This little pig...

I once was the proud owner of a pig. Every year my high school ag class would buy 4 pigs for our annual pig race. Usually after the event was over, the four pigs would be turned into BBQ for the annual FFA meeting. My senior year, the ag instructor, Mr. Brooks, decided it was time for our class to start a gilt ring.

Now for you that aren’t familiar with a gilt ring, two “lucky” students would receive a gilt. A gilt is a female pig that has not had a baby yet. Those two students would then raise their gilt until it was old enough to breed. After the piglets were born, they were to raise them until weaning time. After the piglets were weaned, the student would return a gilt back to the class, keeping the other piglets and sow to do with what they wanted…sell it, keep it or eat it.

Some how, I’m not really sure how it happened, but I was selected to raise one of the gilts. So I took it home. My grandpa had room for it in one of his barns. We found someone who had a boar, got my pig bred then waited for my little dollar signs to be born…I mean piglets. On a Sunday evening in July during the week of high school VBS, four little pigs were born, two boys and two girls.

The first one out was a girl. She was a runt. The whole next week I spent working 24 hours a day trying to keep her alive. I bottle-fed her every hour. I kept her in my room under a heat lamp. Took her with me where ever I had to go. Unfortunately, she went on to a better place in hog heaven.

Next came Mutt and Jeff, named after a couple of guys I worked with. Though Mutt was a girl. They were two of the hardest headed, dumbest, obnoxious animals I had ever been around. Any time anyone came close to the pen, those two piglets would go squealing across it and hide. They were always into stuff.

The fourth piglet that came out we named Scrawny Williams. He had a pretty hard life from the beginning. He was born blind. He was smaller then the other two. They wouldn’t let him eat. I ended up having to bottle-feed him to keep him alive.

The days and months rolled by and I finally fulfilled my obligation. At weaning time I returned my only gilt back to the class. I decided it was time for me to get out of the pig business so I sold out.

I have always wanted to write a book or make a movie of my experience. Maybe you remember the book “Lord of the flies”, well. I did not write it, but that would have made a good title for that chapter of my life. Since it is already taken, I thought of another better title…“The ward of the sty.”

Believe me there is a point to all this.

The English language is a funny language. There are words that we use at times that we really don’t know where they came from. Take for instance the word “steward.” It actually means keeper of pigs.

It is made up of two words, first being “sty” or “pig sty” and “ward” meaning to keep or to watch over. A sty ward or steward as we pronounce it now, was a person who took care of someone else’s pigs. They did not own the pigs, but were hired to watch them and take care of them as if they were their own.

Today when we talk of someone being a steward, we aren’t talking about someone who watches someone else’s pigs. Instead, we think of someone who manages someone else’s money, property or business. They do not own the property but manage it as if it were their own.

When the Bible speaks of being a steward, we know it means a person who manages what God has entrusted to them.

There are three areas in our lives that God has given to us that we should be good and wise stewards…our time, our treasure and our talent. So over the next three weeks we will look in detail at these three areas.

To get ready for this, I would encourage you to read Matthew 25:14-30.