My continuing search for the abundant life includes living it, understanding it, and praying it.
Living to discern the abundant life has taken me in unexpected directions. I will share one example. My wife and I enjoy a comfortable retirement, in a comfortable neighborhood, without financial or health issues. Under these conditions it is all too easy to live an isolated life that is inwardly directed.
But the abundant life is not intended to be lived in isolation. Around us, even in an affluent area, there is so much need, poverty, injustice, cruelty, suffering, and pain. These claw at me and I find new purpose and fulfillment only by entering into these conditions
The lesson life has taught me, and continues to instruct me in, is to enter into the lives of others where abundance is thin or lacking.
Understanding the abundant life is a function of following my hardwired preferences: thoughtfully studying it, creative thinking, seeking wise teachers, and expressing it in words, as I am doing here.
My primary resources are books, especially the Bible, and many, many different Bible commentaries and translations. Creative thinking includes looking at life, in its infinite forms, with an eye toward wrestling out truth. Wise teachers include great preachers, the lives (past and present) of those who have discovered their own abundance, and faith-based organizations.
Praying the abundant life is simply to connect with my higher power to accomplish in me what I cannot do for myself; this is humility. It is missing the mark repeatedly and making course corrections daily; this is repentance. It is getting along with your neighbor; this is reconciliation.
seek, and you will find
Matthew 7:7 NIV
