Consider the Pandas (They Toil Not, Neither do they Spin)

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I picked up a book once that gave species grades according to their evolutionary fitness. Lions got A+s. They are the alpha predators in their environment, with many food sources that are well suited to their metabolic needs. Males and females have several biological features that maximize reproduction, and prides raise cubs communally, upping their chance of survival.

Pandas got Fs. Barely.

Why, you ask? Well, for several reasons. Pandas depend on a single food source – bamboo – that they digest poorly. Because bamboo isn’t that nutritious for them, they have to eat a lot of it. All the time. They can’t afford to do much else, metabolically speaking. In addition, bamboo forests don’t exist in many places in the world, and that number is shrinking. As a result, most pandas these days live in captivity.

So there’s the food and environment problem.

Then there’s the reproduction problem, which is related to the other problems. Turns out, pandas in captivity aren’t actually that good at a basic requirement for the survival of a species: having babies. Males out of the wild could care less about mating – even Viagra doesn’t do the trick – meaning females have to be artificially inseminated. Even so, female pandas are only fertile once a year, and they produce few pregnancies and even fewer live births. Then, if a mother happens to have more than one cub (two is usually the limit), she will often leave the weaker to die. You can’t blame her – pregnancy for a panda is a state of slow starvation. She can barely eat enough to sustain herself, much less a gestating or nursing cub. Two is too much to ask.

If pandas were ugly, they’d have gone the way of the dodo a long time ago.

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But something about their fluffy roundness, their big black-rimmed eyes, the rollicking way they tumble around without a care in the world triggers all of our protective instincts.

In a way, pandas have become humankind’s adopted babies. We love them, even though they are totally incapable of fending for themselves. We’ve dedicated millions of dollars and decades of advanced animal husbandry and reproductive science to make sure they don’t cheerfully roll themselves out of existence. We tried to give them Viagra, folks.

In the Luke and Matthew, Jesus invites us to “Consider the lilies of the field.” Wildflowers, he tells us, don’t work for their keep; they don’t put any effort into their food, clothing, or any aspect of their existence. They just are, and beautifully so.

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Jesus adds, “If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the furnace, will He not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?

Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the pagans pursue all these things, and your Heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added unto you” (Matthew 6:30-33, Berean Study Bible).

I’ve always loved the analogy in this passage, but I’ve had trouble with it, too. I mean, of course a flower doesn’t have to do anything. It’s a FLOWER.

When I substitute “panda” for “lily,” though, somehow this verse – a gentle admonition to faith, rest, and keeping our priorities in order – sinks in a little more.

Can you picture God as a benevolent panda-keeper, wearing overalls and carrying a basket of bamboo stalks, loving us in our helplessness, and rescuing us from all the ways that we fall short?

All we have to do is put our trust in him.

 

 

Sources (besides the book mentioned in the first paragraph, which I haven’t been able to track down):

Panda image

“Lion Reproduction and Offspring”

“Panda Reproduction”

“Why Panda Mothers Abandon Their Babies” 

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Lilies of the field image

“Some silence, some zone of grace”

Day five of my 30-day writing challenge.

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All things aspire to weightlessness,                                   

                                   some place beyond the lip of language,

Some silence, some zone of grace,

Sky white as raw silk,

                                         opening mirror cold-sprung in the west,

Sunset like dead grass.

If God hurt the way we hurt,

                                                       he, too, would be heart-sore,

Disconsolate, unappeasable

– Charles Wright. “Poem Half in the Manner of Li Ho.” Black Zodiac.

 

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Yesterday, on Father’s Day, my mother took white petunias to my father’s grave. He has a marble stone that says “Vietnam” on it, even though he spent his time in the army in Alaska.

My father died just over 22 years ago now, and my mother has been re-married for almost twenty, and she still misses and mourns him. I don’t think I have the license, or even the knowledge, to talk about what she felt when he first died, but I know that she still tears up when she speaks about him for more than a few minutes, and that anniversaries and birthdays are still edged with sadness.

Wright’s poem is uncannily similar to some lines I wrote when I was in training to be a college writing teacher. We were practicing personal essays, and I can’t remember what the prompt was, but I wrote about my father’s decline from a brain tumor – how one of the things that it took from him was language. He first lost certain words – anomia, it’s called – then login codes for his computer (he was a programmer), then struggled for sentences. By the time he slipped into a coma, he had lost his grasp on language entirely.

In my essay, I wondered – as I still do, sometimes – what that was like for for my father to gradually have stolen from him symbols and syllables that once seemed as simple and obvious as his own name. To know exactly what was happening and yet be unable to do anything about it.

What did my father know, in that realm beyond language?  I posed that question in my essay, and although I don’t remember if I used the word “grace,” I think that was the concept I was striving for. I hoped that even if he didn’t have words – even if whole swaths of his experiences and memories had faded to gray – he had access to something real, some truth to hold onto. I know that he knew that he loved us, and we loved him, because “I love you, too” is that last thing I remember him saying, past the time I expected him to say anything at all.

It’s unclear whether Wright’s speaker is expressing doubt or belief in the idea that God can “hurt the way we hurt.” Perhaps he feels a little of both. But I believe in a God that does hurt as we do. I believe that God yearns over creation like a mother yearns for her children to be well and whole and happy. I think that there is something in God that is unappeasable when any of his children are suffering. I think he grieved, and continues to grieve, with my mother. I think he cried tears of rage over the unfairness of my father’s illness. I think that there is a part of God that will never be fully satisfied until every part of his creation is at peace. And I think this is one of the deep consolations of the Incarnation – that Christ, in his full humanness, knew what it was to lose, to experience physical and spiritual torment, to have people let him down, to have things he just could not fix.

I believe that we are never alone in our anguish, no matter how deep and dark the silence. And that, too, is grace.

 

 

The Opposite of Deep Thoughts About Wonder Woman: Not Exactly a Film Review

Day 5 of my 30-day writing challenge

As I mentioned yesterday, I saw “Wonder Woman” last night. I went with my older daughter and her Aunty Cris. We had our 3D glasses, a bag of popcorn, a full theater, and an expectation of some serious girl power. We were not disappointed.

I’ve already written about my childhood identification with Wonder Woman (Underoos were my generation’s cosplay), so I won’t belabor that, but instead jump right into my impressions of the movie, in no particular order:

  • Princess Buttercup grew up to be an Amazon general! That’s the best news I’ve had in weeks. Can Snow White grow up to be our next President?
  • I miss Westley, though.
  • Speaking of Westley, who would you rather have wash up on your remote island: Carey Elwes or Chris Pine?
  • I gotta give Carey a slight edge, just because (as has been pointed out many times), there are too many darn Chrises on movie screens these days.
  • Chris Pine, it’s not that I didn’t believe you as Colonel Trevor. It’s just that I kept wondering when Scotty was going to beam in.
  • Speaking of Star Trek, I know I’m not the only one to feel that Chris Pine’s almost-nude scene was payback for that gratuitous scene of Alice Eve in her underwear in Into Darkness. (J.J. Abrams must not have gotten George Lucas’ memo that “there is no underwear in space.”) Karma, thy name is Patty Jenkins.
  • I’m a little bitter that male actors can have acne scars and still be romantic leads, whereas for women a scarred complexion is the kiss of death . . . or is somehow correlated with being completely evil. I’m looking at you, Dr. Poison.
  • I’m still trying to formulate my thoughts about this – and I’m sure I’m late to the party here – but I appreciated that Diana seems to have a distinct origin story from some of the male heroes I’ve seen lately. She had an idyllic childhood; she isn’t weighted down by some primal tragedy and / or some angst-ridden need to bear the weight of the world on her shoulders. She’s not a case study in PTSD, on a morally dubious quest for vengeance, nor does she have to suffer and die for the sins of humanity. She’s pretty darn sure she’s innocent of the violence around her, and she’s equally sure that she can do something about it that doesn’t require her own death (even temporarily). Just because her moral righteousness is naive doesn’t mean it’s not appealing, and her confidence and lack of cynicism come across as perfectly admirable and (given her innate abilities, honed by training) both gifted and earned.
  • Also in the category of very quasi-formed thoughts: I wonder if Diana’s heroic arc, with its refreshing lack of martyrdom, will be more appealing to some feminist and womanist theologians than Superman’s more overtly Christological arc. Don’t both schools often critique the very idea of redemptive violence and suffering, given the burdens that trope can place on the female body in general and the African American female body in particular?
  • I really would have preferred Diana’s boyfriend to live through the movie, though I appreciated that he wasn’t “fridged” for the sake of sending her on some dark night of the soul (as often happens with girlfriends and wives) but instead choose his death as a result of his own heroism. I’m just kinda tired of disposable love interests.
  • To be fair, if one is an immortal goddess in a world of mortals, everyone has an expiration date. For whom does the bell toll? For every boyfriend EVER.
  • Please, gods of the DC Universe, don’t make Wonder Woman romance Batfleck. That’s not a thing in the comics, is it? Just the thought makes me throw up in my mouth a little.
  • Also, Superman is off limits. Nobody messes with Amy Adams, and if she wants that pajama’d slab of beefcake, she’s allowed to have him.

 

 

 

“But Some Doubted”: Matthew 28

Day 4 of my 30-day blog challenge / Summer in the Psalms

I’m sneaking in today’s post just under the chime of midnight. (I went to see “Wonder Woman,” which was awesome. Then it took us almost 30 minutes to find parking reasonably close to my home, because clubbing season has started in our neighborhood. Not so awesome.) This reflection is from my friend Mercy Perez, one of the writers for my church’s Summer in the Psalms series, which I am editing. Mercy’s reflection doesn’t directly reference this past Sunday’s Psalm, Psalm 8, but instead focuses on the passage from Matthew that was also on the lectionary for Trinity Sunday.

Read

Matthew 28:16-20
28:16 Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them.

28:17 When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted.

28:18 And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.

28:19 Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,

28:20 and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

Reflect

The disciples have just suffered the loss of their beloved teacher and long awaited Messiah. They were enveloped by all the pain and sorrow the loss of a loved one would cause. With Jesus’ death, they had also lost their expectations of a physical Kingdom of God on Earth.

Then there was a turn of events! The women met and touched a very alive Jesus, and he gave them a message: “Go tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me.”

The women delivered Jesus’ messages, and the disciples immediately set off for Galilee. Just as Jesus promised, he was there to meet them.

When the disciples finally saw Jesus,”they worshipped him; but some doubted.”

The phrase “some doubted” intrigues me. Why would someone doubt what is right before them? Did this doubt come from unbelief?

One commentator (Benson) suggests that the disciples “desire that it might be [Jesus], made them afraid it was not.” They wanted so badly for Jesus to be real that they suspected they were imagining him, or being deceived in some other way.

Yet their doubt did not keep Jesus from coming to them. Instead, the revelation of his presence strengthened, empowered and prepared the disciples for their commission “to go and make disciples of all nations” (v.18). Jesus followed up by promising to be with them always, to the very end of the age.

Respond

As a follower of Jesus, his promise that he will always be with me encourages me and gives me hope. Have I experienced moments of doubt, fear, confusion, trepidation? YES! And am I grateful for the strength and guidance of the Holy Spirit through those moments? YES!

If you experience moments of doubt or fear or need direction, take a moment to remember you are not alone. He will be with you always, to the very end of the age.

Mercy Perez

Sleeping With Bread: Adapting the Ignatian Examen for Children and Small Groups

Day 3 of my 30-day writing challenge.

Friday night is Bible study night at the Myers house, and has been for over a decade now. Tonight’s study featured friends of more than 10 years and a friend of less than 1. We’ve almost always started with dinner (Pre-made lasagna tonight, plus the transcendently crispy wings and buttery garlic knots from the small Italian place one block over) and informal conversation before moving to the study portion, but in the last few months, we’ve started by asking people to share their “highs” and “lows” for the week.

This routine is something we first learned about from friends. Their family would go around the dinner table every night, giving every person a chance to say the best and worst thing about their day. We loved the way it gave everyone, no matter their age, a chance to reflect, speak, listen, and connect, and we started doing the same thing with our family.

Recently, we revived this practice again, after I read about it in Sleeping with Bread: Holding What Gives You Life. Its dreamy watercolors make it look like a children’s bedtime story, and one of its aims is in fact to make the Ignatian examen accessible to children, as well as to anyone looking for a basic, gentle approach to this practice.

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The examen is a way to review your day – how God was present, and how he might be inviting you to move forward – by asking yourself, “For what today was I most grateful? For what I was least grateful? Over time, paying attention to where in your days you find grace and life, and where you experience pain and resistance, points you towards how God might be moving and guiding you. It builds awareness and discernment, hope and faith.

For children, authors Dennis, Sheila Fabricant and Matthew Linn simplify the examen questions to precisely the ones we learned from our friends: “What was your high today? What was your low?” These are concepts children can easily understand – our five year old answers them quite vocally. We’ve also found them to be helpful in our small groups. They are non-threatening enough that most people don’t mind answering them, even visitors and new members. People can provide answers as detailed or as vague as they choose, sharing small ups and downs or deep joys and sorrows. Finally, the questions are easily explainable to English language learners; that’s an important criteria in our church, which was started specifically to welcome immigrants and internationals and to foster diversity.

Our group continues to gradually learn more and more about each other – what each person cares about, what they are going through, the unique ways they relate to God. And if we are good listeners, then each person has a chance to feel heard, valued, and loved.

Around the room tonight, the group’s highs and lows were predictably varied. My twelve-year old’s high was that there was no school on Monday; My kindergartener was excited that her graduation cap and gown were delivered today. There were a lot of lows pertaining to work – finding work, the wrong work, conflicts at work.

After completing our group examen – although we never actually use that term – we read Psalm 8 together. Psalm 8 juxtaposes God’s glory and the vast universe he’s made with his intimate care for all of his creatures, down to the very smallest. Verse two says “You have taught children and infants to tell of your strength.” Sleeping with Bread and the examen can help parents do just that – partner with God in teaching their children to be aware of both God’s majesty and his daily involvement in their lives. And it’s good for the adults too.

Wonder Woman Underoos and Yoga for the Soul

Day 2 of my 30-day writing challenge

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When I was around 5-years old, someone bought me a pair of Wonder Woman Underoos. I have a picture of myself wearing them. I have a little pot belly, a bowl haircut, and an underbite, but I’m five, so all of those things add up to cute.

I loved my underoos, and I loved Wonder Woman, but I was disappointed that my top didn’t look exactly like the one Wonder Woman wore on tv. I did not yet comprehend the architecture of the spangled bustier, which gave Lynda Carter’s cleavage its own gravity-defying superpower. I think I thought her costume was held up by magic.

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Physically, I have always been the polar opposite of an Amazon. I was a tiny kid, and I haven’t grown much since then. In (purely hypothetical) three-inch heels, I barely break five feet. Add my natural shortness to my chronic slouch, and I pretty much walk around infringing on hobbit airspace.

In my teens and twenties, I had a ferocious longing to spend just one day inhabiting the body of tall, statuesque woman. I didn’t want to be Wonder Woman or Xena on a permanent basis, I just wanted a few hours to tower above the crowd, kicking butt and taking names. Then I could go back to my ordinary life of needing step stools to reach everything.

When I was in graduate school, I took up yoga. When I started, I didn’t know vinyasa from a red vine, but within weeks, I found myself so much more aware of my body: how I moved, how I carried myself, the native strength of my muscles and bones. I didn’t magically transform into a warrior princess, but I remembered to straighten my spine. I stood taller. I held my head high. And doing so made me feel more confident – physically stronger, but also more of a presence in the world.

(I remember watching a Ted Talk about this. Posture is power. Women who take a minute to manspread before a meeting, whether sitting down with legs apart, or standing up with shoulders squared and a wide stance,  feel more confident and are perceived as more dominant. They channel their inner superhero, and others respond accordingly.)

A similar thing has happened to me since I’ve been practicing spiritual disciplines as part of my training to be a spiritual director. Just as yoga encourages you to make space within your body for your own breath – to stand taller and more deliberately, with strong core muscles and a quiet mind, the spiritual disciplines – approaches to regular prayer, meditation, and Scripture reading that have developed over centuries of Christianity – encourage you to make space for God by exercising your soul.

Spiritual disciplines invite you to pay attention to your emotions, your imaginings, your conversations with God: the daily experience of God with and within you. They shape and strengthen your soul as surely as yoga shapes and strengthens your body. While they don’t give you spiritual superpowers (whatever those might be), they help you to become more centered, to breathe deeply and live freely, and to turn your face toward God.

I’ll take that over magic underwear any day of the week.

 

 

Of Belly Buttons and Soup Dumplings (and a 30-day writing challenge)

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Yesterday afternoon, my five-year old was lying upside-down and face-up next to me in our big leather office chair as I typed away on the computer. Her legs were sticking up, resting on the chair back, and her head was dangling off the bottom. She was clad in only underwear because of our hellacious New York heat wave.

Now, to understand this story, you have to know that my daughter has an enviably enormous innie. It is round and wide and deep and looks like a place an alien spaceship would land.

So, as I was tickling my girl’s naked belly and blowing zerberts on it, she suddenly got serious and asked me, “Mommy, did you know my belly button looks likes an inside-out soup dumpling?”

I paused for a minute to digest this, because she’s right. If you turned a soup dumpling inside-out so the seam was on the inside, then plopped it into a flesh-colored bowl with a little lip on it, it would look exactly like her belly button.

She continued, “My belly button is the dumpling and my blood is the soup.” Not quite as accurate, but certainly a decent analogy.

Then, she took her powers of observation and metaphor-making into the realm of philosophy by asking, “Why is my belly button a soup dumpling?”

As questions go, this ranks right up there with my oldest daughter’s question, at perhaps a slightly younger age, “But why do we all live in a yellow submarine?”

Fast-forward to this morning, and I still have no idea how to answer either question. But a quick internet search has revealed some fun facts:

1) Belly button plastic surgery – mostly for people with outies wanting innies – is a real thing, and it goes by the extremely fun word “umbilicoplasty.” This sounds like a word one says while bouncing on a trampoline, perhaps while keeping 6/8 time.

2) In 2005, the number of people getting umbilicoplasties was roughly comparable to the number getting butt implants.** I’m sure there is a profound cultural comment to be had, but I . . . don’t have it.

3) The word “zerbert” (synonym: raspberry) was popularized, if I remember correctly, by The Cosby Show.*** Before that, my family used a term we picked up from some friends. Their word was “boofa” – also nicely onomatopoeic.

4) Zerbert has no antonym. Which means one should be invented. Suggestions?

On a tangential note, I am an extremely lazy writer in need of major external motivators, and for that reason, am challenging myself to blog every day for the next 30 days. Expect random thoughts, humorous antics, the fruits of idle googling, and hopefully the occasional insightful post. It all depends on how much sleep I get and whether my kids oblige me by continuing to be funny.

*Photograph from Xiao Long Bao – Chinese Soup Dumplings Recipe

** Fun facts from What makes an innie an innie? And more belly button mysteries

*** Confirmed by Urban Dictionary

 

God. Goodness. Generosity: Psalm 8 and Genesis 1 and 2.

For Summer 2017, my church is following the Revised Common Lectionary schedule. Every Sunday, someone will be teaching on the Psalm for a week. Every Monday and Friday, one of four writers from our church will be exploring one of the additional passages from that same week. I’ll be cross-posting my reflections here (and, with permission, also posting reflections from the other writers). For Sunday, June 11, the featured Psalm is Psalm 8, and the first linked reading is from Genesis 1:1-2:4a.

Reflect

Psalm 8 shows God’s incredible vastness and power. At the same time, it shows his care for the smallest and most vulnerable of his creatures. This paradox includes humans, who are both insignificant specks in the cosmos, and beings only a “little lower than the angels,” made for an eternal life in God’s presence.

The beginning of Genesis tells the story of this paradox. God creates order out of chaos. He works day by day, with great detail and love. He builds a beautiful world and fills it with life of every kind.

God displays his generosity at every turn. He doesn’t hoard his life-giving creativity for himself. He gives each living being the ability to create more life. Plants produce more plants; animals have baby animals. And he makes human beings in his own image and gives them authority over everything in this new planet.

God is generous to himself as well. He takes a day to enjoy the goodness of what he has made. Then he again extends his generosity to us. He makes the Sabbath holy, so that we also can have a day of rest and enjoyment.

Respond

Part of being made in God’s image is living this cycle of work and rest, creation and enjoyment. How has God been generous to you? Where are you finding new life and goodness? Where are you creating it?

Throughout this week, consider setting aside time a holy time each day. Take at least twenty minutes out of your busy schedule to enjoy God, the goodness of his creation, and his new life in you.

 

Like a Woman in Labor

God will say, “I have long been silent;

yes, I have restrained myself. But now,

like a woman in labor,

I will cry and groan and pant.

I will level the mountains and the hills

and blight all their greenery.

I will turn the rivers into dry land

and will dry up all the pools.

I will lead blind Israel down a new path,

guiding them along an unfamiliar way.

I will brighten the darkness before them

and smooth out the road ahead of them . . . 

Isaiah 42:14-16

 

For Lent 2017, my church focused on the Lord’s Prayer. When we explored the first line, “Our Father, Who are in Heaven / Hallowed Be Your Name,” we asked what it means to be invited to embrace God as Our Father, someone who is intimately close to us and yet unimaginably holy: someone infinitely other and set apart.

This passage in Isaiah, however, imagines God not as Father, but as a Mother who is by turns fearsome and tender. God is in labor, but giving birth to tremendous destruction. There’s an almost primal rage in his statement that he has restrained himself until this point, but now gives himself over to his world-unmaking cries and groans. He will raze the enemy’s land to the ground, leaving nothing behind but famine and desolation. No regrets and no mercy. (Note: Pronouns are tricky things. Even though I’m writing about God as Mother, I find myself defaulting to the “he” and “him” I grew up with and feel most comfortable with. But I don’t believe God can be contained or constrained by any one pronoun, or indeed, by any human category or experience.)

Yet in the very next line, this same God displays nothing but tenderness towards “blind” Israel. From his words, I picture a mother leading her child by the hand through a dark night, stopping periodically to clear the path of pebbles or dust, shining a flashlight ahead of her to light the way.

How to connect these two images of God, two very different sides of what is apparently the same coin? I’m not a theologian, but here’s how it makes sense in my head and heart: I imagine what God is offering his people in this passage is permission not to look back, not to remain hostage to the land in which they were held captive. He’s destroying the specter that could haunt them, that could keep them imprisoned in their minds and spirits even as their bodies are newly free. Maybe what God is birthing here – and let’s remember, birth is a violent, messy business! – is a way out of the trauma of the past. Look ahead, God is saying. I’ve made sure there’s nothing behind you that can harm you or keep you trapped in regret and shame. Walk with me into the new life I’m preparing for you. You don’t know what it is yet, but it’s welcoming and full of light . . . 

 

Saying “No” to “More”

For Lent, our church is studying and meditating on The Lord’s Prayer. I wrote the following thoughts on the section of the prayer that asks, “Give us this day our daily bread.”

When we ask God to “Give us this day our daily bread,” we are asking him to provide “enough for the day” –  to meet all our emotional, physical, spiritual, and relational needs in the moment. The world we live in, by contrast, tells us we need to constantly seek and achieve more: more wealth, more success, more physical beauty, more feelings of affirmation and excitement.

But the problem with “more” is that it can never be achieved. No matter what you have or do, there could always be more – that’s what makes the very concept so seductive and so destructive. When we chase “more,” we are chasing smoke: a future that will never come to pass. All that lies in that direction is frustration, envy, self-condemnation, and despair.

We need God to give us the wisdom and trust to recognize that he has given us enough. When we are able to look around and realize that God has provided us with enough for this day, we can be at peace. Not later, at some future date, but right now, right here, with the gifts, abilities, and relationships that God has given us.

Reflect and Respond

Ask God to show you all the ways he has given you enough for today. It might help you to write everything down in a journal – that way you can go back later, when you need a reminder.

Thank God for giving you enough for today, and ask him to help you resist the siren call of “more.”