Abundance in Anxious Times
Warehouse made of GHM shipping containers at Curran Lutheran Hospital in Liberia
“We are called by the gospel to a different kind of life, to be engaged in the world and in the neighborhood in transformative ways.”
-Walter Brueggemann (Walter Brueggemann, Celebrating Advent: Devotions for Advent, Westminster/John Knox Press, 2017, p.62.)
For many Americans today, anxiety is growing—as prices go up, new tariffs soar, and friends are being arrested or deported. A normal response to scar city is to hoard, to circle the wagons, to take care of number one, to compete for my “piece of the pie”—believing there just is not enough to share.
GHM consultants with Curran Lutheran Hospital Leadership Team in Liberia
Jesus taught a different kind of life. Jesus said to His disciples, “Feed them,” even as they faced 5,000 hungry men plus women and children and had only a few loaves and fish. Jesus sent out his first 70 followers on a mission of healing and preaching the good news, with no bags or money or anything in their hands. Jesus taught his followers to live transformative lives of service, not based on what they had, but based on faith in the abundance of God, and to let that abundance spill over into the neighborhood.
Abundance is a perspective, much more than an accounting of what you do or don’t have. Jesus knew that God’s immense plan for the world was based on abundance, not scarcity. Scarcity encourages hoarding. Abundance encourages sharing—of time, of resources, of hospitality, and of love. God’s abundance does provide for all. But God’s plan involves every follower of Jesus to be freed by faith in the abundance of God—not crippled by scarcity thinking. You are more precious than the birds of the air and the flowers of the field, Jesus teaches. God will provide for, but God also calls you and me to share with the least of these, trusting in God’s abundance.
Mr. Sumo Woyea and Dr. Amani at Curran Lutheran Hospital
That’s our agenda as GHM. We strive even in these anxious times to partner with some of the very people who bring health and healing across our global neighborhood.
Your partnership in Liberia, for example, is making a difference at Curran Lutheran Hospital (CLH). Mr. Sumo Woyea, the hospital administrator, leads an excellent and motivated staff to serve an area of over 27,000 people, plus many others coming from neighboring countries. Last year, GHM began scholarships for Mr. Sumo (while on the job) and two doctors (now studying in Tanzania). The doctors will return to CLH to lead an OBGYN department and a Pediatric Department- that have been unavailable since civil war crippled the country. Even now, GHM consultants are working to further improve the administration at CLH, and GHM is sponsoring a solar power upgrade for their entire campus. The abundance of God is at work here, even in anxious times!
In five different countries, GHM is partnering with consulting and funding for community-based health efforts that impacted almost half a million people last year. That impact is only growing today.
Your prayers, financial gifts, and service make YOU part of an enormously generous community. Thank you! We are seeing the abundance of God at work, as gifts keep coming together to make profound differences.
Together in faith and service,
Doug Cox
