We are Not Enough

Sufficient: enough, adequate, plenty of, ample, abundant. 
Antonyms: insufficient, inadequate.

Just one search on Amazon books returned 393 results for the word enough.

Sufficient yielded over 10,000.

We have an obsessive-compulsive relationship with the need to be enough. The need to be sufficient nags at us until we do something about it. Then it nags again. Then we strive again. Then it nags. Then we quit. Or run faster, work harder, sleep less. 

Some of us believe we are too much. We try to squeeze our big love, our big personalities, our big dreams down to fit the enough boxes everyone carries around.

Some of us think we are too little. We exert ourselves, promote ourselves, improve ourselves, post ourselves, bigger to be enough.

Come, draw near, you too-muches, too-littles, and everyone in between. Come and sit a moment and peer into the quiet truth about your sufficiency.#enough Click To Tweet

Leave your boxes at the door.

There is One who is Everything. He designed the wild violets growing along the rugged paths where the mountain lions roam. His creativity is so boundless He produces an original masterpiece on the canvas of the sky every morning and evening. His engineering skills are so intricate that He holds the earth at a precise 23.4 degrees on its axis. He is a best-selling poet and His skill with words has brought universes into existence. He is a potter, and with His hands, he made you and me and then breathed His breath into our lungs, bidding our spirits to rise and live. When our foolishness led to death, He came Himself to earth to rescue us. He is the Lord of heaven and earth and calls you by your name (See Isaiah 45:3).

This One who is All offers all to us. We lack nothing, for He is Everything.

We are not enough, and no self-help book, no meditative retreat, no careful health regime, no perfect job, will ever render us so. Our limits lead to our liberty. Our confinement compels us into community. Enough would be so lonely. 

Only God is enough, and even He exists in community, Father, Son, and Spirit. When our insufficiency meets His all-sufficiency, we lack nothing.

Perhaps the focus on enough is like the devastated disciples striving for a catch in the early morning hours after Jesus’ crucifixion (see John 21). I can imagine the intensity of their fiercely knit brows, peering over the side of the boat for anything, even one fish. The water is oblique, hard to see through, so deep. So overpowering. So elusive. Then they hear a voice from the shore, and the mouth-watering fragrance of charcoal and roasting fish wafts over the breeze. It is the Lord! The One who is called the Word, the Creator, the Potter, the Resurrection, and the Life! He instructs them to lower their nets to the other side and they haul in more fish than their nets can hold. Their insufficiency met His sufficiency and not only did they lack nothing, they had a bounty for others.

The too-muches and not-enoughs joy-wade through the water like those whose best friend just rose from the dead. Then they sit. They listen long and learn deep. And eat their fill from His hand.

The Lord is my shepherd; I lack nothing.

Psalm 23:1

Don’t buy the world’s lie that you need to be enough. God is our Enough. 

Lord, I bring my insufficiency to you today and ask you to be my Enough. Amen.

@audreycfrank