – in other words, everything we do with our time, our gifts and our resources, including our work. Psalm 119 refers to the seven times a day that faithful Jews offered praise to God, and those in monastic communities often speak of their work as prayer, intentionally weaving work and spirituality.

While away on vacation last week, I was blessed to ride some of the best rollercoasters in the world, at Cedar Point in Northern Ohio near my hometown. My husband and I are theme park megafans, and I can honestly say there is almost nowhere I find more joy than at the top of that first big hill, about to slide 200 feet toward the ground at a hundred miles an hour. But before the big thrill, after they strapped us into our seats, the click-click-click of going upwards toward the top always makes me ask myself, ‘Lord, what have I done? This is a terrible idea!’