Acknowledging the good you already have in your life
Is the foundation for abundance.
—Eckhart Tolle

When we started our stewardship campaign last year, we hoped to achieve an 11% increase in annual giving for 2026. We were really amazed by your response—a 15% increase! But that wasn’t the end of giving for the year. Our conversations in the fall around Our Money Story generated some energy about other donations.

In November and December, we received FOUR anonymous, unsolicited additional gifts:

• one to get us over the hump of a key immediate property project (making the balcony suitable for seating on Christmas. Go up and take a look some Sunday.),
• $5,000 to improve A/V (which is already underway so that the mics don’t cut out and we’ll be able to live stream services),
• $20,000 to do improvements to our Commons (a refresh to make the space more welcoming and useful. More information will follow about this in the next few months.),
• and another $10k for “whatever the rector needs.”

This is so amazing! We are truly blessed here at Grace. Please join us in thanks to God for these gifts and the wonderful community which we continue to create.

[ photo credit ]

Tags: abundance, stewardship, Finances

Friends,

Last Sunday, I preached on Jesus' story of the lucky farmer whose grain harvest exceeds his ability to store it. He decides to build bigger barns, store his harvest, and then kick back, relax, and enjoy life. "You fool!" God says to him, in Jesus' parable. Real security is not about our wealth or our possessions. Real security is to be found in God and in the webs of interdependence, of trust and reciprocal giving, that we find in generous community. Real security is “what we long for but cannot ever purchase – being valued for your own unique gifts, earning the regard of your neighbors for the quality of your character not the quantity of your possessions, what you give, not what you have." (Robin Wall Kimmerer, in The Serviceberry) You can read more about this book in a MPR interview with the author.

Jesus invites us out of the economy of scarcity and competition and into an economy of gift and celebration (check out the parables about the lost coin, the dinner party with guests from the highways and hedges...). We told a story from Robin Wall Kimmerer's latest book, The Serviceberry, to illustrate the different mindset that gift economy offers.

To catch up on that and other recent sermons, click here.

Susan+

Tags: scarcity, abundance, God's Economy, Rev Susan