A trip to the produce section in most any supermarket today provides the shopper with mounds of fruit and vegetables, sometimes piled so high and precariously you hesitate to pick up three or four oranges or a couple of apples for fear the entire pile will come down on you (and sometimes it has). A trip to the nearby discount store offers the same experience; 100 or more pair of jeans are on the same table or rack, mounds of sweaters and an equal amount of shirts are available. The office at work is the same . . . reams of paper are available near the copy machine, and at least six months supply of envelopes are at hand.

Do you ever notice what happens in these situations?

* A couple of oranges or heads of lettuce fall to the floor-no big deal-there are at least 150 oranges and probably 75 heads of lettuce left.

* The clothes get pummeled by people looking through them; some items fall to the floor, some are misplaced in wrong-sized piles.

* People run off a dozen more copies of their document than they know they will need.

Abundance breeds disrespect, lack of care, and bad stewardship.

A child in another part of the world, even in a different neighborhood of my city, needs-for survival-the oranges that fell to the floor. Likewise, this child might treasure and see as gift the pair of jeans I walked on or tossed roughly on the wrong pile.

Waste of resources, such as paper, ripples over into other natural resource supplies-oil, air, water. The available abundance of natural and other resources creates extravagant expectations and makes waste appear insignificant. As one created in God's image, however, I am to mirror God's care and receive all creation as God's gift. This calls me to be a good steward of all these gifts.

© Harcourt Religion Publishers/BROWN-ROA