god on Scarcity

I was recently at a eight-year-old’s birthday party, and at this birthday party there was a piñata. All of the kids took turns whacking a paper mache shark with a PVC pipe until eventually the shark b...

Joseph’s brothers, meaning to harm him, sold him into Egypt, but in reality God sent him there so that he could save Jacob’s family and many others from death by starvation Robert E. Longacre, J...

God of our hearts, Lord of nations and Creator of worlds; Father, Son and Holy Spirit: When You redeemed us and called us each by name, You made us a family—united by your love and grace. Across towns...

Our God has boundless resources. The only limit is in us. Our asking, our thinking, our praying are too small. Our expectations are too limited.

Alexander Maclaren writes about the importance of recognizing our dependence on God for all we have: Up to the very edge we are driven before He puts out His hand to help us. It is best for us that w...

A first-century Hebrew walks alone on a hot afternoon, staff in hand. His shoulders are stooped, his tunic stained with sweat. But he doesn’t stop to rest. He has pressing business in the city. He vee...

Human beings do not readily admit desperation. When they do, the kingdom of heaven draws near.

Desert spirituality is characterized by the pursuit of abundant simplicity—simplicity grounded in the possession of little and the abundance of God’s presence. Yearning for complete union with God, de...

The man who has God for his treasure has all things in One. Many ordinary treasures may be denied him, or if he is allowed to have them, the enjoyment of them will be so tempered that they will never ...

Lord, You are a great and holy God, and you have asked us to pursue you as the object of our worship and devotion. But Lord, we have fallen short of what you ask of us, we are a sinful people. We have...

The context The parables we hear this week are part of a collection of parables of the Kingdom collected by Matthew in chapter 13 of his gospel account. As with the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7),...

Unexpected Circumstances Strange days,  unexpected  times: a belief-defying announcement of a pregnancy, a wearying journey to be taxed, an uncomfortable birthing bed in a hewn out cleft in the rock ...

The context The parables we hear this week are part of a collection of parables of the Kingdom collected by Matthew in chapter 13 of his gospel account. As with the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7),...

There is an old story of a king who went into the village streets to greet his subjects. A beggar sitting by the roadside eagerly held up his alms bowl, sure that the king would give handsomely. Inste...

It is only when you reach the very bottom, when everything falls apart, when all your schemes and resources are broken and exhausted, that you are finally open to learning how to completely depend on ...

Cosmic ingratitude is living in the illusion that you are spiritually self-sufficient. It is taking credit for something that was a gift. It is the belief that you know best how to live, that you have...

When suffering comes, we yearn for some sign from God, forgetting we have just had one.

A wealthy Dutch collector was searching for a rare diamond to complete his collection. When a renowned New York dealer located the perfect stone, he invited the man to come see it in person. The Du...

Anyone wanting to proclaim the glory of Christ to the ends of the earth must consider not only how to declare the gospel verbally but also how to demonstrate the gospel visibly in a world where so man...

Patience is a hard discipline. It is not just waiting until something happens over which we have no control: the arrival of the bus, the end of the rain, the return of a friend, the resolution of a co...

I place no value on anything I have or may possess, except in relation to the kingdom of God. If anything will advance the interests of the kingdom, it shall be given away or kept, only as by giving o...

Self-made and self-sufficient people live in a fantasy world, empty of the reality of God. In contrast, the poor in spirit are deeply aware of being God-made and God-sufficient:

The claim here is not that the poor are inherently more righteous or sanctified than the rich. There is no place in the Bible that indicates that poverty is a desirable state or that material things a...

When human reason has exhausted every possibility, the children can go to their Father and receive all they need. ... For only when you have become utterly dependent upon prayer and faith, only when a...

A. W. Tozer once wrote,  Left to ourselves we tend immediately to reduce God to manageable terms. We want to get Him where we can use Him, or at least know where He is when we need Him. We want a ...

By describing his disciples as poor in spirit, Jesus points to their relationship with God. Their poverty has touched their inmost being so that they now depend entirely upon God.

In the story of grace, the lack of hurry makes room for presence.

The kingdom is present not in grandiose accomplishments, but in showing practical love in humble ways, day after day, and in refusing to allow our failures and disappointments to hide God’s love from ...

Gracious God, you love us deeply yet we take your love for granted. Rather than trusting you, we trust the gifts you have given us. We confess that our misplaced hope and reliance is on money, intelli...

The farther you go…the harder it is to return. The world has many edges and it’s easy to fall off. Anderson Cooper, Dispatches From The Edge: A Memoir of War, Disasters, and Survival Hearing God&...