Abundant Living

The thief comes only to steal, kill, and destroy: I came that you may have life, and may have it abundantly.  -- John 10:10 (ASV, modified)

Negativity is an expansive, easy-to-find energy into which we can easily find ourselves pulled.  Negativity often feels like it is the default switch on which society and the world operates, and daily we have to work to unplug from it.  What do I mean?  Take the worldly obsession with possessions.  Radio, TV, print media, internet -- as long as we are plugged into the news of the world we are bombarded with the messages that a) theft, murder, and destruction abound, or b) that what we have or possess is shabby and second rate if we don't have the newest and most advanced products.  The barrage is constant and we feel it in our spirits.  The negative vortex to be pulled into despair and emptiness is powerful, and the clarion call to join the lines at department stores & their websites to buy more and more to assuage our inferiority and pathetic existence is ever present.  As James Forbes has said in his sermon, "No Justice, No Righteousness," the sin of consumerism and materialism chokes us all. (Rev. Forbes sermon)

Often when TV evangelists preach on this passage they add to the angst that our existence is too meager and pathetic for good decent people.  They preach that by believing in Jesus Christ your life will magically improve and you will suddenly come into untold material abundance (as though we have none.)  The most blatant examples of this "abundance theology" offers that simple prayer will bring you all the wealth and happiness any person could dream, and if that doesn't occur, there is something wrong with your faith.  Considering that our "want lists" are driven, constructed, and pursued endlessly at the ever-present clamoring of advertisers working to make us feel bad about ourselves if we don't have their particular product we are doomed when the "word of the Lord" supports us in wanting it all through prayer.  It doesn't work that way!

Our faith in Christ is alone our abundance.  The antidote to the media and cultural blitz to feel scared and inferior is to turn off the sources of those messages to us.  The antidote to the static buzz in our heads that we don't have enough is to stop dwelling on what we don't have or on what bad thing might happen to us.  In it's place dwell on the abundances you already have!  Perhaps that sounds odd to you... what abundances?  First, note it is plural -- there are many.  When I start feeling overwhelmed by all that I might not have, or lay awake worried about what is going to happen, I have found it therapeutic to begin listing what all I have in abundance.  I have an abundance of warmth and comfort in my soft bed.  I have an abundance of food in my cupboard (so much that some of it I'm not even interested in eating!) I have an abundance in the car and gasoline that takes me where I want to go.  I have an abundance of people who care about me and love me.  The outside messages are so strong that we shouldn't be happy we might have to work at getting our thinking pulled out of the negative "what you don't have" and plugged back in to what you do have.  The most basic abundance you have at the center of your being is the grace and forgiveness of Jesus Christ... already there!  Christ has come and has brought you abundance.   Go there when you feel discouraged, or inadequate, or dissatisfied, or worried.  Dwell on your many abundances.  Dwell on Christ.

Journal Questions:
1.  Is there some material want that is relentlessly pursuing you to buy?  Is it really a necessity or have you been brainwashed to THINK you need it?

2.  Is shopping an addiction for you?  Meaning, do you find yourself wandering stores in search of something/anything to buy and feel a happy rush when you get it, only to have that rush fade in hours or a day?

3.  Try making the list of abundances.  If it is difficult to think that what you have is abundance, consider a primitive tribal person surviving in some almost inhospitable environment.  They often have a happiness and lack of care that all of us in modern society can't find and can't imagine.  What abundance do you have alongside that?

Prayer:
God of all creation, Christ of all granting abundance, Spirit of all satisfaction and healing grant us peace from our frenzied wants and rest us in the arms of your perfect peace.  We pray in the name of the Christ at our door knocking, open us to Christ.  Amen.  

Overcoming the World

I have said these things to you that in me you may have peace.  In the world you will have tribulation.  But take heart; I have overcome the world.  --John 16:33 (ESV)

God did a unique thing for us at Christmas that gets lost in our celebrations often.  It was not that Wise Kings from the East brought gifts and gave us the practice of exchanging gifts.  It was not that Angels sang and gave us Christmas Carols.  It was not that we over stuff ourselves on every kind of rich food and inch our midsections toward heart disease -- just where did THAT come from?  What God did that was unique was to enter into the birthing process and take on flesh exactly like every single person on the planet who has ever lived.  God joined with human flesh and blood to see the world through our eyes and understand us a bit better and deeper.  God cared that much that God came to visit us in how we live.  Through this joining God experienced sadness, grief, anger, accomplishment, and defeat.  Through God in Christ we can know that God gets us.

Do we get God?  It would be impossible for us to pull off what God did in reverse.  We obviously can not become God, but we can take on the Christ.  By spending time soaking up the words of the Gospels about Jesus' life we gain insights into how God operates in human form.  God clearly strives to bring us peace.  God clearly strives to overcome the world filled with tribulation and strife.  The God nature through Jesus shone a light on a different way to be human that was grounded in peace, compassion, and healing.  That we have a God-living-through-human example should inspire us in our quest to experience God living through us.  It may begin in your gospel reading.  It might continue in partaking of the elements of Holy Communion.  It might expand when we reach beyond the focus on our needs to helping those at the margins with their needs.  Perhaps when Jesus says, "Take heart, I have overcome the world," he means that we can also overcome the world?  If so, then what is stopping you?  Read, pray, serve -- and stop worrying over the tribulations.

Prayer:
Dear God, there are many troubles all around but you know what that's like, don't you?  In awe and gratitude we give thanks for how you overcome them all and  for handing us unity with you.  Amen. 

The Hearing of Faith

This only would I learn of you: Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith?  --Galatians 3:2 (Douay-Rheims 1899)

Scientific tangibility is reality for most people.  If we want to know what is real or what can be believed with certainty, we turn to science (along with all its laws.)  Scientific validity creates believable fact, a world upon which we can base our life.  An adherence to such certainty is the center piece of belief in the present age.  In the days of Bible writing the Law of Moses had this same solidity of reality and certainty.  It was deeply believed that violating the Law of Moses would lead to your demise.  Being a good person and following the letter of the Law brought you righteousness, or togetherness with God.  There was a "legal tangibility" that made clear how one could and should live.  Even when God felt absent you could continue through the motions by following the law and what you easily could know by listening to the rabbi.  Then entered a short time of The Spirit.

In the book of Acts the Holy Spirit arrived on the gathered masses on Pentecost.  While not deconstructed or destroyed, the chains to the Law of Moses were loosed.  The believer was set free to believe, to trust, to have faith in a deeper reality: that God eternally loves and redeems wrong and the wronged.  This reality is more like an intangible fact -- the base on which science or legalities rest.  How do we know it is there, or real?  Because we trust that it is so -- convinced that the mystery of God is holding up the world and its future whether we can reach out and touch it, dissect and understand it, or not.  Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the Law, or by the hearing of faith?  A modern rewrite of the verse would be "Did you receive the Spirit by the certainty of scientific method, or by hearing of faith?"

Many today write off faith.  If it can't be satisfactorily proven, measured, or the workings thereof elucidated it is of no value.  Faith, the sacrifice and resurrection of Christ, the Church, and even God get tossed.  Yet, if these are all tossed then so must all their fruits including "love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law." (Galatians 5:22-23)  Having experienced and witnessed each of these "fruits of the Spirit" I cannot conceive of or agree to live in a world with them outlawed by a law or a science that does not account for what I have heard of faith: Christ died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again.

Prayer:
God of faith, stand by us when uncertainty and other unknowing voices try to convince us that our beliefs are "silly superstitions."  Help us stand near you, O God as well.  Amen.