Life…More Abundantly

It would be revealing to look into the hearts of men and see what hopes lie there. These hopes, no doubt, could be stated in broad generalities for most of us. We all want peace, of course. We all want to be permitted to use our energies and powers of thought in constructive ways. We all want to be loved, and respected, and cherished by someone who esteems us more than casually. We all want the necessities of life, and what each of us considers to be our share of its comforts. In short, we all want to live abundantly, but when we speak of living abundantly, we are usually thinking in terms of material comforts and advantages. If man were a creature only of flesh and bone, food and raiment and the physical comforts would be the end of all his needs. But he is also a creature of mind and of spirit and of immortal continuance, and that abundant life of which we speak must go beyond a full stomach, a new car, a fur coat, and other such things. The material side of our existence is important, indeed essential, consideration. He who makes possible by his inventive genius or powers of organization the wider distribution of more and more desirable things, is a benefactor of mankind⎯but he who supposes that life begins and ends with the accumulation of this world’s goods, is misguided in his thinking. It was of such of whom this parable was spoken: “And I will say to my soul, Soul thou hast much goods laid up for many years; take thine ease… But God said unto him, Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee: then whose shall those things be, which thou hast provided?” And the conclusion of the matter, according to the record of Luke, is this: “The life is more than meat, and the body is more than raiment.” And so, when we wish that men “might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly,” we do so remembering that “… the Kingdom of God is not meat and drink; but righteousness, and peace, and joy.”