What follows is the text of my sermon today

If you've wondered why Economics is called, "The "Dismal Science," this past week should show you. Maybe it's also the dismal science because, according to my Barron's textbook, Economic science is principally about the "allocation of scarcity." As the theory goes, we have unlimited wants and never enough resources. So we have to learn to allocate those supposedly scarce resources.

Everything we've read in the last week seems to confirm the law of human scarcity. The best summary on our financial crisis that I've read comes from Steven Pearlstein of The Washington Post:

"What we are witnessing may be the greatest destruction of financial wealth that the world has ever seen -- paper losses measured in the trillions of dollars. Corporate wealth. Oil wealth. Real estate wealth. Bank wealth. Private-equity wealth. Hedge fund wealth. Pension wealth."

How did this happen? Was it too little regulation? Was it too much regulation? I'm not sure. Actually, I wonder if we should really be debating these questions of macroeconomic policies. Because the focus on policies conveniently distracts us from the motives and actions of the people who carried out those policies.

Pearlstein gets to the human heart of the issue when he writes: "[W]hen you strip away all the complexity and trappings from the magnificent new global infrastructure, finance is still a confidence game -- and once the confidence goes, there's no telling when the selling will stop."

Millions of people, confident that someone else could absorb the debt while they reaped the profits. Millions of people placing their confidence in millions of other people instead of the One Creator -- God.

What a coincidence -- or God-incidence -- that we should hear on this Sunday the story of the people of Israel, facing the scarcity of the Sinai Desert, and losing their confidence in a Desert God they couldn't see, and accepting the law of scarcity. Well, yes we were slaves in Egypt. But oh for those days when we sat by the meat pots and ate bread to the full. We had no freedom. We had no dignity. Occasionally all our male babies had to be thrown in the river. But at least we could eat!

So God, ever the patient Dad, says, "Behold, I am about to rain bread from heaven for you, and the people shall go out and gather a day's portion -- no more or less, and not on the 7th day -- that I may test them, whether they will walk in my law or not." In other words, will the people of Israel learn to confide their fears in a God of abundance and place their trust in him, and him alone.

God knows the apparent scarcities that we live with. But God never forgets what we too easily forget: that all our worries about tomorrow's scarcity won't increase today's abundance one single bit. And so God begins to show his chosen people the abundance in their midst.

As it happened thousands of years ago, so it happens today. Migratory birds flying from Africa over the immense desert often have no choice but to land due to sheer exhaustion. And when they land, they're too tired to get back up in the air, and you can catch them by hand.

As it happened thousands of years ago, so it happens today. A certain type of lice will puncture a hole in the fruit of a Tamarisk tree. And this interaction of lice and Tamarisk fruit creates yellowish-white flakes or balls that congeal in the cold desert night. It's rich in sugar and carbohydrates, and can be baked into a kind of bread, but it has to be eaten quickly or else it is lost to decay and ants. The natives of that region eat it today and they call it manna.

Because we can't control the future, we fear not having "enough." But there is abundance in this world, and its source is a God who is infinitely abundant in power and love. But it's never our abundance. It's God's. And so God tests the Israelites to make sure that they place their confidence in his infinite abundance rather than their own puny efforts. He tells them, "Get enough manna for two days on Friday, so that you don't have to work on Saturday the Sabbath, the day where you rest and give thanks for what I have provided you."

Now a little later in the story, sure enough, some Israelites try to save what they gathered on Monday because they don't trust that there will be manna for them on Tuesday. And come Tuesday morning, the worms have gotten into it and it stinks up the place. Others go out on the Sabbath, and find no manna anywhere. They all assumed scarcity, and placed more confidence in themselves than in God.

When we pray as God's Son, Jesus Christ taught us, what do we pray for? Enough bread to live on for the rest of our lives? No, we ask only for "our daily bread." It's in danger of becoming a cliché, but it's no less true that, "Yesterday is history. Tomorrow is a mystery. Today is a gift. That's why it is called the present."

So, when you eat today, consider it as just one of God's presents to you. When you give and receive the gift of friendship, consider it another one of God's abundant presents to both of you. Of course, we should do what we can to provide for our future. But to waste today worrying about a future over which you have no control makes you a slave to the law of human scarcity.

Pearlstein concludes: "What is really going on, at the most fundamental level, is that the United States is in the process of being forced by its foreign creditors to begin living within its means." Perhaps Pearlstein, the business columnist, means that Americans have to start allocating their scarcity.

But for us who believe in an infinitely abundant God, it means trusting in that abundance. And then inspired by that example, maybe we and our neighbors can begin to live, not in fear of scarcity, but in confidence of God's present abundance.