In the days leading up to Hurricane Isaias, people throughout the Gulf Coast region flocked to grocery stores to buy bottled water, milk, toilet paper, and canned goods.
The impulse to stockpile in the face of crisis reveals a type of fear that grips many of us, even in normal weather conditions: the fear of scarcity.
Let’s be honest: There’s a lot we might fear running out of these days. Members of our churches, job opportunities, health, funding, time with our aging parents, the chance to invest in our kids before they leave home. At its best, our fear of scarcity equips us to respond to limitations with courage and creativity. At its worst, the fear of scarcity can be a pain point in our spiritual formation, pulling us into a tempest of anxiety, negative thinking, and over functioning.
This was the case for ancient Israel during its wilderness wanderings.
In Exodus 16, we find the Israelites about six weeks removed from walking through the parted waters of the Red Sea. Food supplies were running low—a plausible scenario for escaped slaves. There in the wilderness, God meets their scarcity with abundance, providing manna in the morning and quail in the evening. God’s miraculous provision, however, is not enough to stave off the effects of the fear that has set in. Fear continues to grip the community even after bellies are full, and it leads to two problematic dynamics.
First, the community’s fear drives them to a rapacious desire for surplus. Even though God provided enough manna and quail to meet each family’s needs, the Israelites want more. Day after day, they seek to stockpile excess, and every Sabbath, they go out to gather manna and quail even though God provides a double portion of both on the sixth day. For these Israelites, having enough is not enough.
It’s as if the Israelites are playing the 1980s boardgame, Hunger Hungry Hippos. There are only so many pellets on the board, and the goal is to gobble up more than the next player.
So often, the same is true of us. We seek to gather as much surplus as possible—of money, opportunities, accomplishments, success, recognition—in the hopes of fending off what we fear running out of in our own lives. Competitiveness and over-functioning overtake our capacity for gratitude and generosity. Instead of praying “give this day our daily bread,” we hope and work for a future in which we will have so much bread that we will forget what it means to be hungry—or dependent on God.
In Exodus 16, there’s second problematic dynamic surrounding Israel’s fear of scarcity—and it might even be more destructive.
Faced with a food shortage, the people lament, “If only we had died by the hand of the LORD in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the fleshpots and ate our fill of bread (v. 3). This is a curious complaint if for no other reason than the fact that Israel never sat by fleshpots and ate their fill of bread while enslaved in Egypt. This is a distorted memory, a longing for a past that never was—another word for which is nostalgia.
The pull of nostalgia threatens to drag Israel back to Egypt, and it is strong enough to persuade them that dying as slaves would be preferrable to living in a world in which scarcity is possible.
The grip of nostalgia is strong in many congregations today. Out of the fear of scarcity—of members, the presence of youth or young families, cultural prominence—many long to get back to “the way things used to be” in the 1990s or 1960s. But as was the case for the Israelites, this longing can draw us into false narratives about the past and it can prevent us from recognizing where God is bringing forth abundance in the here and now.
Scarcity is a real part of our world today. The faithful way through it does not involve denying that certain things we value are in short supply. Nor does it involve countering our fear of scarcity with a false gospel that promises a life of limitless abundance. Rather, the faithful way through this fear requires that we have the courage to interrogate what the fear of scarcity is doing to us.
How is the fear of scarcity leading us to over function? In what ways is this fear fostering competitiveness and territorialism rather than collaboration and generosity? If we were to turn down the volume of fear of scarcity, would we be more willing to take risks, try new things, or fail? What aspect of our calling might we lean into more fully if it weren’t for our fear of scarcity?
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