By MATT POTTER
RADICAL JOY - CATHOLIC STEWARDSHIP AND ABUNDANCE
“We are to move from a space of scarcity to one of abundance.”
I have made this particular sentence my overall objective for my work in stewardship over the last decade. It is the great challenge of living a stewardship life because the very definition of scarcity is “not enough,” and it is antithetical to the messages we are bombarded with every day that tell us there is not enough.
All it takes is a few minutes of TV or internet ads to convince us that whatever we have, it is not enough. We run off in pursuit of the newest thing, convinced that the addition of that thing to our lives will make us happy and complete. The only problem is that it never does.
While scarcity is not enough, abundance is defined as having more than can be imagined. This, too, can be elusive. When I mentioned this at a meeting, one person said to me, “I don’t know, I can imagine a lot.”
Both scarcity and abundance defy metrics. Two people may have the same amount of money or the same size home, yet their interpretation of their current situation is exactly opposite of one another. How can this possibly be?
One answer is that scarcity and abundance are self-identified qualities. We can look at people who have big homes, expensive cars and large bank accounts and think to ourselves, they have an abundance. Yet that person with all those things might believe they don’t have enough, which is why they keep seeking more.
The psychology of this phenomenon is fascinating, as the accumulation of goods should, logically, reach a point where enough IS enough. Yet the accumulator keeps on accumulating.
For many who seek more even when it appears they have enough, they do not become happier with the addition of another car or a bigger home. Rather, they are seeking security by having more than is needed. Or they are simply keeping score and they want to have more than the next person.
It’s a treadmill, really. They keep going around and around, adding to their stockpile without ever getting anywhere. Their incessant need for the accumulation of worldly goods never allows them to feel the satisfaction of the abundance they have.
It has been said that there are two ways to become wealthy: the accumulation of worldly goods, or being satisfied with what you have. Our world offers us little incentive to say “no, thanks; I have enough” to the constant presentation of the new and improved.
The perpetual tension between scarcity and abundance causes us to examine what we have versus what we desire. When we desire more than what we have, we live in a state of scarcity. There is not much joy in that place.
As Catholics, we believe that all we have comes from God and that He alone is the source of all good things. That alone should tell us that we live in abundance, because God will never be outdone in generosity. Scarcity is not God withholding anything from us, but rather us not seeing what we truly have.
When we take an inventory of all that we have, beginning with God’s love for us, we can truly see the abundance in our lives.
This is how we move from scarcity to abundance. Once we know that we have the unlimited – more than we can imagine – love of God, what more could we possibly want?