Everything in God's creation was designed with a purpose.

The earth was designed to sprout vegetation and produce land animals. That vegetation was designed to bear fruit with seed according to its kind. The sun, moon, and stars were designed to give light on the earth, to govern the day and night, to keep them distinct, and to serve as signposts for the seasons. Fish were created to fill the water by multiplying according to their kind. Birds were created to fill the sky by multiplying according to their kind. Land animals were designed to be living creatures upon the earth and to multiply according to their kind.   

As living icons of our Creator, we were created to bring light into darkness, order to chaos, abundance to emptiness. We were designed in the image of God and according to His likeness to rule over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, and the living creatures upon the earth.  We were created to work the Garden and guard it. We were designed to expand the realm of Eden over the whole world. We were designed with feet connected to the ground, but eyes raised to the heavens. We were created to bring Creation always closer to its Creator by being brought closer in communion with Him ourselves.

We were designed by God for stewardship.

A steward (oikonomos) is the caretaker of a house (oikos). He does not own the house. In fact, everything he has is something that he has received. His job is to take what is the Master's and distribute it to the members of the household according to the plan (nomos) of the Master. He is the icon of the Master. The more he follows the Master's plan, the better he images him.

The record of the steward's management was the "the word (o logos) of stewardship". If a steward was faithful, his record would match the plan of the master; his logos would match the master's nomos. If the steward was unfaithful, the record would show that as well.

Each of us still bear the image of God. We form and we fill. We rule over our lives according to our free will. We make great sacrifices for the things that we love. But we struggle to bear the likeness of God. We order our lives, but we do not order them fully according to God. We fill our lives with an abundance of things, but those things are many times not the things of the Kingdom of God. We make great sacrifices for the things we love most, but those things that we love are very often the temporary and fleeting things of this world and not the eternal things of the Kingdom.

Christ has come as The Logos of God to fill up The Nomos of God. As Christ says in the Theophany hymn: "I have come to save Adam, the first formed human." As we will see, the cross is the vehicle by which He accomplishes this; and the cross is His gift to us that we might become not merely stewards of God, but sons of God.

This opening series of blog posts will explore the tensions created by being born from this earth of Adam through our parents and being born from above of Christ through Baptism. In our next post, we will see the root pattern of our wandering away from God and the pattern of restoration which flows freely from our sacramental union with Christ.