Religious Life

Southland Times, Issue 24460, 13 June 1941, Page 7

Religious Life

By

ICHTHUS

Abundance

Last week I wrote about the waves and the tide: the little advancing waves of the sea-shore broken and flung[back in spray, and the mighty, boundless ocean tide swelling fast and behind them, before which evexything is submerged. The waves seem to be defeated but the tide conquers all. Today I am led back io the sea again and to a kindred thought of It. I did not know when I set out that that where I was going, but I finished p beside “the many-sounamg sea Idi not, like Wordsworth, “see the childien sporting on the shore. But I did sight of that immortal sea that brough us hither,” and I did “hear its mighty waters rolling evermore.

THE MEANING OF WORDS It all came about through my ignorance. Did you ever find yourself m the presence of a word you had used familiarly for years, but of the accurate, essential meaning of which you were totally ignorant? That is what happened to me. The word was abundant,” a very common and familiar word. “His abundant mercy,” we read in 1 Peter one night, and someone quoted that other Biblical reference abundant in goodness and truth.” Thinking i over, and discussing the point, we found that none of us really knew what “abundant” means. So I got down Webster’s Dictionary. Now, a dictionary is really a thrilling book. An Irishman is said to have been found reading the dictionary, and on being asked how he liked it, replied, “Sure, ’tis a fine story, but it changes the subject rather often.” It does, certainly; but ’tis a fine story, nevertheless. Every word, as you trace its history, and growth, and come to grasp its real meaning, is full of surprises and discoveries. And the end is real knowledge. Well, we took up this word “abundant.” First, I tried it on my family. “Plentiful,” “ample,” “abounding,” were the answers I got. No one could Tfell me why it meant that. So we got to work on Webster. “See abound,” was our first doubtful reward. But under “about” we got it all; ab + unda was the magical formula. Ab is a Latin prefix meaning “over,” “above.” (“Subnormal” is below normal; “abnormal” is abovenormal). “Unda” is the Latin word for a “wave.” (Undulate, for instance). Then, in a flash I saw it. I was down by the sea-shore watching the tide come in. And I saw something I have often watched, as you, too, must have done. A wave broke on the beach, but before it could recede, sliding over its surface came another wave, and another swept in over that, and wave followed wave, each one larger and reaching farther inshore, and flooding in over- the surface of the wave before it. And behind was the ocean in boundless “abundance”! I knew, and saw—do we really know anything till the mind reconstructs it pictorially?—what “abundance” is. Whenever, in the future, I use the word “abundance” I will be seeing in my mind’s eye the tide coming in, wave flooding in over the wave before, sweeping ever higher up the beach, and behind it, backing it up, the vast exhaustless store of the ocean. OUR ABUNDANT RESOURCES So. says the Bible repeatedly, are our resources in God. We ourselves are small and meagre enough. Our best and greatest is only a drop in the ocean. But if we have God behind us we have “abundance.” “All things are yours,” cries Paul ecstatically, “and ye are Christs, and Christ is Gods.” “His abundant mercy,” cries Peter, marvelling at the depth beyond depth of it, never to be fathomed, always outreaching our need. “Abundant in goodness and truth” says another writer Our hymn-writers have caught the same glimpse of infinite opulence: “Till in the ocean of Thy love We lose ourselves in heaven above,” sings Keble. And the blind Matheson: “I give Thee back the life I owe, That in Thine ocean depths its flow May richer fuller be.” Yes; there is our abundance. Well, then, what are we worrying about? Why the pessimism and the low spirits? Whether it be your own personal troubles, or the fortunes of war in the vast world-struggle that daunts you, lift up your eyes and look on the infinite ocean of our “abundance.” It will do you good. You may even “hear the mighty waters rolling evermore.” At any rate, you will be sure that our little creeks and inlets will soon be brimming, and the day of our impoverishment forgotten. Last night I was reading Van Dyke’s “Little Rivers” in bed, and I came on this: “I reckon,” said a cow-boy to me one day, as we were riding through the Bad Lands of Dakota, “there’s Someone bigger than me, running this outfit. He can ’tend to it well enough, while I smoke my pipe after the round-up.”