Readings:
Acts 5: 34-42
John 6: 1-15
Reflection:
An abundance mentality, the belief that there’s enough for everyone, is a concept Stephen Covey promoted in his book, 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. It is a belief that there are plenty of opportunities, resources, and successes to go around. This mindset encourages collaboration, sharing, and optimism. Highly effective people have an abundance mentality. The opposite is a scarcity mindset, the belief there is only so much to go around. In a homily on today’s Gospel Richard Rohr uses this concept to encourage us to develop a worldview of abundance instead of scarcity. https://cac.org/podcasts/worldviews-of-abundance-versus-scarcity/
Understandably, most people are afraid that they don’t have enough. We are deeply scripted in a scarcity mindset. If we’re dependent on finite things — limited money, or time or personal ability —it’s easy to look at life in terms of scarcity, convincing ourselves that there isn’t enough. There isn’t enough of goodness. There isn’t even enough of God. This can drive us towards anxiety and possessiveness, because we don’t want to lose what “little” we have—even if what we have is really more than enough.
But there’s another worldview, the worldview of abundance. Rohr is convinced it is the worldview of the Gospel. The miracle of the loaves and the fish points to it. It makes much out of little and there are baskets left over! The same story in all four Gospels! There’s plenty! If we learn to be a less selfish, there’s always another way to see things and to make sure all are fed. However, it depends on recognising that we cannot depend merely on finite things but on God, the limitless source of abundance. While Rohr does not put it this way, it seems to me that Jesus, the incarnation of the God of Abundance, uses this miracle as a demonstration that he has indeed come to bring us life in full abundance (Jn 10:10).
For Covey, an abundance mindset flows out of a deep inner sense of personal worth and security which enables one to share, collaborate and acknowledge the success of others. Our motivation, sustained by the God’s abundance of grace, goes beyond being highly effective persons. It calls us in simple everyday ways to recognise God’s abundance in our lives and to work so that others may be fed by God’s lavish bounty.
John McGrath is a parishioner of St Brigid’s Marrickville.