Enough

What does it mean to have enough? My church has been preaching through the Sermon on the Mount since last September. In November, we covered the Lord’s Prayer in the context of verse 5-15, but after a break for Advent, we’ve come back to work through the prayer itself more slowly. Yesterday, Darren covered verses 11 and 13, but I’ve been largely thinking about what he said on verse 11 and the concept of daily bread.

Aside from the cultural differences that exist between us and a society of day laborers that make it hard to grasp the metaphor, we struggle to recognize what it is that we actually need. Darren framed this point in terms of the lie of believing that God is withholding “enough.”

Three weeks earlier, I preached from 1 Kings 19 on Elijah’s flight from Jezebel and his encounter with God at Mount Horeb (sidenote: there’s another post in my mental queue about Moses, Elijah, and Jesus on mountains). One key aspect of that passage is that reality doesn’t quite live up to Elijah’s expectations of what God was going to do after the events of Mount Carmel. Instead of revival in Israel, Elijah receives a warrant for his arrest and execution. And so he flees to speak to God. My main argument in that sermon was that in situations like Elijah’s where our expectations and God’s actions don’t agree, the problem is on our side.

And so that’s what hit me as soon as Darren starting talking about daily bread in terms of having enough. Partially it was because Elijah actually says that “It is enough” after he runs himself to exhaustion, collapses under a bush, and asks to die. But I don’t think that is the same sense of the word “enough.” Elijah has had enough trouble, but Jesus is concerned with having enough provision for the day.

An English search for the word “enough” turns up some interesting passages to ponder, but I’ll leave that as an exercise for later. Two other passages come to mind as well as what Jesus says in the rest of the Sermon on the Mount.

The first is Proverbs 31:15-16 (all Scripture quotes from ESV):

The leech has two daughters:
        Give and Give.
Three things are never satisfied
        four never say, "Enough":
Sheol, the barren womb,
        the land never satisfied with water,
        and the fire that never says, "Enough."

If we become those who never have enough, we are like death, barrenness, drought, and wildfire. We need to possess the ability at some point to be satisfied and to be content.

In 2 Corinthians 12, we read of Paul’s vision and the thorn in his flesh. He concludes, “For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.” Paul has what we might call an interesting view of contentment. We see this also in Philippians 4 and 1 Timothy 6. How often is our view of having “enough” defined by not having the items in Paul’s list? If we have weaknesses or insults or hardships or persecutions or calamities, aren’t those signs that we do not have “enough?” It seems our definition is flawed (and coincidentally so is Elijah’s).

Returning to Matthew 6, Jesus ends with a long section on not being anxious, He recognizes that we need food, drink, and clothes and that our “heavenly Father knows that we need them all” (v. 32). If we seek first the kingdom of God, we will have all these things that we need. Not what we think we need. But what we actually need. Which might be less than we want, but will be everything necessary for us to continue seeking the kingdom. Finally, Jesus brings anxiety back to the idea of daily provision saying, “Therefore, do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble” (v. 34).

We already have enough simply by virtue of belonging to the kingdom of God. When we begin chasing after provisions we don’t necessarily need, it might be a sign that our faith is weak. Of course this discussion leads to another question, “If we are part of God’s kingdom, shouldn’t we be able to expect to have more than enough?” But I’ll save that for my next post.