Abundant Living

 

Scripture

 Luke 12:13-23

¹³ Someone in the crowd said to [Jesus], “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me.” ¹⁴ But he said to him, “Friend, who set me to be a judge or arbitrator over you?” ¹⁵ And he said to them, “Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.” ¹⁶ Then he told them a parable: “The land of a rich man produced abundantly. ¹⁷ And he thought to himself, ‘What should I do, for I have no place to store my crops?’ ¹⁸ Then he said, ‘I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. ¹⁹ And I will say to my soul, Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.’ ²⁰ But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’ ²¹ So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God.”

²² He said to his disciples, “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat, or about your body, what you will wear. ²³ For life is more than food, and the body more than clothing.   (NRSV)

 

Devotion

 A couple weeks ago, I came into possession of what can only be described as an abundance of tomatoes.  I had innocently told a friend's father (an avid gardener) that I really liked the orange variety he had picked for lunch.  He went outside for a few moments and returned with a shopping bag filled to the brim with tomatoes for me to take home.  An entire shopping bag.  For one person.  Even if I ate three tomatoes a day, I couldn't imagine keeping ahead of them going bad on me.

I filled my fruit bowl with tomatoes.  I reached under my car seats to corral the ones that escaped the bag on my drive home.  I looked up recipes and began planning my meals around eating tomatoes as fast as I could.  Finally, I admitted the truth: there was no reasonable way for me to eat all those tomatoes on my own.  The only way to make the most of them was to be like my friend's father and share them.

How quickly the blessing of abundance can begin to feel like a burden when we try to keep it all for ourselves!  The rich man in Jesus's parable, for instance, believed that the only way to deal with his incredible abundance of grain was to tear down the barns he had and build larger ones...a costly and time-consuming act that he hoped would let him have grain for years to come. Evidently, sharing what he had with others never crossed his mind.

One wonders if the rich man has really thought this idea through.  What about the time and cost of keeping all that grain safe from mold, animals, or theft?   How would his neighbors react when they realized that the person who already had so much wanted to store away even more while others in the community were struggling to get by?  Even if the rich man wasn't about to die that very night, it seems highly unlikely that he would have  been able to truly enjoy his hoarded abundance. Giving some of it away would have been a much better option.

 So what happens when we share from our abundance?  In the case of the massive amount of tomatoes, I discovered the joy of watching several different people's faces light up as they took home enough for their families...and I still had enough to satisfy my own needs.  Showing people I cared enough about them to share from my bounty helped our relationships grow just a little bit stronger.  Knowing these folks as I do, I trust that they will return the favor at some point by sharing their own bounties with myself and others.   

When we participate in an economy where people share what they have and gratefully receive what they need, we can all work towards a more blessed and abundant future.    In that world, the injustices and inequalities that infect our society begin to lessen.  Slowly but surely, it becomes easier for people to find the resources to not just survive but thrive.  

It wasn't easy for me to give up some of my tomatoes.  What, I wondered, if something happens and I don't have what I need?  That was just greed and anxiety talking.  When I set those worries aside and trusted in God, I was blessed with a vision of an abundance that far exceeded the tomatoes I had given up.  As I reached the last of my own stock several days later, I was more than happy to sacrifice the cost of a tomato or two for the spiritual blessings I received when I shared what I had.   And it all started because my friend's father shared the abundance he had been blessed with...the abundance of his garden.

Whether our abundance is of food, money, time, talents, or something else entirely, let us all do our best to share what we have been given so that God's blessings may flow throughout  our lives and world.  For when we share our abundance, God's kin-dom grows.  And the blessings we receive will far outweigh what we may have gained if we kept what we had to ourselves.

Prayer

God of abundance, thank you for all the blessings your pour into our lives...both those we notice and those we do not.  Give us the courage to share what we have with others so we may not be burdened by having too much and others may not be harmed by having too little. We trust that through the grace of your son, Jesus Christ, we can work together to build up your abundant Kin-dom on Earth.