An Abundance of Abundant Life!
When I was a child, my family lived in Raleigh, NC just across the road from Alma Cooper and her husband “Coop.” Salt of the earth people he worked for the Highway Patrol – making their cars go faster. Alma was a homemaker. The only thing this sweet Christian lady ever really wanted out of life was to get married and have a child of her own to love. She married a good and loving man but after years of trying, they were told it was no use; they would never be able to have children. I’m sure Mrs. Cooper grieved the loss of her dream of children for years, but Mrs. Cooper refused to be defined by any scarcity of her life.
The Coopers lived in a small house on a large corner lot which they routinely opened to groups of neighborhood children. Their front yard had a perfect hill for sliding down on a cardboard box. Their back yard had a huge Pecan tree that provided all the ammunition we needed to target the big crows and squirrels that frequented the tree. Beside the Cooper’s house was a large field where Mr. Cooper planted corn. When he was finished picking corn for the year, he would let all the kids come in with our stick “swords” as we pretended to win a great battle against the cornstalk army. All the neighborhood kids loved to play in their yard – but that wasn’t even close to the best part of being at the Cooper’s house.
Many days after a group of neighborhood kids had been playing hard in the Cooper’s yard, Mrs. Cooper would holler from her kitchen, “Come and get it!” At that moment we stopped whatever we were doing and ran immediately to the kitchen because we had learned what she would have waiting there for us. As we opened her kitchen screen door, the smell of Mrs. Cooper’s fresh baked biscuits was unmistakable. There on the table she’d have a row of small brown paper bags. Inside each bag was a large hot biscuit slathered in real creamery butter (a real treat for me since we only had margarine at my house!). Beside each bag was small, bottled ice-cold Coca-Cola just out of her refrigerator.
You talk about abundance! It was just a biscuit and soda but on a hot summer day this unexpected treat was sacramental, a true means of grace from Mrs. Cooper to the children she loved. Mrs. Cooper never birthed one child of her own but as she made a conscience choice to live into God’s life of abundance, Mrs. Cooper received a neighborhood full of children as her very own. Jesus did not conquer the grave just to spend the rest of eternity watching his followers live insignificant lives and then die a slow miserable death. Easter is about the triumph of life over death, and he invites us all to share in this victorious living, “I have come that you might have life – in all its abundance.” John 10:10
Are you ready for a little bit of that kind of living? Have you had enough of being beat down and waking up each day to another sack full of worries? Then my last preaching series, “One Month To Live,” is for you! I invite you to take the “One Month To Live” challenge and discover for yourself - the possibility of a new and abundant life!
