What is included in the abundant life?
It contains happiness, joy, and fulfillment but is not restricted to these. It includes the opportunity to enjoy and share blessings, of good times with good people.
It involves wisdom and the ability to discern truth from lies, what is healthy from what destroys, and substance from the superficial.
The abundant life also accepts the world as it is and life with all its unfairness, tragedy, and vanity without despairing.
In the abundant life you may find some what some might call unlikely candidates; humility, service, sacrifice, gratitude and charity.
A simple but powerful-and perhaps the best-approach to discovering the abundant life is to read the parables, Beatitudes, and Gospel stories. Though requiring considerable thought-you can’t just blow through them despite their seeming simplicity-they can cut through the religious haze to what is important to understand. I continue to marvel at the profound depth of these treasures, a depth that has no bottom. When confronted with deep theological issues, I turn to “what did Christ do, what did he say.” And regarding stories, especially from the Old Testament, be prepared for some raw material. As the saying goes, it is the journey that is important. Each story has its own journey, and each journey is personal.
In the final analysis, the abundant life is the limitless life as long as you seek the higher things of life.
Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes?
Matthew 6:25 NIV
