Consider the humble apple.

There are over 7500 varieties of apples grown throughout the world. Over 2500 varieties are grown in the United States. One hundred varieties are grown for commercial sale—those are the kinds you buy at the local grocery shop for your kids’ school lunches.*

Photo source: Guardian

Adam and Eve could have eaten an apple a day from a different tree for twenty-one years. Did they really need one more?

Yes. And no.

Yes, because the persistent hiss of the snake kept them focused on the one thing in the Garden of Eden that they thought they lacked. (Genesis 3)

And no…because God had given them all that they needed. (Genesis 1:31)

What we focus on, we find.

Don’t we all have a just one more thing? The one worry or hope or temptation that keeps tugging our focus away from God’s sufficiency for us…and onto a perceived deficiency. Just this week, four different conversations with friends revealed their one more thing: concern for a child’s future, hope for career advancement, struggle to afford a first home, exhaustion from caregiving a daughter afflicted with Early Onset Alzheimer’s.

Imagine how the story changes when perspective shifts from scarcity and deficiency to one of sufficiency, of abundance. To trusting God with our one more thing.

What we focus on, we find.

Scarcity says…what I have…just isn’t enough.

Abundance answers…“You can be sure that God will take care of everything you need, his generosity exceeding even yours in the glory that pours from Jesus. Our God and Father abounds in glory that just pours out into eternity. Yes!” (Philippians 4:19, msg).

*Source of Apple Facts: University of Illinois

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