Delano Herald Journal

Serving the communities of Delano, Loretto, Montrose, MN, and the surrounding area

Pastors’ Column – 09/20/10



The fields are getting ripe for harvest and this year has been an exceptionally good year for crops in our area. This is a fulfillment of a promise that we find quite frequently in the Bible.

The apostle Paul wrote to the Christians in Corinth that “God is able to provide you with every blessing in abundance, so that by always having enough of everything, you may share abundantly in every good work.” (2 Corinthians 9:8) The words “abundant,” “abundantly” and “abundance” occur in the Bible at least 146 times.

A theme found throughout the Bible is that God provides so abundantly that everyone should have “enough.” This means that there should be enough that even the poor, the orphaned, the invalid, and the homeless have plenty.

But how do we reconcile this with the fact that more than a billion people in the world today are undernourished and that 25,000 children die of hunger-related causes each and every day?

Even in the difficult times our country has been facing, we Americans, as a society, have been blessed with more than enough, not only for our own people, but for the entire world’s basic needs.

As an example of how abundant our wealth is, consider this: Americans bought 2.1 billion pairs of imported shoes in one recent year. That’s an average of seven pairs per person. For less than the average cost of one pair per American, $53 according to one website, we could provide the additional $13 billion needed to fully meet the world’s yearly sanitation and food requirements.

Our wealth is not really ours. It all belongs to God. We have not been provided with our abundance because we are more righteous than those in need. We have been blessed in order that we may be a blessing to others. May we all be generous in our sharing of God’s bounty.

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