Bread from the Basket: Your Daily Slice

Monday, March 28, 2022

Your Daily Slice

ADAR BET 25

Abundance

“For if these are in you AND INCREASE …” (2Pet 1:8 ISR, emphasis mine)

The principal of ‘increase’ is not just a Biblical one, it is universal. When we plant a seed – one seed – that seed has the ability to reproduce and multiply over and over. Take, for example, zucchini. If I plant one zucchini seed, that one seed will produce many individual zucchinis, up to ten lbs. in a single year, with each zucchini having no end of seeds within itself[1]. And the same principal applies to most everything we plant and harvest.

As believers in the Elohim of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, we too are expected to ‘increase’. Some of us may remember a song we sang while in the westernized church system, a song based on Isa 61:3, about the “planting of the Lord”. We are expected to be part of “the vine”, the vine being Messiah Yeshua, with our Father being the Master Gardener (Joh 15:1). And we understand that as being part of the vine, we are also expected to bear fruit, fruit that should reveal to whom we belong (Gal 5:22-23). These verses from 2Peter contain another list of ‘fruit’ – actually, several of the fruit mentioned in 2Peter are also found in the list from Galatians 5 – fruit that we should not only exhibit in our everyday lives, but fruit that should be in abundance, maturing to full flavor.

The Greek word that has been translated as ‘increase’ – some translations read ‘abound’ – is the word pleonazō (Strong’s G4121), and carries with it the implication of super abundance and overflowing increase. Be that as it may, we need to remember that a plant – any plant – will not yield a harvest if it is not provided with the needed elements with which to grow: nutritious soil, water, sunlight. As it is in the physical, so it is in the spiritual: we will not produce the harvest our Master Gardener desires if we are not firmly and securely connected to our source (1Cor 8:6), our supplier (Phi 4:19), and our light (Joh 8:12).