Welcome to today's encouragement from Our Daily Bread.

Our reading titled, Heavenly Abundance, was written by Lisa M. Samra.

I expected eight bananas.

Instead, when I opened the grocery bags delivered to my home, I discovered

20 bananas. I quickly realized that my move to England meant I also moved from ordering groceries

in pounds to requesting them in kilograms. Instead of three pounds, I had ordered three kilograms, nearly seven pounds of bananas.

With such an abundance, I made several batches of a favorite banana bread recipe to share the

blessing with others. As I mashed up the fruit, I began thinking about the other areas of my life

where I have experienced

unexpected abundance, and each path led back to God.

The Apostle Paul appears to have had a similar experience of reflecting on God's abundance

in his life. In his first letter to Timothy, Paul paused to describe

his life before Jesus, describing himself as a persecutor and a violent man, the worst of sinners.

Into Paul's brokenness, God lavishly poured out grace, faith, and love. After recounting all the

abundance in his life, the apostle couldn't help but express praise to God, declaring him

worthy of all honor and glory forever and ever. Like Paul, we all received an overwhelming abundance of grace when

we accepted Jesus' offer of rescue from sin. As we pause to reflect on all the resulting

blessings, we'll find ourselves joining Paul in grateful praise to our generous God.

Today's Our Daily Bread devotional scripture reading is from 1 Timothy chapter 1,

verses 12 through 17.

I thank Christ Jesus our Lord, who has given me strength, that he considered

me trustworthy, appointing me to his service. Even though I was once a blasphemer, and a persecutor

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