Intro A - Abundance found in an upsidedown way

 

I hear ‘abundance’ everywhere.

And I cringe.

The word has become popular. Common. Dare I say misleading? I wonder at times if it’s the modern and western replacement for “prosperity”.

At least that’s what it feels like to me.

I haven’t’ known what to do.

I haven’t known what to say.

I just know I haven’t felt comfortable with that word.

However, I sit now, toes warm under the duvet, warm white Christmas lights shimmering on the small white tree on my dresser, ears blocked to the chaos of the Saturday morning happening in the other end of the house… and I pick up careful words from Ann Voskamp. From her fingers typing on her laptop. No, from her heart.

The letters on the front spell out that word… Abundance.

“The Way of Abundance”

I want to shudder as my eyes rest on that word.

But I think this one is different.

She speaks not of taking up ones life. She speaks not of listing goals and running after them to be fulfilled. She speaks not of YOU ARE ENOUGH.

Thank you God that she does not speak of this.

Because I am not enough.

And I never will be.

And neither are you.

And neither will you ever be.

My sin has ruined me.

Your sin has ruined you.

And while we are loved better and deeper than we can imagine by a God that holds all love… we still are not enough.

It is the blood of Jesus that has made us enough I the eyes of God.

And she speaks not of all the ways the world tells us that we can have abundance.

Halleluiah.

For I do not want the world’s abundance.

I want God’s mysterious type of abundance. An eternal kind that if I’m honest… I don’t really understand. But I am fairly sure it doesn’t look anything like what the world would say it does.

It’s a different kind.

And it’s found in a different way.

“These pages are about the wildly abundant life found in wildly unexpected places. These pages are about taking the dare to journey into a deeply meaningful life. The abundant life isn’t found in what’s touted as the good life bought on credit; it’s found in the upside-down life, in broken places, with broken people, being most near the broken-heart of Christ. Abundance is found in the loaves being broken and given, in the seed being broken open to new life, in the stars breaking-then blazing… in all the bits of our broken hearts. Abundance isn’t about having as much as you want-abundance is about having as much of God as you want.” P13