Saffron is worth its weight in gold—literally! Imagine you live in France. You are getting ready to make a big pot of bouillabaisse (boo-yuh-BESS), a stew made from seafood. You already have a tomato, an onion, fish, sea mussels, clams, shrimp, and a wriggling, live lobster. Your grocery bill is really racking up—and you haven’t even made it to the spice aisle yet. There, one teeny-tiny jar of saffron costs $20!

Why the big price tag? Because saffron is scarce. That means people want more than exists. Besides that, harvesting and growing the tiny threads takes a lot of work. In most kinds of farming, machines can make harvests much faster. Faster work means cheaper prices. But a machine would mangle the delicate crocuses. Only a human hand can do the work well. To harvest a single pound of saffron, a person must labor for up to 250 hours! Kashmir’s land and water problems just make saffron farming more challenging.

Economists use the terms supply and demand to talk about how value works. In our fallen world, there is often more demand than supply. People (like the vertical farmers of Kashmir) respond to scarcity by getting creative.

Do you dream of a world where all people have everything they need, all the time? Life with God in the new heavens and new Earth will be like that. God owns everything. By grace, His people inherit His riches.

But even before the new world comes, God blesses His people abundantly. What evidence do you see of His goodness today? Do you have a family? Food? A house? Best of all—do you have God’s Spirit living in you?

And my God will supply every need of yours according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus. — Philippians 4:19