The Stewardship of Responsibility

The EC145 Air Ambulance helicopter sat on the parking lot, its light strobing, its rotor kicking up clouds of dust that drifted over the employees’ vehicles. White-faced employees stood against the building’s brick false front. One or two snapped pictures with their phones and a couple were pointing and shaking their heads. Most stood mute as if watching a bad dream they were powerless to change.

At an upstairs office window, a man stood with hands in his pockets, staring down at the spinning rotor as it slowed to a stop.

“Do you think he’ll make it?” the bookkeeper asked, his face deadly sober.

The man at the window shrugged then sighed, his shoulders seeming to drop as he lowered his chin to his chest slowly shaking his head. “I don’t know,” he muttered. “I just don’t know.”

****

“It’s not my fault. It’s not! I didn’t have anything to do with it. I wasn’t even down there!” George banged his folder down on his boss’s desk. “I don’t see why you called me in to talk about this subject. Why don’t you talk to Frank? He was the one who . . .”

Samuel sighed and held up a hand. “George, George, can I . . .”

“No! You just keep telling me that I’m responsible somehow and I wasn’t even there! How could I be responsible for something when I was at my desk? I wasn’t even down on the floor.”

“George . . .”

“And I’m not an idiot. I know OSHA will probably be crawling all over us for this. I feel terrible for Derik and his family. I just don’t see that blaming me for something I didn’t do will fix any of that.”

“George, if you’ll just . . .”

“Anyway, it’s done now. How is going on a witch hunt looking for somebody to hang going to save you from what’s coming?”

“It will not save me. It’s just that as a responsible individual, I need to explain to you that . . .”

“But that’s just it!” George’s shaking voice was coming out in a high-pitched squeak. “That is precisely it. As a responsible individual, you say, but I’m not. How could I be responsible for the accident? I didn’t cause it. I didn’t tell them to do what they did. I wasn’t even down there!”

“George . . .”

“They should have known . . . they should have known better than to open that flywheel cover before it had stopped turning.”

“George, please . . .”

“They should have known that it would shift like that and get caught by the flywheel.”

Samuel put his elbow on the table and leaned his head on his hand.

“They should have known,” George said. “They should have.”

“Yes,” said Samuel, looking up, his dark eyes intense. “They should have known, but they didn’t. Why?”

“I don’t . . . I mean . . . well they . . .” George paused, trailing off.

“Did you ever have any safety meetings with them about this? Did you ever tell them that they were not allowed to open that cover before the flywheel had stopped?” He was leaning forward now, his lips pursed, staring at George.

George squirmed. “Well . . . it seems to me that they should be able to figure that out for themselves.”

“And what about the safety meetings you were supposed to be having?”

“I had a few . . .” George was scuffing at the carpet with the toe of his boot.

“Okay. When?”

George scuffed harder, seeming to shrink into his shirt collar. “I don’t know. It’s been a while.”

“Shall we check?”

Samuel stood from his desk and walked down the hall, George following with what can only be called extreme reluctance.

Samuel clattered down the steps and strode across the employee break room. Reaching into the cubby hole, he pulled out a clipboard with a stack of paper on it. Blowing the dust off it, he turned to the first page.

George stood miserably by the snack machine.

“Looks like the last entry was November 22. The last Friday before Thanksgiving. That was six months ago,” Samuel said, looking up.

George stood staring at the coin return pocket of the snack machine as if waiting for it to divulge an answer. “I guess I didn’t think . . . I had no idea . . . is that really the last one?”

Samuel handed the clipboard to George who flipped dully through it, then handed it back without comment.

Samuel sighed. “Trust me, George, we’re not just picking on you here. When an employee gets hurt like this, there will be plenty of blame to go around. Plenty.” He sighed and raked a hand through his graying hair. “On the other hand, if you have a position of responsibility, you will be held accountable for that responsibility. You will have to give an account for that trust.”

Give an account for that trust.

Sounds like stewardship, doesn’t it? That’s because it is.

Positions of responsibility are entrusted to us to steward and care for. Like Adam in the garden, we are given a responsibility to “dress it and to keep it.”

Whether it be a job, a role at church, a child to train, a ministry, or a position as a safety manager at work, the one thing all responsibilities have in common is that whoever is entrusted with it will be held accountable.

Sure. Of course.

Except . . . except that sometimes we forget. We start thinking it’s “just another job.” Just another day at work. So, we slouch through it, waiting for the clock to strike five so we can get on to our real joys of hunting, ice fishing, or even reading.

After all, who cares if I’m doing my best or not? Nobody is complaining.

And so, we slouch off and call it a good week. Was it?

Can we see Daniel acting this way?

Daniel, waving away a clerk carrying official documents. “Count me out of this one. I didn’t volunteer for this job. Taking care of a wicked king isn’t my lookout. In fact, his nation is an enemy of my people. Don’t go looking for me to do a thing more here than I’m told to do. If he wants to run this place into the ground, that’s his deal. It might even be God’s judgment on him. Anyway, have you seen what goes on at his parties? No use working my fingers to the bone to support that!”

Can we see Daniel saying, “Who cares if I’m doing my best or not? The boss is happy with me or at least he’s not complaining.”

We can’t see that happening, can we?

But seriously, why not?

It kind of makes sense that he would take a halfhearted “eyeservice” approach. After all, how many people do you know who behave that way in less extreme circumstances? Maybe, even among our own people?

But we see nothing of the sort in Daniel. When the princes went looking for something, anything, they could use against Daniel to show his faults to the king, they found . . . nothing.

“Then the presidents and princes sought to find occasion against Daniel concerning the kingdom; but they could find none occasion nor fault; forasmuch as he was faithful, neither was there any error or fault found in him” (Daniel 6:4).

No errors or faults. Unbelievable.

Because in the end, it doesn’t have anything to do with the king. It’s all about our standing before God.

We discharge our duties faithfully because we will answer to God. We discipline that child, not because he’s being obnoxious (though he is) but because we will answer to God for our discipline or failure to discipline.

It’s not about keeping the boss happy. It’s about being able to stand before God, to come before Him boldly on the day of judgment and honestly say, “I did my best.”

It’s not the things we build that matter. It’s the character we build in building the thing that matters.

Because we’re not in this life to build pallets, or houses, or grow wheat. All the wealth that Daniel helped to manage is gone. Lost to the sand of history.

But the character that he built standing as president in Darius’s court, that will last forever. The physical world around us is temporal, but the character we build lasts forever. That will stand, and we will stand accountable for our responsibilities on judgment day.

****

The paramedics were coming. They rolled the gurney down the ramp and across the parking lot, bending over the patient as they crossed under the stationary rotor. A minute later they had the patient inside the helicopter. The employees, standing against the building, could see their forms moving around over the patient.

The helicopter’s pair of Arriel 1E2 jet turbines began to whine to life, bringing their combined nearly 1400 hp on-line. The thirty-foot rotor began to turn, then the sound deepened as the pilot pitched the blades in, the rotor wash blasting the asphalt free of dust and bits of trash for a hundred feet in all directions. The skids lifted off and the air ambulance rose vertically until it cleared the light poles and buildings, then nosed forward, accelerating over the workplace and away, fading over the countryside, the sober employees sliding their phones into their pockets and turning away.

Would he live? Their coworker who’d just an hour before been cracking jokes in the break room? He is married and they are expecting a baby. Would he ever get to hold that baby?

A few workers drifted back to stare down at the twisted flywheel drum cover, the instrument of his injury.

“He just flipped it up,” one of them said, “and the flywheel was still spinning. The cover shifted a bit on its hinge and the corner of the cover caught in the spinning wheel. Flipped it up faster than you could blink. Smacked him right on the forehead.”

They all stood looking at the flywheel cover, weighing over 300 pounds, and imagining it flipping up with blinding speed on its single hinge toward his defenseless head.

“Think it broke his neck?”

“Maybe his skull.”

“Maybe both,” somebody muttered.

They all shook their heads, turning away from the heavy shield as it hung twisted and bent from its single hinge.

****

So often we see a workplace or any responsibility failure as a results problem. We did this, we think, and then this happened. But what if it’s not? What if it really is about stewarding our responsibilities as unto the Lord?

What if we all poured our efforts into every responsibility as unto the Lord? Whether we are sorting nails in the back room, or running a work line with dozens of lives under us, what if we saw every responsibility as a direct stewardship, an accountability for which we will answer to God Himself?

What if we lived that way? How would our lives be different? How would your home and workplace be different? Or your church?

What if we saw every responsibility we’ve been given as a stewardship making us accountable and answerable to God and as an opportunity to serve Him today?

Because it is.

“Servants, obey in all things your masters according to the flesh; not with eyeservice, as menpleasers; but in singleness of heart, fearing God: And whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord, and not unto men; Knowing that of the Lord ye shall receive the reward of the inheritance: for ye serve the Lord Christ. But he that doeth wrong shall receive for the wrong which he hath done: and there is no respect of persons” (Colossians 3:22-25).

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Darryl Derstine lives in Holmes County Ohio with his wife and 7 children. He works at Christian Aid Ministries Foundation and CAM Books. He can be reached at bss@camoh.org or 330-893-4915.