...isn't it rich?

As we worship, grant us vision, till Your love’s revealing light

in its height and depth and greatness dawns upon our quickened sight,

making known the needs and burdens Your compassion bids us bear,

stirring us to tireless striving, Your abundant life to share.

---Albert F. Bayly, 1961

“Abundant life” is an attractive concept to believers. Definitions for abundant include “in plentiful supply, ample; abounding with; rich.” The picture I have in mind is of a life so rich and full that it is overflowing. Just as there are many mental images of abundance, there are many interpretations of what Jesus really meant when he promised an abundant life. As I study this hymn text, I find a new favorite.

This text suggests that the abundant life Christ lives, and beckons us to, is abundant in service. Out of the abundant life we have “in plentiful supply”, we can reach out to salve the hurts of an aching world. And, just perhaps, a fully abundant life cannot be lived separate from serving others out of the riches of grace and mercy showered on us by God. No one can live an abundant life outside the sphere of serving a hurting world.

Isn’t it rich?

...to risk life

O Love that will not let me go, I rest my weary soul in Thee;

I give Thee back the life I owe, that in Thine ocean depths

its flow may richer, fuller be.

---George Matheson, 1882

It’s hard to believe. Someone comes to you and says “Give up your riches to me. Blindly trust that I will take them and increase them.” And if this were an email solicitation, or a risky stock market offering, or a trench-coated fellow on a busy street corner, we know we’d be foolish to go along. No one wants to be scammed like that.

However, this is what God calls us to do. Here the hymnist imagines God as the personification of Love, a love that seeks us and pursues us, wraps us up and embraces us. This love calls to us, “Trust me. Turn over your life, which you may consider rich, full, and precious. In the depths of my life, your life becomes rich indeed. Entrust your life to me to achieve depth and meaning. You can rest here from your striving; here you are loved.”

This is a risk we can take, must take, if we are to live lives of meaning. Oh, to be found in the ocean of God’s love!