Dear reader,
The language of scarcity fills my newsfeed: shortages of hospital staff, lack of customers or financial support to keep small businesses afloat during lockdowns, not enough of a particular vaccine. Framing our world in this way is, I think, reflexive. For me, at least, I tend to think of my time, money, energy, and patience (among many other things) primarily in terms of scarcity, if not lack.
Of course, if I have an accurate sense of my own humanity in general and my failures more specifically, I’m often confronted with these limits. These confrontations, rightly met, can be opportunities for acceptance of my dependence and confession of sin.
And yet I find it difficult to resist imagining that these limits also characterise God. His infinity, so beyond human experience, confounds our logic and imagination. This is especially the case when it comes to thinking about God’s abundance. Or—perhaps not quite. I find it easy to think about God’s abundance—in a few moments I could rattle off a handful of verses declaring the abundance of God’s grace, mercy, love, patience, kindness, and faithfulness. Instead, what is incredibly difficult, I find, is to live out from that reality: to not simply agree mentally that abundance characterises God’s actions towards his people, but to live in a way that shows I believe it. My actions tend to testify that scarcity, not abundance, defines the shape of the world.
I’m speaking here of abundance of good. What seems so often to be the case is that we have in excess exactly the things that we don’t want: from something as trivial as the weeds that threaten to overrun my vegetable garden, to the more serious and devastating things such as disease and death. And on the other hand, what we need often seems scarce. I say “seems” because I don’t think that we always see our world rightly. Modern western culture, in particular, epitomizes this understanding of the world. We continually reach for more and more, not out of a belief in God’s abundance, but in a selfish, anxious panic that if we don’t, we will miss out, lose out, and be left behind. Our pantries, closets, attics, and garages usually contradict this, and yet we are hard pressed to resist the fear that we may have to go without.
I don’t, however, have material abundance primarily in view here. While the meeting of our basic needs is certainly important, in my experience it is difficult to disentangle a sense of abundance from material possessions. What we need is a way to live in the world that accepts our humanity with its God-given (and blessed) limits, without fearing that God's hand towards us is closed when it comes to what we need. While my time is limited, it is not scarce. When I live as if the latter were true, I resent interruptions and unexpected demands. I don’t have enough, and so I can’t give any to others. A right understanding of my limits, by contrast, receives the time that I have been given as a gift, with gratitude. Money and energy follow the same reasoning: an understanding of the limits of my resources leads to wisdom and prudence, while a scarcity mindset leads to stinginess and bitterness.
But even as we live within these limits, we ought to cultivate in our imaginations the possibility that God may extend what has been given: the sun stood still for Joshua, the widow’s oil did not run dry, the fish and the loaves fed thousands. While these events punctuate the Biblical story as extraordinary moments of salvation history, nevertheless they give us a true picture of the God we serve. Theologian Jonathan King describes God’s trinitarian life by describing “the sheer positive plenitude of his being.” God created the world out of the overflow of divine love, from the fullness of divine trinitarian life. That means that the shape of the world, fallen though it is, is not most naturally scarcity, but abundance.
We are not limitless creatures, and yet, we must learn to live out of this abundant life of God. Because of the new life we have in Christ, we can reject the posture of scarcity that is most natural to us, and instead adopt a posture that declares that trouble and suffering will not always define our days. A future of abundance and beatitude is coming—and has, through the work of Jesus—even now broken into the present. There is more than enough, if only we will obey his call to come and drink.
Flowers are, I think, one of the most beautiful images of abundance in creation. A field of wildflowers strikes the heart as a gratuitous gift of abundance. But even in one or two, as the roses in this painting by Anne Ellison, I’m struck by the sense of plenitude: the whole frame filled with the petals, fullness that is alluring and satisfying.
This past month, I devoured the much-talked about novel Piranesi by Susanna Clarke in less than twenty-four hours. Part of my rush was to finish before a live book club meeting with Joy Clarkson, who has been working her way through the novel with a series of guests on her podcast. But even if I hadn’t had this deadline, it would have been easy to finish so quickly. The novel pulled me in completely, and Clarke’s literary artistry, particularly in the many allusions and resonances to other classic works, makes me sure that I will continue to ruminate on it, and hopefully read it again soon.
My C.S. Lewis class has begun (it’s not too late to enrol!), and our first book together is The Silver Chair. It’s been one of my favourites since I read it as a student and then teacher for the Introduction to Humanities course at Geneva College. One of the professors, during the common lecture, would don her Green Lady costume and pluck the strings of her zither to recreate the enchantment scene in the witch’s Underland castle. Since then, the book has always struck me as particularly important to resist a world that claims that what we see is all there is, and that any other reality is a dream. We need more Puddleglums, willing to wake us up and dispel the enchantment. But who is willing to accept such pain?
I also picked up a short book by Rowan Williams, Silence and Honey Cakes. Reflecting on the writings of the desert mothers and fathers of the ancient church, Williams draws out lessons for anyone, monastic or not. His writing is clear and profound, and presses readers to give up the pretension of building up their own images in order to make space in their hearts for God’s penetrating truth.
From “A Shift in American Family Values is Fueling Estrangement”: One of the downsides of the careful, conscientious, anxious parenting that has become common in the United States is that our children sometimes get too much of us—not only our time and dedication, but our worry, our concern. Sometimes the steady current of our movement toward children creates a wave so powerful that it threatens to push them off their own moorings; it leaves them unable to find their footing until they’re safely beyond the parent’s reach. Sometimes they need to leave the parent to find themselves.
From “Becoming Human at Home”: [Bavinck insisted] that modern culture tended to set family and individual in conflict by telling us that our most authentic individuality comes about precisely as we break away from our family histories. This, the idea went, was how to become an authentic individual. In the process, however, an undeniable reality — our individuality — is elevated to become a new and altogether more dubious thing: individualism.
From “Beyond Sexual Capitalism”: “How can we love one another—authentically, fully, as God intended us to love—when we can barely even see one another through the morass of our own self-delusion?”
This month over at Gentle Reformation, I’ve begun a series on beauty. You can find the first article here, and the second here.
King of Glory, Divine Majesty,
...Thy goodness is boundless;
All creatures wait on thee
Are supplied by thee
Are satisfied in thee.
How precious are the thoughts of thy mercy and grace!
How excellent they lovingkindness that draws men to thee!
...In love and pity thou hast provided us a Saviour;
Apply his redemption to our hearts,
By justifying our persons,
And sanctifying our natures.
We confess our transgressions, have mercy on us.
We are weary, give us rest,
Ignorant, make us wise unto salvation,
Helpless, let thy strength be made perfect in our weakness,
Poor and needy, bless us with Christ’s unsearchable riches,
Perplexed and tempted, let us travel on unchecked, undismayed,
Knowing that thou hast said,
‘I will never leave thee nor forsake thee.’
Blessed be thy name!
-From The Valley of Vision
On the road with you,
Laura