Scarcity or Abundance (Blog by Neil Mancor)
/Scarcity or Abundance
How do you see the world?
One way we have of dividing ourselves up as human beings is into the glass-is-half-full or glass-is-half-empty camps. That is to say those who look at life or circumstances and see what is there and those who see what is lacking. The optimists and the pessimists. It’s considered a way of establishing a person’s worldview.
We could be forgiven for thinking that the cup is more than half-empty right now in Church. We haven’t been able to meet together since March. Some of us have managed to maintain our levels of giving, others have not. For many of our Churches, this has been a time of having to very seriously rethink the very economic foundations of our communities as rental and event-based income have dried up due to the pandemic. Indeed we may not be able to go back to depending upon those sources for a long time.
So perhaps it feels not only like the cup is half empty but, to change metaphors, that the cupboard is bare. Resources are scarce. But when we allow a sense of scarcity to guide our decisions and thinking, we tend to turn inward, hoard what we have for ourselves and become fearful of the future and suspicious others. That can only lead to a downward spiral of discouragement, inertia, fragmentation and dwindling.
Or, it could throw us into the hands of the Living God. I don’t see half-full or half-empty thinking in the Bible. The Scriptures talk about a glass overflowing kind of thinking. My cup runneth over says the Psalm writer. It is about abundance, not scarcity. I do not think that is intended to be thought of in material terms, prosperity gospel terms. It comes from the writer’s awareness of the utter closeness and care of God the Shepherd. It comes from who the Lord is and what the Lord does. You prepare a table before me; you anoint my head with oil: my cup runneth over. When the young adults in my family sit in my kitchen eating and laughing and being loud; when I sit looking at the wildness of the sea on holiday at Métis – my heart is filled with the gratitude that says: my cup runneth over with abundant blessing. Not scarcity – abundance.
In our Churches we can look at what we have managed to do since the pandemic began with such gratitude. It is amazing to think that we are still together. The very fact that so many of us went to the effort to keep on meeting somehow, anyhow, is a sign of God’s abundant blessing. So now, with the expectation of God’s loving care and abundant blessing, let us together press into God and look for God’s abundant generosity for our communities. When we allow ourselves to be guided by an abundance mentality, we place ourselves in the cross-hairs of God’s grace, and we are better able to see what is there, rather than what is missing. We open ourselves up to the possibility that God is God and has plans and purposes for us. We see the potential in a mustard seed, we regard the other faith communities around us not as competitors but as collaborators in the Kingdom of God. And we will find that God is enough.
Psalm 73:26
My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.
photo credit: Manu Schwendener
