Some thoughts on "more than enough"

Well we are having another rainy day here. I passed the field near our house earlier this morning and there was a flock of seagulls covering it. Not a good sign…may have to rent a jet ski later today.

I jest.

So for a quick thought that isn’t silly this morning, I am reading in 1 Kings now and Solomon just finished building the Temple in the passages I read.

Chapters 5-7 of 1 Kings outline in great detail the whole process and I noted an old message I penned in the margin of this same Bible when I did a read-through in 2020. “I am trying to wrap my mind around this, but I think I need pictures.”

I have a picture kind of mind.

You can describe your new home to me in great detail and I will lose you right after we mentally walked in the front door.

I will be smiling and nodding and adding appropriate expressions of appreciation, but inside my brain the wheels are just spinning in all directions and I am stuck on something you said two rooms ago that I am trying to get into 3D with a linear brain that also can do gymnastics.

But it is God’s word and so I read each word and pray for any insight I might get and here is what jumped off the page back in 2020 that still rang true today.

In Chapter 7, verse 47 I find these words: “And Solomon did not weigh all the articles because there were so many; the weight of bronze was not determined.”

You would have to have read every verse of chapters 5 through 7 to appreciate this lack of detail. There is so much description and attention to making sure every inch of the Temple design is recorded that this verse stands in stark contrast.

After quarrying rock off sight and toting it to the location for assembling the walls, fashioning cherubim and covering with hammered gold, making basins three inches thick and crazy wheel designs that were like the wheels of chariots but so much more; we hit this piece of data…well, there are so many of these items we crafted of bronze, let’s not even bother to account for the weight of them.

And all I could think of as I read that in 2020 and again today is…abundance.

Abundance that is beyond measure. So much that you don’t even want to take the time to try and add it all up.

Which reminded me that He gives me abundantly more than all I could ask or imagine.

In fact He even takes it beyond abundance. It says so right in Ephesians 3: 20…as Paul accredits to God this accolade of praise:

Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to His power that works in us, to Him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen
Ephesians 3: 20-21

I looked up abundance in Websters and it means “an ample quantity.”

I looked up ample and it means “generously sufficient to meet a need or request.”

And then I look at the verse Paul wrote and I see it isn’t just abundantly above, not just generous sufficent…it’s exceedingly abundantly above.

So…an incredibly large amount that goes beyond being generously enough to meet our needs.

But then I am thinking … wait…not just anything I could think or ask, but this goes for all the generations that will come after me.

Even after I am gone, and my children and grandchildren and their children and grandchildren, until Jesus returns, are gone…He has the resources to meet every need we could think of or imagine, according to the power that is at work in us through Christ Jesus.

A year ago around this time Russ and I approached the lip of the Grand Canyon with Rachel and Zach and the band of brothers and Miss Caroline. The immensity of that canyon and the walls that extend forever as far as the eye can see absolutely took our breath away.

It is the most expansive, abundant rock formation I can even conceive of imagining.

But it has ends.

It has limits.

It only goes so deep and it is only so wide and so long.

It can be measured.

But God’s love and grace and mercy and provision and protection and guidance and glory…are exceedingly abundantly beyond what we could even think to ask of imagine.

He is with no beginning and He has no end.

He was and He is and He always will be.

Glory!

Whatever you need today, even if you can’t put it into words; He will exceed that need, abundantly and beyond your wildest imagination.

He is faithful and you, my friend, are dearly loved <3

Share and Save: