ENOUGH

A whisper we sometimes hear in our heads is “not enough.” It plays out in the background: not good enough, smart enough, strong enough, educated enough, rich enough, understanding enough, persistent enough, timely enough, disciplined enough, loving enough, handsome enough, ambitious enough, interesting enough, focused enough, wise enough, pure enough, obedient enough, rebellious enough, successful enough.

It seems like everyone has that niggling thought crop up sometimes. It shows up when they are trying to do something hard or different than before. 

That was the case for the Bible’s ultimate Pharisee of the Pharisees, Saul. Pharisees were the Hebrew sect that scrupulously tried to follow hundreds of detailed religious rules. Saul strove to obey the law to the letter. He was the ultimate over-achiever. He wanted to be the best at everything and he really worked at it. But it turned out that whenever he accomplished something, ten more unmet aims appeared. Then he turned his tremendous energy toward enforcing other people’s compliance with the rules, particularly the Christians. He became the ultra enforcer, “breathing out threatening and slaughter against the disciples of the Lord.” Doesn’t that phrase from the King James Bible just drip with Saul’s uber?

Saul encountered a strikingly different attitude when he finally interacted with the very Christians he was pursuing. His extreme rule following began to break down. He was actually struck blind on the road to Damascus, but one of the Christians he sought to persecute, Ananias, came and healed him. Ananias even called him “Brother Saul.” Still, Saul had a hard row to hoe in trying on the new way of living based on the life of Christ Jesus. All his slavish rule-consciousness was tossed out in favor of one thing: Love. “For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this:” he wrote, “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.”

That was the one thing that Saul, renamed Paul after his conversion experience, hadn’t really worked that hard on.

And it was a hard slog because he found he wasn’t good enough at loving. But the gentle healing touch of Ananias welcoming him into the Christian brotherhood helped him to realize a marvelous thing called grace. Grace is unearned, undeserved, unmerited favor, affection, and blessing. It is really another term for unconditional love. Jesus taught that this was God’s nature. He said, “But love ye your enemies, and do good, and lend, hoping for nothing again; and your reward shall be great, and ye shall be the children of the Highest: for he is kind unto the unthankful and to the evil.”

Rule following can be a very good and necessary thing. Jesus actually loved the Pharisees and gave them special attention. Many of his teachings are tailored especially for them. He wanted to save them from a too legalistic approach to the law. But he often chided them for missing the main point, which was, of course, love.

When Paul finally discovered grace, he still had to learn to take it in. But grace has a way of seeping in through the cracks and widening them like water flowing through crevices. And what grace finally did for Paul was to help him realize that none of us can ever be enough on our own. No matter how wonderful, privileged, trained, honored, talented, or chosen we are, we can never be enough. We get depleted without grace. We run dry and fail to measure up.

But grace connects us to the Source. All through the Bible we have references to our Source. The prophet Jeremiah rebuked the Jewish people for having forgotten their Fountain of living waters. Their lives were like cisterns they had dug out for themselves that had cracked and let all the water out. They needed to reconnect to God in order to refill. Jesus told a troubled woman at a well in Samaria the same thing. He said that if she asked, he would give her living waters and she would not thirst again.

That’s what Paul learned with his grace. He got connected to the Source and then he could finally count on being good enough. And Paul wanted everyone to know and share his discovery. I love the way Paul says it, “And God is able to make all grace abound toward you; that ye, always having all sufficiency in all things, may abound to every good work,”

From that point on, Paul fiercely defended the power of grace in the circles of Christians he encountered. When someone tried to thrust in too much rule enforcing, too much judgment of others, he reminded them that each one already had a connection to the Source and that love would cause them to do what was right and good.

So still today, when we hear that drone in our thoughts of “not enough,” “not sufficient,” it’s a call to reconnect to the Source. Plug yourself back in to the Source of the flow of good in all its forms.

We don’t live to ourselves. We belong to our Creator who has a plan for us that we are exactly fit to fulfill. When we connect to 0ur Maker and let His good flow through us, we are all good enough, in fact, just right.

Gal. 5:14 Luke 6:35 II Cor. 9:8