Foundations
We are caretakers, not owners.
Squared Away Life is a tactical approach to stewardship. This page is about the part underneath the tactics, which I would rather state plainly than leave as an unspoken assumption.
A steward is entrusted with something that belongs to someone else. The word carries its own theology. A caretaker manages a house he does not own, according to the owner’s wishes rather than his own convenience. Strip out the owner and the word collapses into mere tidiness.
So the question any honest version of this has to answer is: entrusted by whom?
Everything belongs to God. “The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof, the world and those who dwell therein” (Psalm 24:1). Not only our money and possessions, but our time, our abilities, our opportunities, our bodies, our households, our work, and our lives. Man was put in the garden to work it and keep it (Genesis 2:15), and the commission has never been withdrawn. What we have is on loan, and everyone to whom much was given will be required to give an account for how he handled it (Luke 12:48).
That is the foundation of everything here, and it changes the practical advice in at least three ways.
It rules out ownership as the goal
Most productivity writing is about getting more for yourself: more output, more margin, more control. Stewardship asks a different question. Not what I can get out of my time, but what return it yields for the Lord, whose time it is. The servants in the parable were not settling a debt. They were trading with their master’s capital, and they answered to him for the increase.
It makes limits honest
You are a creature. Your energy runs out, your attention fails, and one day you die. Systems are not a way to transcend that; they are a way to work faithfully within it. Heroic effort doesn’t scale, and it won’t outlast you. That is not a productivity observation. It is an observation about creatures.
It changes what counts as success
Faithfulness with what was actually given, rather than the size of the result. A small thing handled well is the point, not the consolation prize.
If you do not know Jesus Christ
Everything on this page rests on something more important than any system: the One who owns it all, and to whom the account is finally given. If you have never settled that question, start there rather than with your calendar.
I would begin with this short talk on what makes the gospel good news: God’s Gift of Himself. I wrote a booklet under the same title, published by Reformed Forum, and I will send you a copy at no cost. And if you would rather talk with someone, write to me. I would be glad to.
Who writes this
I am a minister in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church and the executive director of Reformed Forum. That work is about theology and the church, and my writing and speaking there live at camden.bucey.org. This work is about ordinary life under the same convictions: the house, the calendar, the ledger, the body, the business, and what is left behind.