Trusting God's Abundance

Brian Bauknight

 

We live in a time of unimaginable abundance.  We do not always see it; but abundance is always present.  Perhaps we are experiencing in America the greatest abundance the world has ever known. This is a time of amazing plenty.

Yet we live as though scarcity will be the rule.  We fear scarcity.  We read our Bibles with one eye on the daily Wall Street numbers.  We pray for just $1,000 more each month or even each year. As the slick catalogues arrive in the mail every day between now and Christmas, we covet enough to spend and buy.

The witness of Scripture is one of God’s incredible generosities.  Still, we worry about scarcity. Will there be enough for me?  What about Social Security when I retire? Are my savings secure?  Is my pension fund/IRA/401K secure?  Should I start playing the lottery or Power Ball or the Publishers Clearing House sweepstakes just in case?  Could I be walking around “lucky” and not even know it?

Is this an issue of faith for us this Thanksgiving season?  Do I/we/you trust God’s abundance?  Do we trust God’s marvelous promises?  Or, are we inextricably connected to the world of things and financial security?

Can you trust the Jesus who says, “It is the Father’s good pleasure to give you….?”  (Luke 12:32)

Consider these principles:

1. God always wants to give us sufficient to our needs. Not always our wants, but our needs.  Some of the world’s people who live in basic simplicity already know this!
2. What God supplies is more than enough.  In fact, it seems to multiply.  Not riches, but abundance.
3. What God supplies cannot be hoarded.  This may be the meaning of the manna in the desert story in Exodus with Moses and his people.  God says to Moses, “I will teach my people the discipleship of trust.  I will see if they trust me or not.”  You can’t store or stockpile God’s gifts.
4. What God supplies is meant to be shared.  In one of the best loved stories of Jesus, five loaves and two fish seem hardly adequate for the disciples.  But when God’s abundance is shared (and in the hands of Jesus), there is enough for all.  (Is this story recorded in all four gospels for a reason?)  If bread is blessed, broken, and shared, there is enough.

I recently saw this powerful poster: “Gratitude turns what we have into enough.”

This week, one Facebook post read: “Black Friday: because only in America will people trample each other for sales exactly one day after being thankful for what they already have.”

Will you live out the liturgy of God’s abundance in these late November days?  Or will you be distracted by the demons of scarcity? Someone has said, “The power of the future lies in the hands, not of those who believe in scarcity, but of those who trust God’s abundance.”

Bear witness to this God each new day.  Be a leader in a theology of sufficiency.  That will make your Thanksgiving season this year very special indeed!