Deepening Abundance

I have had a weekend of abundance.  Some of you may be smiling and imagining me on a roller coaster moving so quickly from expressions of the difficulties and challenges of life to  abundant joys and richness!  I think the reality is that the rich abundance of life encompasses and surrounds both the struggles and the joys. The Chinese character for "crisis" incorporates the ideas of "dangerous opportunity."  There is great abundance and growth implied in that understanding of crisis.  It is often in the times of walking through difficulties that we learn and grow the most in our own personal abundance.  Through some of the challenges of our days we have known great abundance.  People have surrounded us and cared for us in many ways.  I have known personal triumph and growth in my own ability to grow in love and care.  We have known greatly of God's grace and love in glimpses of light in the ordinary.

Yesterday was a wonderful wedding celebration.  It felt like a watershed moment of abundance for me, through the joy of our friends.  My friend married is my age and has raised her two children by herself for the last twenty years.  She has walked faithfully and has persevered through many challenges.  She and I have met together for weekly late night cups of tea over the last year.  Together we have seen God's grace and leading as she met her husband through the internet.  We had many moments of laughter and disbelief in ourselves as she made that very uncharacteristic and risky leap.  Together we have been learning to wait on God in times of foggy darkness.  Our growth was intertwined with the events of this year, but not all that related to the actual bringing together of such joy.  On its very own our growth was cause for this great celebration of two lives joined.

In the midst of her own preparations this week, my friend brought me these exquisite flowers.  At first I thought I should bring them to the wedding as flower centerpieces, but no, they were just for me.  Exquisite beauty and abundance sitting right in the middle of my own table, full to bursting with both joy and pain and the hope of dangerous opportunity!  Thank you my faithful friend.  May God bless us all in His abundant fullness of life in the now of all circumstances today.