Scarcity assumes that what you have now is all you’re going to get and the only option available is to hang on to it or risk losing it. The scarcity mind hates tomorrow and longs for yesterday. The good times are always in the rear view mirror for the scarce mind because really, there were never any good times and, if there were, the scarce mind would never admit it. The scarcity mind is under threat all the time.
The scarcity mind is grasping at whatever it can get right now. The scarce mind hangs on to money like it’ll disappear, or buys that big plasma screen because they’ll never see money again. It blows a whole paycheck on crazy shit because the scarce mind has no ability to think past today and getting what they can right now.
The scarce mind is under attack and so it lives in survival mode all the time. High anxiety, high stress, high fear, high worry, code red. The threat might be the neighbors, the internet, the news, the world, the grocery store, the employer, the friends, the in-laws, anything that could put outside force and outside thought upon the scarce mind.
The scarce mind fights for themselves only. It can’t see much beyond its own nose because it’s on survival mode. With a skeptical heart it hears good news and quietly hates it. It is showered with grace and a dozen roses and hates that too because a scarce mind even thinks of love as a threat. Love has been put into a box along with everything else. The scarce mind knows good and well that even good things will be turned into bad things. How does it know that? It’s a professional apple rottener. It was taught how to do it at an early age, it believes every negative thought that floats on through and calls all the good thoughts liars.
For the scarce mind there is no such thing as enough love or forgiveness or peace or time or grace or patience or anything. Those wonderful things are limited resources never to be handed out without a good vetting process. Everything is scarce and so you hoard what you have and lock the house up tight. For the scarcity mindset, it’s all winning and losing and strength and weakness and power and control and the worst thing that could happen would be to lose the shaky ground upon which it stands. It’ll never get better. It’s just this and this is all there is.
You can be a billionaire and live with such a mindset. You can have all the riches the world an offer and still see and experience none of it. The scarce mind calls trusting people fools, calls loving people fools, calls dreamers straight. up. fools.
But there’s this other thing available. It’s actually possible to switch allegiances. It’s possible to open up to wonder and gratitude and beauty with the opposite: an abundant mind.
The abundant mind knows there’s more than enough time, love, grace, peace and patience to change the hearts of men. The abundant mind doesn’t hold on too tightly to anything because change isn’t the enemy. Change is part of the process. The adundant mind might take a measured approach, buy a little save a little, work a little, have fun a little and knows the threats won’t go away while hiding. The threats only shift if we think about shifting.
Adundance has nothing to do with bank accounts. It has everything to do with thinking and heart beating. The abundant mind asks why? and doesn’t fear the answer. The abundant mind is curious about why light is light and dark is dark and walks out into the road to meet its neighbor. The abundant mind knows it has more to learn and has places where it needs healing, but also the abundant mind knows full well it has places in its heart that can extend healing to others as well. The abundant mind is unafraid of imperfection. It knows that the pursuit of perfection is the losing-est possibility out there. The abundant mind is resting in the arms of the one who created and sustains it. It knows where it sits in the grand order of human history and so it walks in humility and bravery.
I woke up this morning sad for all of this. I woke up this morning looking to my right and my left wondering why the inaction and why the lack of creativity and why the present state of division. I thought to myself, “Hopie, you sure sound as though you’re more interested in protecting your own skin than making anything better and that, my friend, is a true sign of scarcity.”
I don’t want the world to thoughtlessly go back to normal. I don’t accept the bizarre inequalities I see in my daily life. I don’t want to be tempted into scarcity thinking just because there’s a whole world out there under the impression that such a way of living is safe. There’s nothing safe about it.
We had all those years to pack up the car and drive to the Grand Canyon and we never did. We could go now, but only to reach the gates to find it’s closed. Isn’t that an interesting thought on life? To get to the end of it and realize you had a freedom and an invitation staring you in the face that whole time and you never took it. We have an opportunity to imperfectly and messily extend the circle and bring people in, but for fear of what a fellow creature would say of us, we don’t. We hesitate. We stay the same, but oh how we will mourn when change is no longer an option!
I’d rather be a fool than a coward. I’d rather be extravagant with grace and love and hand it out freely than meet my heavenly Father thinking he’ll be proud of my having kept it in a box underground so as not to waste it. We were meant to waste it. We were meant to live this one beautiful, extraordinary life like kids trashing a play room getting glitter and blue eye shadow everywhere (in a good, positive, joyful type way).
Be unafraid of the scarcity mind. Once you see it, then you see how you’ve been championing the cause of NO for a very long time. Be unafraid of abundance. The more you see it, the more you’ll learn how to invite it in. Be unafraid of letting go of what you’ve always done. Be unafraid of the uncertainty of tomorrow. The spirit of God extends beyond the power of men putting into place exactly what was supposed to be there.