From Scarcity to Stewardship

My husband asked me a few nights ago, as we were talking about the discipleship ministry I am starting: “I wonder why it is so important for you to make money from this? We have enough to live.” It gave me pause. Why is it so important for me to monetize this ministry? Am I drifting toward greed? Is this ambition creeping in under the banner of calling?

I scrambled for answers. I told him I wanted to contribute. I wanted to have extra to uplift others. I said that when people are willing to pay for something, it signals that they value it. All of that was true. But deep down, I sensed there was more to it than monetization.

What I really wanted was to build something bigger, something that could impact the world, and my people, in a significant way. And that realization unsettled me. That conversation exposed something in me I hadn’t fully named, a tension between godly contentment and holy ambition.

You see, I came from absolute poverty. I was raised on the milk of scarcity and limitation. Very early in life, I became aware of the quiet “us versus them” narrative in our community. There were the educated ones. The ones who drove cars. The ones who led the church and the community. They felt like a different breed, exceptional, almost mythic. I looked at them with wistful admiration.

They were the few who managed to live comfortably in the harsh reality of Eldorado Park, the Coloured township in Johannesburg where I grew up, a place where most families lived below the breadline and where drugs, alcoholism, and other social fractures were common.

I was definitely not one of “those people.” But I admired them. Their lives gave me a glimpse of something beyond survival. A suggestion that perhaps there was a world in which someone like me could drive a car. Lead. Speak. Build.

It has been thirty years since I moved out of that community. But my community has not fully moved out of me. Sometimes, even now, I still feel like the little girl who had to receive clothes and help from her church.

This is why I find myself identifying with the servant who buried his talent in Jesus’s parable in Matthew 25. The fear of that servant was real. In the story, a master entrusts different amounts of money, talents, to three servants before going on a journey. One receives five and multiplies it. One receives two and multiplies it. Another receives one but buries it out of fear. The first two hear the words we all long for: “Well done, good and faithful servant.” The third is rebuked, not because he was given less, but because he buried what was entrusted to him. He was afraid, and  as a result, he did not even try.

When I think about the one who received five, I imagine someone accustomed to handling increase, perhaps one of “them.” The type of person who had already experienced good things, who expected good outcomes, who had some familiarity with responsibility and abundance. But the servant who received one… I wonder if even that single talent felt like more than he was used to holding. Maybe it was not laziness that drove him to bury it. Maybe it was self-preservation.

When you have lived close to scarcity, even a small increase can feel abnormal. When you are not used to abundance, responsibility feels like exposure. The safest response is not expansion, it is protection. So he buried it. Not because he despised the master, but because he feared losing what he did not believe he deserved to hold.

The master says the talents were given “according to each one’s ability.” Which means the servant was not given more than he could handle. But perhaps it still felt like more than he was accustomed to. And fear can distort even appropriate responsibility into perceived danger.

I have often told myself that contentment means not wanting more. But perhaps contentment is about resting in Christ, not refusing increase. Perhaps holy ambition is not striving for status, but refusing to bury what God has entrusted to me. Perhaps the greater danger is not pride, but shrinking.

So here is what I am learning: Everything that I am today, my education, my experience, the skills and knowledge I have gained, the cross-cultural relationships, the platforms — all of it has been entrusted to me by my Master. These are not trophies of ambition. They are trusts from God, part of the good works He prepared in advance for me to walk in.

And if that is true, then shrinking is not humility. It is fear. It is the quiet refusal to carry what has been entrusted. It is mistaking smallness for holiness.

I used to think that staying small protected me from pride. But perhaps staying small can also protect me from responsibility. Perhaps true humility is not minimizing what God has given, but stewarding it with trembling obedience.

So here is my resolve: I am saying yes.

Yes to visibility.

Yes to every door God opens.

Yes to the weight and wonder of responsibility.

I am saying yes to becoming visible possibility, so that little girls from any kind of disadvantage can grow up believing it is normal for someone like them to lead. Not extraordinary but normal.

If God has opened the door, I will walk through it. If He has entrusted the gift, I will invest it.

And if my obedience helps rewrite what leadership looks like, then that, too, is holy work.