Just a quick note that I started writing this series about 6 months ago, and like many of you, I’ve experienced a half-year of tumult. Fears and joys tangling together through hard freezes, chilling rain, new growth, heat domes, and precious times with friends and family. And through it all, a desperation to understand my place and my approach in it all. There were times that I felt ill-equipped to talk about this, and I let that keep my keyboard still.
And while I often take breaks between writing, I do want to apologize for my absence. For holding these ideas in, when many of you may have needed to read them. So here we go, with some tender ideas and some opportunities to grow our understanding. To practice trusting each other as we take each step on this messy journey.
My mind holds on to thoughts and themes. They constantly tumble in my brain, often becoming smooth and polished, others maintaining persistent jagged edges. Some of these topics I eventually try to write about and share, and some I will always hold close, either because they are too intensely personal to share, or because I know if I try to talk about them there’s a chance I’ll be misunderstood.
This is one of those “please, please, please don’t misunderstand me” topics.
In western American church culture, “abundance” is one of those GOOD words like blessing and joy and freedom. “Scarcity” is equated with BAD things like sin and judgment and discipline. In the terminology of a children’s book by Claude M. Steiner1, abundance is a “warm fuzzy” and scarcity is a “cold prickly.” In some circles that teach a prosperity gospel, “abundance” is the evidence of your holiness. “Abundance” is something to strive for and create, while “scarcity” is the evidence that you are not in God’s will, and it’s something to avoid. Abundance is celebrated, scarcity brings a sense of shame.
It’s a complicated, nuanced topic, and I want to address it with clarity.
These words are trigger-laden for many of us, I know, and I’m sorry, and we’re going to be okay. To be clear, I’m not a proponent of prosperity gospel in any way.
It’s a complicated, nuanced topic, and I want to address it with clarity. I could give you a dictionary definition and be done, and work from there, but as I said, nuance. I’ve been reflecting on this topic as we’ve gone through the immense changes of this year.
I won’t only be talking about monetary or tangible abundance or scarcity in this series. Relational scarcity, a personal sense of abundance, and faith that weaves into daily life: these are all topics I want to cover.
The strict definitions are: abundance is “excess” and scarcity is “lack.” These are accurate definitions, but they are not helpful in evaluating where you are. I shared a piece in December giving examples of this using different kinds of light, but let me be more definitive here:
To me, abundance is marked by ease and generosity, graciousness and openness. Boundaries are in place, and can be as immovable as we need them to be, but there are doors or windows that can be opened for communication. Connecting with and trusting people feels easier and welcome, we find it easy to say yes to new opportunities. Risks are deemed worth the reward. Think of hands open and reaching out.
Scarcity, on the other hand, is marked by hesitancy, fears, and overwhelm. Capacity for anything beyond the current moment’s survival or completion is low; so conversations that don’t solve problems, or situations that place new demands, or anything that increases the cost of daily life in the area affected by scarcity will be avoided. Skepticism and doubts abound. The reward doesn’t seem to be worth the risk. Think of hands grasping at what they have and pulling in.
And I know that for many of us, our conditioning tells us that fears are BAD. But they are just sources of information. Fear and low capacity tell you where you are right now. They protect you from giving away what you need in this moment.
In short, abundance isn’t something we work for. It’s something we watch for. In the same way, scarcity isn’t something to avoid; it’s a normal state in the flow of life that we all experience and need to honor. We can’t turn one into the other by our efforts, but when we notice the reality of the state we’re in, we can watch how we act out of it.
In short, abundance isn’t something we work for. It’s something we watch for. In the same way, scarcity isn’t something to avoid (I don’t think we can); it’s a normal state in the flow of life that we all experience and need to honor. In different areas of our lives we may experience abundance or scarcity, with no obvious reason for each (sometimes, blessedly, simultaneously). We can’t turn one into the other by our efforts, but when we notice the reality of the state we’re in, we can watch how we act out of it.
We’re going to take our time over the next few months wading through different aspects of how abundance and scarcity show up in our lives, the effects they have on us as individuals and on our neighbors, and what we can do with whatever state we’re experiencing.
And if “Abundance” is your word for 2025, well, I’m sorry or you’re welcome. I hope you’ll stay with me, subscribe, and share.
Two notes on this.
a) All links to books this year will be to bookshop.org, which helps to support local bookstores. It may not have the speedy convenience of the billionaire-owned-behemoth, but it feels more responsible to link to books this way. And yes, you can create wishlists there. And they have ebooks, too.
b) The point of this book is, in fact, that we cannot be diminished by giving away the good that we have. One of the main lies of a scarcity season is that you must hold onto whatever you have, in case you don’t have enough later. But abundance knows that giving away things that cost us nothing (like kindness in our words) doesn’t reduce any store we think we have
This is really good and helpful, friend. Especially right now, I'm simultaneously experiencing both abundance and scarcity and in the overwhelm, I've been having a hard time finding the right words to describe it all. Thanks for coming back to the keyboard.