“Sharing in God’s Abundance” Sermon Illustration

John 10:10

Durban, South Africa

What is meant by abundance?  I think I have been quick to associate abundance with material wealth and possessions, but I doubt that is what Jesus had in mind.  I live at a girl’s boarding school in the middle of a township.  Many people would not choose to live in a township.  It is a mix of simple dwellings and extreme poverty.  It isn’t neat or polished.  Basic service delivery of electricity and water is poor and crime is high.  Yet there is abundance.  There is a local church next to our school that is running a soup kitchen and daycare.  Every morning 140 children stop at the soup kitchen for breakfast before school.  The preschool children remain for the day in the sanctuary that is transformed into a daycare center.  A short distance from this soup kitchen is a welfare society also operated by a church that provides a home and income generating projects for the aged, orphaned, terminally-ill and unemployed.  There is abundance.  The boarding school where I serve as the Chaplain and my husband the Development Manager has produced stellar grade 12 results this year which compliments 144 years of quality education for black females.  Inanda Seminary is an historic school founded by our American Congregationalist missionaries.  There is abundance when it is shared!

Susan Valiquette, a member of First Congregational Church, Winter Park, Florida, serves with the Inanda Seminary, Durban, South Africa. She works as the school chaplain and a class instructor.