What does abundance mean? The dictionary says an ample quantity is an abundance. I have often wondered if we truly understand that word? We have turned that word into a description of wealth and material goods. Used in this way it becomes a rather elitist word that most cannot relate to, but what if that meaning is of our creation and not the true meaning?
If one takes the word as the representation of wealth and material success, then the words of Jesus: “I have come so they have life and that life in abundance”, are problematic for most of us. We do not have overflowing things in life. Instead, we strain, struggle and stress to just make enough and/or have enough to live. This definition of abundance makes that life and that promise impossible to embrace or even imagine.
What if we were to take that basic meaning as the important one: abundance is an ample quantity? Now does Jesus’ words make sense? Do they take on a meaning all of us can relate to? I think the answer becomes yes. If the abundant life is having enough, an ample amount to live on, then Jesus’ promise is good for all.
You might be asking, what about the poor? What about the sick? If you are like me, those questions immediately come to mind and they would be leading us in the wrong direction. Jesus always spoke about life in the Spirit, in God. If we take that as a spiritual promise, then it is absolutely true. Perhaps a better way for us to say it is that life in God will always provide us with enough.
There is another piece to this that we truly never talk about. I have read these verses for so many years as Jesus giving us this great life and we don’t have to do a thing for it. Many churches preach that we cannot be good enough or do enough to deserve it, it just is. What if that is not true? What if that promise is that abundant life is always and forever available to us but we have to take it and use it? We must stop being passive in our spiritual life. God’s promise is to always be there, to be available and to make an abundant life available, but if we just sit here, if we wait for God to do all of the work, we will never know abundance.
The African American theologian, Howard Thurman describes the life of evergreens above the tree line and describes those trees as “using to the full every resource in me and about me” to have life. Now, that is the meaning of abundance, when we chose to use all that is available to us to live! What would our lives be like with that attitude? I will use all that God has provided to the fullest. That is a statement of believing in abundance.
TMM