“For me, and for many of us, our first waking thought of the day is “I didn’t get enough sleep.” The next one is “I don’t have enough time.” Whether true or not, that thought of not enough occurs to us automatically before we even think to question or examine it. We spend most of the hours and the days of our lives hearing, explaining, complaining, or worrying about what we don’t have enough of…We don’t have enough exercise. We don’t have enough work. We don’t have enough profits. We don’t have enough power. We don’t have enough wilderness. We don’t have enough weekends. Of course, we don’t have enough money – ever.
We’re not thin enough, we’re not smart enough, we’re not pretty enough or fit enough or educated or successful enough, or rich enough – ever. Before we even sit up in bed, before our feet touch the floor, we’re already inadequate, already behind, already losing, already lacking something. And by the time we go to bed at night, our minds race with a litany of what we didn’t get, or didn’t get done, that day. We go to sleep burdened by those thoughts and wake up to the reverie of lack…What begins as a simple expression of the hurried life, or even the challenged life, grows into the great justification for an unfulfilled life.” – The Soul of Money by Lynne Twist
Scarcity.
The excerpt above captures the essence of the daily battle that I am surely not alone in fighting.
Rather than recognizing the abundance in my life, I see insufficiency.
This reverie of lack runs rampant in my mind.
There is a constant need to be more, do more, have more, and try more.
I am never witty, kind, successful, thin, or smart enough to fill this gap.
Maybe you too are familiar with the feeling, one of never enough?
I have found it to be the fastest path to an existence lacking fulfillment.
Sufficiency.
“We each have the choice in any setting to step back and let go of the mind-set of scarcity. Once we let go of scarcity, we discover the surprising truth of sufficiency. By sufficiency, I don’t mean a quantity of anything. Sufficiency isn’t two steps up from poverty or one step short of abundance. It isn’t a measure of barely enough or more than enough. Sufficiency isn’t an amount at all. It is an experience, a context we generate, a declaration, a knowing that there is enough, and that we are enough. Sufficiency resides inside each of us, and we can call it forward.” – Twist
While I agree with Lynne Twist that sufficiency is the anecdote to scarcity, I disagree that sufficiency resides inside us all. In fact, I’m increasingly aware of how incapable I am. Any attempt to call forward my own sufficiency would prove fruitless and utterly disheartening. (I know this from years of experience).
Yet, I believe we can claim our sufficiency in Christ. How freeing that this declaration has nothing to do with us and everything to do with grace?
In Him, our worth has been sealed.
We can confidently proclaim we are complete in Him (Colossians 2:10).
Apart from Him, we can do nothing, but we bear much fruit by abiding in Christ (John 15:5).
His power perfects our weaknesses (2 Corinthians 12:9).
What if all of the seeming scarcity in our lives was only meant to point us back to the sufficiency of Jesus?
It’s here we discover that all is grace.
Here we are freed from the ceaseless scarcity into the safety of His sufficiency.
2 Corinthians 3:5
“Not that we are sufficient in ourselves to claim anything as coming from us, but our sufficiency is from God…”
From Ashes to Beauty 