I will not tell you how many emails are currently sitting in my inbox so don’t even ask me. Don’t even try to guess. I’m a wimp when it comes to deleting. It’s too embarrassing and I simply, wimply won’t tell you how many are in there. I’m probably considered an e-hoarder though. If you suggest therapies, I won’t refuse to look into them. Just zip me an email. Or 13,000.
In all fairness, the messages are not urgent, even the ones marked urgent. Even the ones marked URGENT in all caps. They’re not nearly as URGENT as they try to insist they are, and most of them need to calm that drama down about eight notches. I get that the exclusive offer is about to expire, that I have 873 social media notes and invitations today, that there’s a 50% off lightning deal I shouldn’t miss, and that I have several thousand updates I can’t successfully maneuver life without. Still, I don’t think any of that is as earthshaking as the caps imply. Or the over-exclamation-point-ing. Or the over-over-over-emoji-ing. So many emojis.
It doesn’t help that I’m pretty sure I’m on every email list ever created. All of them. Hard to imagine, but I may be better at deleting than I am unsubscribing. But also, I just saw an ad that said if I sign up for this certain e-newsletter I’ll get two percent off all future purchases. I’m bad at math but suddenly I have what feels like 98 reasons for signing up. I’m practically overflowing with reasons.
No doubt there are better ways to overflow—urgent ways, I’d dare say. Paul wrote to the Colossians about “overflowing with gratitude.” In context, he was teaching about walking in Jesus, living for Him the same way our relationship with Him begins. “So then, just as you have received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to walk in him, being rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, and overflowing with gratitude” (Colossians 2:6-7 CSB).
We received Him by grace, through faith. And we live life through and for Him by grace, through faith. That’s gospel living. Gospel living keeps our faith grounded, built up, established. And gospel living very naturally leads us to a place of sweet thankfulness, a gratitude that goes beyond just us. It overflows and sloshes happiness on those around us.
Jesus still sends this message today. “I have come so that they may have life and have it in abundance” (John 10:10 CSB). The Amplified Version describes that abundance as “to the full, till it overflows.”
Overflowing life and overflowing gratitude meet in beautiful, earthshaking, joyous drama, with nary a need to calm it down—not even a smidge of a notch. I’ll take all the best drama and every one of these meetings: grace meets faith meets thanks meets life meets overflow. Oh YES (all caps). I seriously and sincerely want these meetings every day. I want to live gospel-gratitude urgently. And simply, not wimply, share it urgently as well. Maybe even email it. Maybe even email it 13,000 times. I’m without question an unashamed life-long subscriber.