Thoughtful About . . . Abundance

Yesterday, when I sat down for some much-needed reading and praying, I read Psalm 65, and this verse really struck me. In church last weekend we were talking about how this has been a horrendous year for natural disasters. So many tornadoes . . . flooding . . . wildfires . . . earthquakes . . . tsunamis . . . . Disaster after disaster after disaster that have left very little of the country (and world) untouched.

About two weeks ago I mentioned how much rain we’ve gotten this year, and a friend in the Southwest said how they hadn’t gotten a drop of it in nine months. While things here have been washing out, things there have been drying out.

Yesterday when I read this verse, it resonated within me because I’ve been having a great couple of weeks, professionally speaking. I have an editor super-interested in the book I wanted to write next anyway, I signed with a new agent after phone calls with three of them . . . it’s been great. Exhilarating. I would usually quote the verse about my cup running over, but I like this even better–I’ve been following His path, and it’s dripping with abundance.

But the contrast is still there. Not so long ago, I felt like I was going nowhere. I knew I was doing what the Lord wanted me to do, so there was peace in that, but it was a resigned peace. An “I guess Your will for me doesn’t include this dream of mine” kind of peace. I was dried up. Burned out.

Much like a few friends of mine are now, while I’m going through this period of much.

In a way, it seems weird. Unfair. Right? But it’s about seasons–we all have them. We go through them ourselves, and so does everyone else, and rarely do our seasons line up perfectly with everyone else’s. Still, I had to wonder, yesterday, why this fabulous season of mine corresponds so exactly to such dry periods in the lives of two of the people closest to me.

Then I took a deep breath and remembered that when I went through my dry spell last year, they were there for me. Encouraging, praying. Giving of themselves. Giving of themselves because they could. Because they had the abundance then.

Isn’t that really awesome of God? Yes, we could choose to focus on the wrong thing and be jealous of our friends when all’s going well for them, or to be resentful. But while we can’t send the Southwest our rain, we can pour out the healing waters of the Lord’s love upon others when we’re overflowing with it. We can nourish their souls. And then we can trust that when we’re the ones in the arid places, they’ll do the same for us.

I always used to define “abundance” as having a lot of what you want or need. But my new definition is “having enough to share.”

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On an unrelated note, I’m trying out a new commenting server thingy. What with all the issues with comments that Blogger’s been having, and the option with this one to reply to an individual’s comment rather than the whole thing if you want, it seemed worth trying. Though it doesn’t recognize your Blogger account, which is the drawback (though you can leave one as “guest”). So opinions on it welcome!