Here is about how it goes around here:
One root beer, three thirsty children at the park.
One night to sleep, three upset children who need love (and therefore mama or daddy) to get back to sleep.
Two HVACS, one that blows cold air and one that blows “cool-ish” air.
Two hands, five loads of clean laundry in a pile, a days-worth of dishes and dinner waiting to be served.
One mama, four needy children.
One husband, a church of a couple of hundred people- many who need him lots of days, five who need him everyday.
Two redeemed lives, a lot of years of life and life’s difficulties and pressures to work through.
This list is just a glance at life on earth. There is not enough fuel, enough clean water, enough justice, enough peace, enough lovingkindness…. When will there be enough of anything, for anyone?
I keep thinking of the story in Matthew 14. Thousands of people, hanging around to hear Jesus, see the show the Son of God had to put on. People who didn’t think ahead to bring food. People who didn’t have a plan. People who needed more because their circumstances hadn’t put them in a place where there was enough.
The disciples tell Jesus to send the people away, so they can fend for themselves.
Jesus asks the disciples to give Him what they have. It’s not much. It’s not nearly enough. Five loaves of bread and two fish. Meager rations for several thousand people.
But Jesus took the smallness of their offering and looked up to heaven, and he blessed it with a prayer of thanksgiving. Then he broke it and gave it back to the disciples. They passed it out, did the labor of feeding, caring, nourishing. They took what could not possibly be enough and then saw, miraculously that it was more than enough.
Jesus blessed the not-enough. Jesus was grateful for the not-enough.
I am full of not-enough. Does that mean Jesus is grateful that I can’t seem to keep clean clothes in the drawers? What about when I put the children to bed early because I have run out of patience for tired and fussy attitudes? Is He thankful when Morgan races home from a meeting to find that the children are asleep in bed already and he will have to wait until the morning to play with his favorite little people? That He is blessing it when Morgan takes a day off to be with us, even though there are emails to answer, a zillion phone calls to make and a city that needs to hear that there is a God who loves them more than they can imagine?
Yes. It only looks like not enough when you stare in the basket. Somehow, He makes it enough if we will stay with Him, wait on Him, serve His people. In fact, we will have a mess of more-than-enough to clean up at the end of it all. A beautiful bounty of broken and blessed burnt toast to look at and amaze us. Actually, it only looks like burnt toast, though. It is really living water, that will quench our thirst so that we will never thirst again…. But that’s another blog all-together.
Cast your bread upon the waters . . . it will come back buttered.