Abundance

Every once in a while I am struck by the sheer abundance that surrounds me. While driving home at the end of our summer vacation, staring out the passenger window and watching farm after farm pass by, I found myself overwhelmed by emotion. I was surrounded on all sides by a sea of feed corn, soy beans, wheat, and pastures dotted with livestock. We were traveling in a minivan, and yet, we were so small in comparison to the greenery and life all around us. And yet, all I could see, perhaps three miles in any given direction, was only a small fraction of what exists in the state I was traveling through. Add this to all the states that have similar landscapes and then to all the countries in the world and the entire thing becomes unimaginable. It’s a bit like trying to wrap your head around a trillion – 1,000,000,000,000.

I do this in the grocery store, especially in the produce section. I am standing there examining the tomatoes, or the lettuce, or the apples and I think, There are maybe 150 apples here and those are just the ones on display in the Braeburn section. There are probably at least that many in the stockroom waiting to come out to the floor. I am standing in one grocery store in one city in one state. There are at least 6 grocery stores in 3 miles of my home and each one has Braeburn apples. 6 stores x300 apples =1800 Braeburn apples. If I really think about it I can come up with 20 cities surrounding mine that have these same grocery stores in them. 20 cities x1800 Braeburn apples = 36,000 Braeburn apples. If I reach back into my 5th grade social studies lessons I come up with something like 900 cities in Minnesota. 900 cities x an average of 4 grocery stores per city = 3200 grocery stores x 300 apples = 960,000 Braeburn apples. On display today. The population of Minneapolis/St. Paul is something like 600,000. That’s one and a half Braeburn apples for everyone. Today.

Then I think, How many apples does an average apple tree grow in a season? Say 1000. 960,000 Braeburn apples / 1000 = 960 trees needed to grow all the Braeburn apples that were available for purchase in all the grocery stores in Minnesota today. Next week there will be that many Braeburns again available for purchase. There are at least 10 commonly available apple types at grocery stores. 10 types x 960,000 apples available in all the cities in Minnesota = 9,600,000 apples of all varieties available today in all the grocery stores in all the cities in Minnesota. There are 50 states in the union. 50 states x 9,600,000 apples = 480,000,000 apples of at least 10 types of apples available in the US for purchase today. There are 305,000,000 people in the US. 480,000,000 apples / 305,000,000 people = 1 ½ apples for everyone in the US today.

And that was just apples. When I look at the green beans and then the corn and then the peppers, I pop a fuse. How is it possible that anyone is starving when there is so much today. And there will be that much again and again and again.

~ Peace and abundance