From Scarcity to Abundance

In 1988 my family moved from Waco, Texas to Lowell, Arkansas to help take care of my nana who was dying from lung cancer. We lived in a neat little duplex, something I just learned back in December when Connor and I went down for my grandmother’s 80^th birthday, in Springdale, just a few miles from Lowell. We lived there from September until Decembers and then moved in with my nana and papaw after an addition had been added on to their farmhouse.

I thoroughly enjoyed living there on the farm. There was always something to do for a kid who had an imagination like mine. There were broken down barns, rusty chicken houses, giant fields of grapes and peach trees, and I could run from their house to my memaw’s house, my uncle Clyde’s house, and to my Aunt Jerry’s house and go swimming whenever I wanted. While we were living there we had a chocolate lab, I’ve told you about her, named Fudge. Now Fudge was a great dog. She was as tall as horse and David could ride her. She was sweet and playful but she had knack for running off and getting pregnant.

One day my brother and I are in the chicken house, which was really just a long metal shed that on the farm that kept the tractor dry and housed my papaw’s tools and other junk. Anyway, we’re in this decrepit chicken house building some gadget that was supposed to be make our Radio Flyer fly when we heard this little yelp. We followed the noise and discovered the coolest treasure ever, puppies! Apparently, Fudge had ran off one day, gotten pregnant and gave birth to a litter of puppies. I think there was about eight or nine of these little ones.

My brother and I came out each carrying one followed by Fudge and the rest of the pups. We hollered for my mom and out she came, just as surprised as we were. When my dad got home we began to name them. Of the pups I can recall Bullet and Cocoa. Bullet was named after my dad’s beloved black lab and Cocoa was named cocoa because she looked like nestle cocoa. We eventually gave the pups away with Cocoa and another going to live my friends Heather and Leigh Garrett.

I remember this story as if it were yesterday because it was a moment in which I discovered how the dark cannot ever overcome the light. We often protect what is ours by ensuring our future through endowments, hedge funds, retirement 401ks, and in other forms. We get caught up in trying to fill in what we don’t have instead of seeing what we do have. We let the darkness creep in and steal the light from us, convincing us that we have nothing. We function from a place of scarcity, protective of the light we have while the dark continues to cover the earth.

The year we spent living with my nana and papaw was probably one of the darkest years for my parents. My mom became a substitute teacher while my dad worked as a salesman for a company called Mantek until my nana got worse and he began to work as a tire salesman at Moore Tire in Lowell. We were poor but we didn’t know it. My brother and I were completely unaware of the financial struggles of our parents. But we weren’t unaware of the struggles of our nana. Within days after moving in with Nana and Papaw, she got worse and worse. She refused to do radiation or chemo because she didn’t want to lose her hair. While she was dying, there was no hiding from that fact, my brother and I were discovering the excitement living on a farm. We were discovering the little corners of light in the dark. We were discovering how beautiful this quaint farm town was. We were learning about our family history and we were getting to spend a lot of time with our entire family. While darkness crept in, we were being submerged in light.

There is an interesting play between light and dark throughout the Gospel of John. John calls Jesus the light of the world. He says the life of Christ or life in Christ is the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it. Jesus is the Word of God and that word gives life and light. Sometimes though the world doesn’t accept it. The light of Christ shines in the darkness exposing all the sin, the greed, the angst, the struggle, and suddenly we learn that we really are poor. The revelation of our poverty stricken nature sends us into an existential crisis. Everything we thought we knew we question and we run back into the darkness. We are reliant on the darkness because the darkness is familiar. The darkness is comfortable and the darkness is how we are accustomed to living.

Sometimes we need a little yelp to move toward the light.

Do you know what the difference is between the poor widow’s offering and the offering of the wealthy in Luke?

The difference between the poor widow’s offering and the offering of the wealthy is the widow was giving out of her poverty. Meaning she was able to empty herself for others. The wealthy gave out of their wealth. They gave out of what they believed they could part with. It didn’t cost the wealthy anything but it cost the widow everything she had. Yet she was willing to give because it wasn’t hers.

Henri Nouwen calls it the poverty of inner disposition, we know it as being poor in spirit. It is an inner spiritual disposition that allows us to take away our defenses and convert our enemies into friends. It is a disposition that says, “Please enter—my house is your house, my joy is your joy, my sadness is your sadness, and my life is your life (Nouwen, “Hospitality” Show Me the Way pg. 31).” It is a disposition of giving from our poverty because we understand that what we have does not belong to us but to God. It is being poor in spirit.

When speaking of spiritual poverty we are speaking of an inner disposition, an inner ethic that views what we have differently. Such a disposition would allow us to view our lives from the perspective of abundance. Instead of seeing life in terms of what we don’t have, we see it in terms of what we have in abundance. It transforms us to be more willing to give out of poverty because we no longer see ourselves as poor but abundant.

As I read the story of the sinful woman who interrupts Jesus during dinner at Simon’s house I am reminded what it means to see our spiritual poverty as abundance. You are most likely familiar with this story:

A certain church member invited him home for dinner. Jesus accepted and went into the church member’s house and sat down. Then a shady lady of the town, who had heard that Jesus was being entertained at the church member’s home, brought a bottle of high-priced perfume. She sat at his feet sobbing, and her tears began to wet his feet. She dried them with her long dark hair and kissed his feet and dabbed on some of the perfume.

When the church member who invited him saw what was going on, he thought to himself, “If this man was the Son of God, he would know the type of woman this is. She is a sinner.”

Jesus turned to him and said, “Simon, I want to ask you a question. Two certain people owed a debt to a certain banker. One owed five hundred dollars while the other owed only fifty. Neither were able to pay this banker back, so he cancelled both their debts. Which one, do you suppose, will love him more?”

Simon thought hard before answering, “I suppose the one who had the bigger debt.”

“Right you are!” Jesus said, “Do you see this woman? I came into your home yet you did not give me any water for my feet, but she has wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair. You did not give me a kiss, but this woman, from the time I entered hasn’t stopped kissing my feet. You did not put oil on my head, but she has poured perfume on my feet. Therefore I tell you that she has been forgiven for much as seen by her great gratitude. But he who has been forgiven little loves little” (Luke 7:36-47. NRSV, Cotton Patch Gospel).

She is an example of what it means to be poor in spirit. She recognizes her dependence on God’s delivering grace thus she gives freely from that disposition because she sees what she has as abundance. She freely gives of herself to Jesus out of gratitude for what she has been given.

Often we look around and see what we don’t have. We see we do not have an abundance of money, time, energy, or other economic resources. But what if we look around us and saw what we do have an abundance of? What would we see? Would we see an abundance of compassion? Would we see an abundance of love? Would we see an abundance of concern? Would see an abundance of grace, forgiveness, patience, smiling faces, welcoming people, good cooks, and people? What is it that keeps us from giving out of our poverty so that others may see abundance?

Many of us have been given a lot. Many of us have been forgiven of a lot, yet we love very little. We are very protective of what little we have. The challenge this Lenten season is not only to give up what binds us to see our stuff as ours, but to be transformed so that we may see what we have in abundance and give for what have belongs to God. It is to move out of the darkness of this world and into the light of Christ.

Jesus is the word of God and that word gives life and light. Those who wish to follow Christ need to recognize where that light shines. It shines in the dark corners of our lives. It exposes our sin and we are left with the choice to mourn and repent or cower back into the dark. When we choose the latter, when we choose to shrink, to cower back into the darkness, we deny ourselves and others the abundance of light in their life. We keep our heads down and ignore the sinful nature of our government, our leaders, of our society, of ourselves, and we deny others the light. We deny them forgiveness and change. We deny them abundance of God’s delivering grace all because we don’t like what the light shines on.

When the light shines in the darkness and we see how the darkness cannot overcome it, we are able to have courage. We are able to be poor in spirit for we know nothing can separate us from God’s everlasting love. We are able to be poor in spirit for we know we are dependent on God’s grace. We are able to be poor in spirit when we let the light shine in for we know God is with us. And we know God is with us we are able to humble ourselves, give freely out of our poverty because we are in lack but in abundance. We are in abundance of God’s everlasting light.

One sunny day the inevitable happened. I went into my nana’s room, gave her a kiss, told her I loved her, and outside I went to play. It was such a beautiful day. I can recall it in my mind as if it were yesterday. The sun shined brightly, the sky was bluer than I ever saw it, and the light of life was everywhere. An hour or so later I came running around the front of the house to find an ambulance and out came the paramedics with my nana wrapped in a body bag. The last image I have of my nana is a black bag being wheeled to an ambulance. For the longest time I couldn’t enter into hospitals or funeral homes or be around sick people because it was too painful. It was as if they would shine a flashlight in the corner of my mind to dredge up a memory I long wish to forget. One day I decided that wasn’t going to be the last image I would have of my nana. The last image I have chosen is twofold: I remember her sitting in her rocking chair at our last Christmas gathering. She rocked back and forth laughing and enjoying the surprise in me and David’s eyes. And I remember making milkshakes with my dad and papaw and making a fourth for Nana. We gathered by her beside as she grasped for air and we drank our milkshakes, my dad, my papaw, my nana, and me. And that is the light that shines in the darkness. And the darkness will never overcome it.