Enough

Last month while on vacation my boys left a couple of days before the week’s end to head back to Augusta, work, and friends. As I was hugging them bye and seeing them off, I thought about how it never seems to be “enough” with my boys who are now young men. Never enough time…enough play…enough work…enough hours in the day…enough love…enough rest…enough money…enough faith…enough laughter…enough intelligence…enough friends.

Why is it, I wondered at the edge of the dunes watching my boys drive away, that scarcity seems to be the one thing we have enough of? At work and home and play, we are more defined by what we do not have enough of than what is truly enough.

Even church does not escape this culture of scarcity. Never enough in the budget…enough teachers in Sunday School…enough laps in the nursery…enough visits to the elderly…enough activities for the students…enough clarity of faith…enough worshipers on Sunday…enough fried chicken on Wednesday!

Maybe that is why some of the most memorable stories in the Bible are those that confront scarcity. Moses calls for bread from heaven and water from the rock to provide in the barren wilderness. Elijah depressed and alone, meets God not in the mighty acts of earthquake or fire, but in the still small voice. Jesus holds up a few loaves and fish and feeds the multitude. Somehow in the scarcity there is provision. There is enough.

Can you allow yourself the grace of enough even in your scarcity? Your love and worth is not measured by the number of likes on Facebook or Instagram, but by the One who made all things and said it is very good – it is enough! Because we are not whole, we will never be able to love enough, forgive enough, or show mercy enough. Therefore we must risk ourselves with each other that in our scarcity God will be enough – enough love, enough forgiveness, enough mercy.

And when we find out that enough is enough, we find peace, we find gratitude, we find hope. We find out it is enough.

For God alone my soul waits in silence; from him comes my salvation. He alone is my rock and my salvation, my fortress; I shall never be shaken. (Psalm 62)