Not Your Last Blessing
Good day to all!
So, I finished the Parker Palmer book called Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation. In the process I gained clarity in several areas. In bible study at my church recently, my pastor gave a remark at our leaders’ training.
Here’s how he dropped it:
Stop treating your blessing like it’s your last one.
Yeah, not a creature was stirring…So the next few days in my devotional readings Parker Palmer said the same thing!
Here’s how he put it:
Human nature…seems to regard perpetual scarcity as the law of life. Daily I am astonished at how readily I believe that something I need is in short supply…It is difficult to trust that the pool of possibilities is bottomless, that one can keep diving in and find more. (pp. 106-107)
Palmer continues to say that when we believe the scarcity assumption, we create the very scarcities we fear. Sound familiar? Job had to confess in his tribulation that the thing he feared came upon him (3:25).
When we make scarcity “law” in our lives, we end up competing with others for resources as if we were stranded in the Sahara at the last oasis (Palmer, p. 107). In other words, when we act like all we have is all we will get, we make other people our “enemy” and create unnecessary competition to get to “all that God has left”.
Palmer’s other point about resource is that abundance is richest in community…but we’ll get to that later.
In the meantime, loosen your grip on that “blessing”. Our God is the endless source, and there’s always more where that came from! Cast down the law of scarcity! Embrace the abundance. One last exercise: Stand up with your eyes closed. Very slowly turn in one circle, and look at your life’s blessing. Keep blessing in mind. When you complete the circle, then open your eyes and declare: I EMBRACE THE ABUNDANT LIFE.
Selah, and love to all.
Blogs I Follow
The Bereans' Commentary with Shaunta D. Scroggins, Ed.D. 