Prosperity and Abundance

In a previous post, I wrote that I don’t believe that poverty in its truest sense exists in most places I’ve been to; even the poorest place I’ve been, where $500 dollars is a massive fortune, the people have never gone a day of their life without more than enough food, the clothing they need and a house to live in.  They have very little, but they are lacking nothing.

This doesn’t mean that true poverty doesn’t exist; it simply means that it in our comfortable world of prosperity and abundance, we have a skewed definition of poverty. Many of us have more than enough food every day of our lives, and money to spend on all sorts of extra items that are in now way necessary to live on, yet we consider ourselves poor or low income.

The village where we live in Canada has a large number of Mennonites arriving from Mexico; many live on incomes much lower than Canadians consider “necessary” with families much larger than Canadians consider sane.  Some church charities have noticed the situation and taken steps to help out.  For example, one day of the week, there is a sewing circle in a church basement here; one of the charities goes to a local grocery store and picks up all the fruit and vegetables that the store can no longer sell.  About 90% of these are still good, and only very few have gone bad.  The people who take these pick out some of the fruit, but leave pretty much all the vegetables and even some of the less popular fruit.  If there were anyone truly living in poverty, I’d suspect after everyone had picked out their favourites, they would pick it up the whole box and take it home to feed their needy family.  But no one does.

I am not complaining about or criticizing abundance, I’m only saying that we are so surrounded by abundance, that we don’t even realize it.  We begin to think that abundance is poverty.

Personally, I’m thankful for some of the benefits that overabundance brings.  Besides regular thrift shops which sell excellent used stuff for cheap prices, there’s a shop nearby called the “Twooney Barn.” It’s basically a thrift shop where you pay whatever you want for things.  You can also exchange furniture, clothing and a bunch of other items.  When you’re done with things, you simply take them back if they’re still good.  My wife went there for the first time today and completed the few things we still need for our new apartment here in Canada.  It helps keep the budget in check.  Places like that wouldn’t be possible without a culture of overabundance.  I’m thankful for and to the people who have too many things and are willing to give away some of those things, despite the fact that they are in perfectly good condition, so people like us can buy them at whatever price we see fit.

So, yes, I’m thankful that we live in a place of abundance and prosperity.  It only surprises me when people don’t realize how abundant and prosperous life really is.  Realizing this would help us do more for those who truly are poor.