2020: It’s time to LEAP into ABUNDANCE

At the beginning of a new year, loss is not what we really want to focus on. However, loss is such a reality for many of us. Here in Australia, where much of our country is suffering crippling drought compounded by devastating bush fires, many are painfully aware of the experience of loss. Of course, we only have to flick on the news to realise that war, economic hardships, unrest, to name only some of the issues, leave few in our world untouched by encounters with loss.

When we live with enough profound and deep loss, though, it can threaten to become our identity. Like Naomi in the book of Ruth (my Bible just flipped open at this passage this morning!), we can decide to allow it to change how we see ourselves, our life and our future. We can believe that our life will never again be “pleasant” (the meaning of Naomi) and that we are destined to experience only “bitterness”. Just as Naomi asked to be called Marah, (which means bitter), we see this to be our lot for life.

In life, most people suffer terrible loss at some point. If you have, you understand the crippling, soul destroying vacuum that threatens to overwhelm all desire for living further – the inability to even hope that you might feel joy, or even peace, again. Loss and all its associated grief and pain can become a black hole in our being which seems as though it will swallow up all goodness and hope that may ever come our way for all our future. Indeed, it appears that it may well even have stolen our future, to the point we can see nothing ahead for us but continuing pain and bitterness.

In the past, as we have stepped into the new year, I have asked God for a word for the year ahead. Reflecting back, I can see they have been very accurate, although not necessarily in ways I expected or hoped.

At the beginning of 2017, the word was “resilience”. I remember well my disappointment with that one! Just as with learning patience, I knew resilience can only develop by going through tough times. As I look back through my blogs and journaling, I know that year did not produce many of the answers, breakthroughs and promises I was hoping to see. But woven through, I see the unwavering hand and love of my Father, drawing me deeper into Him, teaching me to focus more and more on Him and not my circumstances, building my faith and my ability to hold on to Him even when I don’t see the answers I want come to fruition. In the face of unrelenting disappointments and a lack of restitution of those losses we have felt God’s promise to restore, we have been learning the resilience to simply continue to stand when that is all we can do.

In 2018, to my excitement, “anticipation” popped into my consciousness. The desires of my heart that I was anticipating did not materialise, though. However, shifts have come in situations, relationships and the “bigger picture” I believe that God is more interested in. These have well answered (and continue to answer) the excitement of my anticipation.

This morning I was reminded to ask God if He had a word for me this year. As I put my knife into my nearly empty marmalade jar to scrape some out for my toast,

I felt Him whisper the word “abundance”.

Don’t you love His sense of irony!

Now, although I really like that word, there is a hesitation in my soul to be leaping in joy. So many hopes and promises we have been waiting on for years have not yet materialised. It does not quite feel safe to believe that I am hearing right.

Am I really hearing that? Or am I just making it up in my head because it is what I want?

I don’t want to set myself up for disappointment. After many years of feeling though we have been just getting by, continuously scraping the bottom of the barrel of our reserves (of energy, hope, finances, faith to name a few), the idea of abundance is even a little scary - it means letting go of mindsets that have become “normal”.

However, as I have been learning, it is so important that I don’t overlay this word with all I think it should mean.

I need to wait on Him to show me what abundance looks like in His realm; wait on Him for the abundance He wants to give me.

Which returns me to loss: surely the opposite of abundance.

What do we do with loss and how do we experience abundance when our losses seem irreplaceable?

First, for me, is the ever-deepening revelation of what God’s abundance is about.

On the surface, we can make abundance about material “stuff”: Prosperity in our goods and provisions and good times. At a slightly deeper level, we might make it about our relationships with family and friends, or even about opportunity to serve God.

However, I can’t help but reflect on this abundance through the lens of Matt 6:19-21

“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

Much of what we consider to be abundance and provision from the Lord (which it is good to be grateful for), can become our mainstay: when we put our trust and value into these things, they become props to our sense of well being and safety.

It is only when we suffer the loss of them that we realise what poor gods they make.

So then, what sort of abundance from the Lord can we and should we rely on? What does He really promise?

Galatians 5:22-3 springs to mind:

“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.”

(If you read this in context of the rest of the passage, the message becomes even more plain. However, this is a blog, not a sermon!)

The obvious problem with stuff and even relationships is that we can suffer from the loss of them. There are times where we have no ability to control that loss. In our relationship with God, though, His word promises us that nothing can separate us from His love (Rom 8:39). By extension, that means no matter what loss we experience in the physical realm, we still have access to those fruit of the Spirit, in abundance.

I know that these sorts of words can seem exceptionally trite and even unfeeling in the face of loss. However, this is something I have personally and painfully experienced. There have been a number of losses for me over the years that have felt like they have broken my heart and destroyed my life and future. And I know am far from perfecting living out of these words to the contrary.

More lately, though, I have started to get a picture of what it is like as we set our faces like flint toward God. When we feel like the situation in Isaiah 50, where it seems as though everything and everyone is against us, as though the pain, loss and destruction will never end, we keep our eyes fixed on Jesus, the Author and Perfecter of our faith, (Heb 12:2). As we do this, in the picture I am seeing, the troubles and issues of this life become smaller and smaller and impact us less and less. Instead of our love, joy, peace, and hope coming from those things God provides us with, they come from Him directly. Nothing can separate us or sever that relationship unless we allow it (Rom 8:39).

A couple of years back, I was reading Psalm 23 in the Complete Jewish Bible. I didn’t get past the words “I lack nothing”. (Check out my blog on this here.) The landing point was that if I really believe this - that with God as my Shepherd I have no lack - I have to surrender the lack or loss I am experiencing to the Lord as well as all else.

Turning our faces toward 2020, we will only be able to receive and have space available for filling with all the abundance He promises as far as we commit to handing Him all those places of loss in our lives and our being that threaten to suck us dry and rob us of every good our Father has for us. (If you are not sure how to do this, it can be as simple as speaking it out loud, “Father God, I hand You all those places in me that have experienced loss. Please fill me afresh with Your abundance.”)

In the past weeks, I have been sitting with something I was sensing God was saying to me through my gazanias. (For those who don’t know, these are a flowering plant, as pictured here.)

The last six months or so, have found me energised to do much more work in my garden than in the past. There are places which have needed a complete start over and God has really been talking to me on a number of fronts through this (which may be another blog!).

As I have renovated my garden, though, it has included shifting some plants to fill spaces in different areas. My gazanias were one of those shifts.

These plants had been sitting in my garden doing very little for a number of years, despite the fact that they are known to be very resilient and prolific, both in growth and flowering. When I moved them, it was only a matter of a couple of metres distance, and I divided each plant in two.

Well! As we have SHIFTED into Summer, these plants have SHIFTED into overdrive. They have at least quadrupled in size and where in the past they may have produced maybe one or two flowers each year, this year they have been literally covered in flowers already, with more coming up behind. An overwhelming abundance!

What is different?

I can look at an obvious answer, that they are now getting that bit more sun compared to where they were. They are also not crowded out by weeds and other plants any more. Perhaps I have watered them more. However, the SHIFT was perhaps most important to them.

Like these plants, (who didn’t get a choice, but I believe they are happy with the choice I made!), sometimes

we have to allow God to SHIFT us if we want things to be different.

Saying we want to stay where we are and Him to move the sun and everything around us to give us “better growing conditions”, is probably not going to cut it with Him. In fact, when we start to dictate the conditions we want, we start to set ourselves up as god.

To allow the SHIFT to happen, though, we not only need to be prepared to let go of what we have and where we are, but also what we don’t have (our lack) and the pain and grief (and loss) of the past.

If you haven’t realised yet, 2020 is a LEAP year. As I have reflected on what this might look like, I keep getting a picture of a mountain goat LEAPING up onto and over boulder after boulder, higher and higher up a mountain, with great speed and agility. If you have ever seen how goats can jump, you will know that they can LEAP on and over obstacles that seem insurmountable. (Check them out on YouTube if you don’t know what I mean.)

I sense that this year, as we connect in with what God is doing

there is opportunity for us to LEAP up the mountain of obstacles that have held us back in the past, HIGHER and HIGHER in faith,

until the pain, grief and losses of the past are but distant memory. And here, we can experience the true abundance of His fruit, His love, peace and joy. However, we will not be able to do this holding onto our past losses, pain, grief, guilt, sadness and disappointments, to mention a few.

My encouragement:

Bring Him your empty marmalade jar, the yawning chasm of your losses and emptiness. As you lay them at the foot of the cross, consecrating and leaving them with Jesus, you create a different kind of space that He is more than willing and able to fill with His very great abundance.

“For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name. I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.” Eph 3:14-21

On the road...(Or Lessons from the road - Part 1)

I went on a trip back in time a few weeks ago.

Heading off to pick up the motorbike my husband had bought me was like going down memory lane as we travelled some 350km out west, to the other side of the rural city I spent most of my childhood in.  I have rarely been there in the ensuing thirty-something years since we moved away, but on the occasions I have, the memories come flooding back at every landmark, town and hamlet.

We decided to make a bit of a road trip out of the journey, leaving early so we could take it easy. It was nice not to have to rush, not to have to be anywhere by a certain time. Our day was largely unplanned, stopping morning tea when we felt like it in a lovely old rural town, complete with the Saturday market. By lunchtime we had made it to my home town. As we sat outside the main street bakery in the summer sun, eating our pies, I felt waves of nostalgia for days gone by.

Reflecting on my feelings, I realised that we had left there at a point where I was gaining greater independence and freedom, which I didn't have to the same level in the place we moved. There was a part of me that still felt I had missed something because of the move. However, there was also the problem that although many things were just the same as I remembered, so much was different.

My heart was yearning to go back to that simpler place in that simpler time, but it is no longer there and neither am I.

The desire to go back in time has been a temptation for me at a number of significant points in my life, particularly in the pain of divorce. Thinking about what life might have been like if things had been different, if I had made a different decision, if I had been more emotionally healthy, the "if only..." scenarios can seem like an escape from dealing with the difficulties of the current situation. I have realised, though, that these thoughts don't actually help at all. They keep me stuck and can simply lead to bitterness and disappointment colouring all that comes after.

I can't live there.

The past is gone and it is unalterable, just as the person I was back then no longer exists. And besides, I still have more past to create, I still have a road to travel. If I try to do that looking backwards, I will either come to a grinding halt or I will crash. Consider Lot's wife. Looking back inappropriately brought her to a permanent standstill!

However,  looking back at the past with nostalgia is not our only problem.

Looking back on the journey of our lives in any capacity can be a dangerous occupation.

Reflecting on the past with the rose-coloured glasses of time can be wishing for something that really never existed. We forget the less than perfect bits. When we reflect and feel, "I wish it was like the 'old days", or "life was better back then", we can also diminish our enjoyment of the present.

On the other hand, we can dismiss the past in its entirety, deciding that because there were bad bits, none of it has any value. Doing this, we lose a significant part of who we are and can become a little rootless. It makes it easier to disconnect from any part of life we find unpleasant, leaving a shallowness in our relationships.

Recollections are important at some level, though. God was pretty adamant about it with the Israelites, urging them to remember all the lessons, good and bad, from their past with Him. It helped them remember who He was (and is) for them through tough times, and was to keep them from straying back into past errors. 

Celebrating and being grateful for the good times, for the positive experiences and input, and learning from mistakes - our own as well as those of others - is an important part of the fullness of life. It can keep us grounded.

Embrace the past. Make peace, however you can, whatever it takes, with those aspects you'd rather forget. They are part of what makes you who you are - make them count for something good! Give thanks for every opportunity for growing and learning, whatever form they came in. I promise you, it will change your perspective on the worst experiences. Share the joy and sadness with others.

But remember to come back to living the present you have been given, looking forward to future joys and challenges, so when they are done with they too can become part of the ever-changing scenery of a life well traveled.