On consideration (Excerpt)

               Go out into

        the field of you Lord and

consider how even today it abounds

          in thorns and thistles

  in fulfillment of the ancient curse.

      Go out, I say, into the world

for the field is the world and it is

           entrusted to you.

    Go out into it not as a Lord

but as a steward, to oversee and to

  manage that for which you must

     render and account.

Go out, I should have said, with

  careful responsibility, and

       responsible care. 

By Bernard of Clairvaux

[Christian History originally published this article in Christian History Issue #24 in 1989]

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