Growing up in my house, we all learned – one way or the other – how to save, re-use, and recycle. Even if we didn’t really want to. A lot of this had to do with my parents – my mom, especially – who were masters at this. Using all the bread in the bag (even the brown ends); turning the heat down in the winter (freezing!) and the A/C up in the summer (hot!). All of these things came second nature to my mom. Can you blame her? She was born in the middle of the Great Depression (1937), and grew up in a time of scarcity, where the attitude really was save, save, save. She even recycles plastic baggies. I know this because my family once received a bag of freshly-baked cookies. Written on the outside of the bag – “Spanish – Oct 2005″. I knew immediately what this was. My parents are fisherman, you see. ”Spanish” was short for “spanish mackerel” – some fish they froze back in 2005. She had used an old fish bag to put her cookies in! Mmm. Tasty.
There are a lot of benefits to saving, reusing, and recycling. My mom has taught us a lot about this (even if it was a bit frustrating as a kid). But when we begin to have fear in our lives due to a sense of scarcity, the idea that we don’t have enough and we never will – well, this is where Jesus says it can get tricky. In fact, he warns against it over and over again. The fear of scarcity can lead to a starving of the soul – a spiritual life scarcity where our heart shrivels up because we are either hoarding all that we’ve been given, or because we get so discouraged about it that we get depressed, and then become hopeless. And our heart shrivels up.
Are you struggling these days with being overcome by the fear of scarcity?
Read more about what Jesus said about the topic in Luke 12:13-34.
Listen to a message I delivered on this at Glenstone Chapel yesterday, May 9, right here.
