Living abundantly

Yesterday in a weekly Sunday mass, a sermon was about abundant life. The speaker/preacher quoted that in economic term, there are 3 basics need of people namely food, cloth and security. So as long as we have food for the day, a cloth to wear and a shelter we are OK. If we have food supply for more than a day, a few clothes and a big house as shelter, we are living in abundance.

Looking from that sense, I think most of us are living in abundance despite all types of crisis surfacing around us. Despite the rise in fuel price, I do not have to be worried because owning a vehicle is not a primary need. But that's not usually the case. It seems like owning at least one vehicle has became of a great importance. It used to be our want but now it has became our need.

Jesus said do not worry about anything, about what should you eat and what should you wear. Well, I think during that time, Jesus was speaking to the needy, to the poor. Those people have less than enough food to eat and perhaps they did not have extra clothes to wear. All these people have been worrying about food and clothes. So Jesus told them not to worry because God will provide that for them. He also mentioned that life is more important than food and the body is more important than clothes. So as long as we have life and the body, we should not be worry. God will take care of our food and clothes.

Does this mean that we do not have to worry about not having job or steady income? Does it mean that all we need to do is to believe in God and do nothing else and hope God will give us everything that we need? Paul wrote that faith without deed is dead. We need to work our faith out. We need to use our talents which is given by God. God wants us to make us of our talents not to keep it and bury it.

As a Christian, we believe that everything is from God, by God and for God. We do not believe in luck. We do not believe in 'it happens accidentally'. We believe that everything works for good for those who believe in Him. But that will only happen if we live by His words, by His wills. In his blog, 97 seconds with God Jon mentioned about the Tower of Babel that we have in our life. We all have that tower. We built the tower of greed and selfishness in trying to attain our own agenda. We did not even ask God if it is His will. We merely plan our tower and God make our plan become confusing and hard to work out because it is not His will.