Notes of Faith July 1, 2025 Part 2

I just received these thoughts from a friend today and thought that you might be blessed as well, so I am sending them along…

Happy July 1st! It’s so hard to believe how quickly the year is flying!

One recurring theme that we hear from the people we sit with is “Am I enough?” Are they smart enough? Are they good enough? Are they skillful enough? Are they doing enough? It seems that everybody has a ruler out, trying to see if they “measure up”.

This question gives me a new perspective on the temptation of Eve. According to the serpent all she had to do was eat the fruit to be “like God”—and she bit. Literally. This seems to indicate that somewhere deep down Eve believed that she was lacking, incomplete—not enough the way she was.

So let’s settle that age-old question once and for all: Am I enough? Unequivocally NO! Absolutely not. Not even close.

I’m convinced that this is the core message of Jesus feeding the 5000. In the face of overwhelming demands around us, we only (always!) have 5 loaves and 2 fish, and it is not enough. We need Jesus to step into our worlds and provide what is necessary to meet the needs around us, because we can’t.

We are not equal to the world and its problems. We are powerless to change the people around us. We can’t even clean up our own messy internal worlds—and that’s actually GOOD news because it reminds us that we are human and not God. And that, while we fall short in many ways, God IS enough.

How differently things might have turned out if Eve had been thoroughly convinced of the Creator’s joy over her for the very fact that she was NOT like Him. Her limitations, frailty, and otherness were His design, and gave Him great delight.

May you and I rest deeply in that knowledge this week. We do not have to strive to be more than we are—more than we were meant to be. Our God is more than enough. He loves us in our smallness. We are His, and that is enough!

Pastor Dale

(from the notes of a dear friend)