Our God is a God of harvest bounty--and desert scarcity

Our God is a God of both desert scarcity and harvest bounty—the gracious provider in all conditions and seasons of life.

The Jewish festival Sukkot, or "Booths," reminds me of Thanksgiving Day.  Sukkot, or “Booths,” celebrates the Hebrew faith in such a God. The booths symbolize a God who provides for us in both bad times and good during scarcity and abundance.

After delivering the Hebrews from slavery in Egypt, God led them through a time of wandering in the desert wilderness. During this period, God provided food in the form of a miraculous, funny-looking white substance they called “Manna”—appropriately named, as “Manna” in Hebrew literally means “What’s that?”

The exciting thing about Manna was that it was only good for one day and then spoiled. You couldn’t store it up; you had to live by faith day by day. This is the spiritual meaning behind the phrase in the Lord’s Prayer: “Give us this day our daily bread.” Bread is enough for this day.

The same God who provided Manna in the wilderness also provided booths, temporary dwelling places where the people could shelter from the extreme desert elements.

Later in Jewish history, Sukkot, the annual festival, was established to celebrate God’s goodness and faithfulness. Temporary booths were erected where families would eat and sleep during the seven days of the festival.

These booths were set up in the fall at harvest time. Farm workers also used them as shelters while they gathered the harvest.

I love the dual historical image of the booths in the desert and the harvest fields. God provides both in the face of desert scarcity and the harvest bounty.

The Apostle Paul points to such a God in his letter to the Philippians:

I have learned in whatever state I am to be content. For I know how to be abased, and I know how to abound; in any and all circumstances, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and want. I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.

For Paul, Jesus was not just the historical figure from Nazareth but also the Christ—the living Lord who was an indwelling presence, an inner resource of spiritual strength and wisdom. Paul experienced himself as living “in Christ” and Christ “living in” him. Jesus himself used phrases like living in or entering the kingdom of God and spoke of the kingdom of God within us.

“I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.”

The famous nineteenth-century preacher Washington Gladden preached two sermons on these verses: “Knowing How to Be Rich” and “Knowing How to Be Poor.” There are unique challenges to both conditions—affluence and poverty, success and failure. Gladden also wrote the hymn “O Master, Let Me Walk with Thee”:

O Master, let me walk with Thee.

In lowly paths of service free;

Tell me Thy secret; help me bear

The strain of toil, the fret of care.

Ah, the “fret of care!”

In recent years, we’ve been on an economic roller coaster. Our dependence on the stock market for our income and sense of financial well-being has made us feel rich one day and poor the next—secure today and anxious tomorrow. When the market goes up, we feel giddy with well-being; when it goes down, we think our economic life is on the ropes. I’m embarrassed by how much my own feelings are subject to such fluctuation.

For over thirty years, we experienced unprecedented prosperity, marked by only a few minor reversals. Suddenly, we faced an unanticipated string of losses—oil spills and hurricanes on top of economic downturns.

We need the secret Paul found of living in both good times and bad, in abundance and want, in desert scarcity and harvest plenty.

“I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me,” he wrote. But that’s not the best translation. One cannot do all things. One cannot make hair grow on a doorknob or produce money from a head of cabbage. Instead, we are given by God the inner resources to cope with whatever comes our way—the spiritual capacity to meet the challenges of our successes and our losses. “I am empowered in all circumstances through Christ who strengthens me.” That’s a better translation.

Jesus taught us about living with trust in all seasons of life. From the Sermon on the Mount:

“Do not wear yourself out in anxiety about your life—what you will eat, what you will drink—or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing?

“Look at the birds of the air; consider the wildflowers of the field. God cares for them, feeds them, and clothes them in unmatched beauty. How much more will God care for you?

“Seek the kingdom of God first, and all these things will be added to you.”

Look at the birds…

Consider the lilies…

Jesus’ words are not a call to careless living. The old English translation said, “Be careful for nothing,” meaning do not be full of care or burdened by worry.

But it doesn’t mean to be careless or without care. God will not plow the ground for us or, gather the harvest, go to work for us, or balance our checkbook. But God will provide what we need. These words call us to a simple life and a centering trust.

Most of my anxieties have little to do with my basic needs and more with my wants. “Why do you wear yourself out worrying about such things?” Jesus said. The unbelievers do. But why you?”

I try to live by a mindset and spirituality of abundance rather than a mindset and spirituality of scarcity.

A mindset of scarcity fears there will not be enough. So we become competitive; our hands tighten around what we have; we find it hard to be generous.

A mindset of abundance says, "I trust that God will provide all I need to flourish as a child of God—to be and to do what God has made and called me to be and to do."

This is not a form of magical thinking, turning God into a dispensing machine where you put in your order, and God dispenses what you’ve asked for. The God of the Bible does not promise lavish financial returns on your faith. But God does offer you a way of life based on faith, not fear; on generosity, not greed.