We Begin The Quest
Genesis 1:1-3; Matthew 28:20; John 1:1-5
Life can never be abundant unless it has abundant resources. It is obvious that no organism can expend more in energy than it takes in from without. Just what does “the without” consist of: physical nature and human society only? Or is there a third dimension in addition to “the within” and “the around”? Is there an “Above”? Many have decided that there is no “Above.” At least, there is none they can contact; so they have short-circuited life to “the within” and “the around.” But, to their dismay, they find that “the within” and “the around,” instead of offering resources to abundant living, offer resistances to it. “The within” is clashing, and “the without” is contradictory. The resources are in reverse, pulling the other way.
Someone has said, “If we haven’t that within us which is above us, we will soon yield to that which is around us.” We become circumstance-conditioned and circumstance-fed, and grow weak and anemic on the fare. And if we turn within for our resources, we find the well is dry. Harvard professor William Ernest Hocking, speaking as a philosopher, says: “Man comes up to a certain point and then finds he hasn’t resources in himself to complete himself, so he remains incomplete and frustrated.”*
There ensues what an able and earnest man described as “a sense of cosmic loneliness. I am not sure,” he continued, “whether my doings have anything cosmic back of them, whether I am working with anything significant, or just working meaninglessly, alone with no one to back my work or care.”An atheist has been described as “a man who has no invisible means of support.”
“A sense of cosmic loneliness”—that is the frigid thought that lays its cold hand on our hopes and our endeavors. Can it be lifted and the sense of a warm, living, cosmic Presence—who is with us and for us—take its place? If so, then that would hit the spot: the central spot. For if the central spot is empty and meaningless, then all of life turns empty and meaningless with it. But if that central spot is full and meaningful, then all of life turns meaningful with it
MLA 9th Edition (Modern Language Assoc.)
E. Stanley Jones. Abundant Living : 364 Daily Devotions. Abingdon Press, 2014.
APA 7th Edition (American Psychological Assoc.)
E. Stanley Jones. (2014). Abundant Living : 364 Daily Devotions. Abingdon Press.