MERCY AND ABUNDANCE
It’s the holiday season and right now tables are groaning to capacity with sweets and treats of all shapes and sizes. Meringue cookies, snickerdoodles, chocolate chip treats, shortbread… It’s an almost unending plethora of sugar and if I’m not careful I will undo the good work I set out to do earlier this year. (I would LOVE some homemade salsa right now just to have something different.)
It is this overabundance that made me think of the difference between man’s idea of abundance and the abundance of the Almighty Creator.
Ever notice that when man has an abundance of something it is usually too much of what you don’t need or an excessive amount of what you do need? There are those in such heavy need that it breaks your heart, and then you turn around and see somebody with more than he/she knows what to do with and they’re out there buying more. A friend of mine counted at least 30 coffee mugs in his cupboard; he only uses maybe three or four of them in a given week. Another friend has closets full of clothing purchased at really low prices at various thrift stores and she doesn’t wear but a fraction of them on a regular basis.
Then look at our God, our wonderful Almighty Maker. His mercy is endless and it is always just what we need. The Almighty always seems to give us exactly what He knows we can take and when God gives to us in abundance we are expected to use it to help others or it dries up, like the manna in the desert that went bad if somebody took more than they needed.
We don’t need more cookies, more clothes that we won’t wear… We need to spread the abundance of love and compassion we were given when we were created for the more we spread it the more it grows – such is the nature of God’s abundance. Once man gives something unless it is ‘paid forward’ it stops – and even paying it forward eventually has an end. Anything of man has a beginning and an end.
But thank goodness God doesn’t work that way. As the Psalmist so aptly wrote centuries ago, “For the Lord is good; His mercy is EVERLASTING; and His truth endures to all generations.” (Psalm 100:3)
Happy Holidays – Shalom!
Rev. K Hyler DD OCC