Abundance

The only thing in life that we do not have in abundance is time. No matter how we cut it or have it cut for us, each of us will have a finite number of days on this planet. But even with a discreet number of days, we can still live in abundance. Abundance does not mean or imply endless. We have other words for that. Like endless. Abundance is simply having more than we know how to use. How many of us live day to day as though there are more hours to a day that we can possibly use? Not many. Most of us run frantically from one thing to the next, anxiously addressing each person we pass as though they might be the person to use up our last minute. Someday that will be true. For most of us though, that day is not today.

Living in abundance is living as though we can not exhaust something. Perhaps this is eternal life. Not an afterlife in some other heavenly realm, but this life, lived in abundance. Jesus said he came so that we might have life and have it abundantly. Not that we might have life and have it eternally. I do not and would not pretend to know what happens after we each take our last breath. I know that I have fanciful hopes of what might be next, but nothing on which I'd wager my next paycheck. Call me faithless, if you must. I guess, as they say, that is above my pay grade. 

Whatever lies ahead, I am convinced that this life is not limited by the quantity of our days. The power of memories and of love prove this. We do not end, others have not ended, with their last breath. We remain changed. Our love continues even as their lives have not. Whatever gives us breath, gives it to us abundantly. Not in quantity, but in quality. We can focus on the quantity of this life and live lives of dread, scarcity, and anxiety. Or we can live into the quality of this life and know its abundance. If only, we choose to choose it. Choosing abundant life - living abundantly - is to choose joy. To live abundantly is to live joyfully.

Choose joy.