Webster identifies the word alive as an adjective and defines it by identifying synonyms such as  animated, alert, active, energetic, vigorous, sprightly, vivacious, buoyant, exuberant, ebullient and spirited.  Does that sound like your life?  Does that sound like anybody’s life that you know?  All too often we feel anything (and everything) except alive, much less fully alive!  But fully alive is just what our Father desires for us.  John 10:10b reminds us that Christ came that we might have an abundant life (NASB).  I especially like some of the other translations for this particular Scripture such as that we might have life “to the full” (NIV) or that we might have a life that is “rich and satisfying” (NLT).  The Aramaic Bible in Plain English translates John 10:10b as “I have come that they may have life and have whatever is abundant.”  That’s something to ponder – what is abundant to you?  What is fully alive?

I wish that I could tell you that I had an answer for you to either of those questions, but I don’t.  But I do have the next best thing to offer and that is what is the source of an abundant life!  We only have to back up a few verses from John 10:10b.  Verse 9 reads, “I am the door; if anyone enters through Me, he will be saved…and find pasture.”  Join this verse with verse 10, and you have the answer.  Jesus is the source of an abundant life – the only source.  Not a career.  Not a person.  Not a place.  Not a time or season.  Jesus is the door, and He came that we might have life and “whatever is abundant!”