Book Review: Grace Abounds: God’s Abundance Against the Fear of Scarcity by Walter Brueggemann
At its heart, Grace Abounds addresses a foundational human struggle: the "smallness of mind" that fosters envy, competition, and self-preservation. Against this, Brueggemann presents a God who lavishly provides and invites us to live in a way that reflects this trust. As he writes, “Do not participate in the anxiety system that is grounded in a mistaken notion of scarcity. Do not be anxious, because your heavenly Father, the Food Manager, knows what you need.” Brueggemann’s call to reject the “Pharaonic” systems of greed and exploitation—systems rooted in fear—is profoundly timely, challenging the church to resist the status quo of anxiety and instead cultivate practices that proclaim God’s abundance.
The first part of the book provides a robust biblical theology of grace as abundance, drawing on the experiences of exile and forced migration to illuminate how God meets the fundamental human needs for food, land, and shelter. Brueggemann reminds readers that grace is more than forgiveness; it is God’s ongoing self-giving, a reality that disrupts our scarcity-driven perspectives and transforms our relationships with one another and the world. He masterfully shows how the biblical narrative portrays abundance not as a static resource but as a dynamic, relational reality that fosters dependence on God and interdependence among people.
Brueggemann's second section is an ecclesial blueprint for living in alignment with God’s abundance. He advocates for practices such as keeping Sabbath, making doxology, bestowing blessing, offering forgiveness, and realizing reconciliation. These practices embody trust in God's sufficiency and actively resist the systems of greed and hostility that dominate contemporary life. “The people who are grounded in the generous abundance of God’s new creation,” Brueggemann writes, “are the ones who will, perhaps in time, dismantle the entire system of anxiety and greed that feeds hostility.”
Particularly compelling is Brueggemann’s treatment of the Sabbath as a radical act of trust and hospitality. “Sabbath is a great equalizer: all are welcome, because their worth is not based on productivity, a criterion that foreigners and eunuchs perhaps could not meet.” In a society that reduces human value to utility, this vision of Sabbath as a space of grace-filled community is profoundly liberating and countercultural.
Brueggemann’s insistence that the church’s identity be shaped by God’s abundance is both inspiring and convicting. He declares, “We are the people who trail behind Jesus in the history of blessing. What a claim for the church, to be known as the people of limitless resources shared with no restraint, limitless because the abundance of the Creator is so trusted that we are persuaded out of our calculating fearfulness!” This vision of the church as a community marked by generosity and trust challenges readers to examine how their own lives and congregations reflect—or fail to reflect—this divine abundance.
The book’s social critique is sharp yet hopeful. Brueggemann diagnoses the systems of greed, anxiety, and exploitation that dominate global economies, but he consistently points to the transformative potential of a church that trusts in God’s abundance. His prophetic voice is a call to action, urging Christians to live into a reality where God’s provision dismantles the structures of fear and replaces them with justice, generosity, and joy.
Grace Abounds is a must-read for anyone wrestling with questions of scarcity, justice, and faith in a world that constantly insists there is not enough. Brueggemann’s profound theological insight, coupled with his practical prescriptions for embodying grace, make this book both challenging and deeply hopeful. It is an ecclesiological manifesto for a church fully surrendered to God’s abundance and ready to act in ways that reflect the generosity of the Creator. For those seeking to reimagine their lives and communities as expressions of divine grace, Brueggemann offers a clear and compelling path forward.