Haven’t You Had Enough?

by Bob Smith

Last winter, I had the pleasure of seeing my oldest son, David, perform in a play in Louisville, Kentucky. The play was Charles Dickens’s “A Christmas Carol,” and it was wonderful. David played the role of the ghost of Christmas Present, and in one scene he and Scrooge were talking about the meager Christmas dinner of the Cratchit family. Scrooge remarked how the goose was so small and the meal was pitiful. Turning Scrooge’s own words against him, the ghost answered that “they had enough.” Isn’t that an interesting word. “enough”?

Those words have resonated with me ever since I saw the play. What would it look like if we could live our lives as if we had enough? What would “enough” look like? What if we decided that we didn’t need that new car, that our old car would do just fine?

What if we didn’t need a vacation home, or a second home? How many houses can we live in, after all?

What if we decided that we didn’t need so many pairs of shoes in our
closet? I bet we don’t even wear most of them anymore, even forgot we
had some of them. In a newspaper, just few weeks ago, a lady was
featured with about three hundred pairs of shoes. Enough.

What if we needed only two suits, maybe three, and that was enough?
What if we decided that we had enough money? What if we decided that we
had the time? What if we decided that we had the resources the means
and the will to change something that needed changing. What would that
look like?

What would it look like if we were living out of our abundance, if we
were living out of our plenty instead of our scarcity? What would that
look like?

Might we start to look at our lives, our society, and our world with
new eyes? Might we begin to sort out our needs from our wants and find
less confusion and less anxiousness between the two?

What would it look like to realize that many of us in this country have
met our basic material needs? Our wants we can never satisfy. Our
culture tells us that we ought to want and that our wants are sacred.
To decide that we have enough though, it seems like an unreachable
standard, an impossible dream.

Imagine that if we had enough, we could find out what our neighbors
needed? That if we just had enough, we could look around and see to the
needs in the community? What do the children need? What are the needs
of the old people in the nursing homes?

I know some people who have nothing, and since my needs have been met,
I have the time to help them. Since I have enough, since my needs have
been met, I see my wants better. Since I have enough, maybe I can see
with new eyes. Maybe since I have enough, I can hear with
understanding. Since I have enough, maybe I have a new heart and a new
spirit.

What if we could believe, really believe that we have enough, could we
discover a new will and a new willingness? If we had enough, would we
be less encumbered, less jealous, and less cynical about our world? If
we had enough would we have more time, would we have more love, would
we have more faith in each other?

An old preacher once said in his Sunday morning sermon, “ Based on the
preponderance of the evidence, I have been persuaded.” Well, I am
persuaded, too. I am persuaded that to believe that I have enough, to
live as if I have enough, is to begin to live in abundance. I am
persuaded that to have enough is to live with a little less fear and a
lot more faith. To live with enough is to find my portion and to
understand that it’s not all about me in this life.

“Enough.” What an interesting word, “enough."