finally enough

Oh! do not attack me with your watch.

A watch is always too fast or too slow.

I cannot be dictated to by a watch.

-Jane Austen

Are there days when you are surprised that you weren't able to accomplish all you set out to do?  Do you wonder if you are doing enough; if it would be better stewardship if you’d just achieve a little bit more?  Are there unending needs that cause you to fall into bed every night feeling as if you’ve only touched the tip of the iceberg?  I find myself doing relentless battle with the feeling of not enough; the feeling of ‘I really should…’

 I need to answer her email before another day goes by.  I should spend more time in prayer.  I should get more exercise. I really should clean those dust bunnies (or do they now qualify as rabbits?) out from under the bed.

The voice of expectation is loud and accusing.  Why didn’t I remember to pick up more milk at the store? I need to make an effort to cook more healthy meals. How could I have forgotten his birthday?

 

The voice contradicts itself.  I should be more organized; I should be more spontaneous; I should offer to help with that ministry; I should make individual time with each of our kids.

I hear the voice in other people’s comments.  We ought to be spending more time in our ministry.  I should not be leaving so much to my husband to do.  I need to lose weight.  We really should get together for coffee.

The unmistakable voice of expectation lays the guilt on thick, regardless of how hard we try.  It’s a voice that reminds us that there’s always one more thing undone, one more area in life where we’re lacking, one more vice that hasn’t been checked, one more way we’ve failed again.

Can we ever do enough?  Or will we forever be dissatisfied with our inability to do the good we want to do?  In Earth’s economy, there are just never adequate amounts of the limited resource of time.

It helps me enormously to know that there is a reason I’m not able to do it all.  An explanation as to why I’m not satisfied in these confines of time.  After all, I was not designed to be content in this economy, but destined to evacuate one day these strictures of time, in order to revel in eternity.  

We are so little reconciled to time that we are even astonished at it.

"How he's grown!" we exclaim, "How time flies!"

as though the universal form of our experience were again and again a novelty.

It is as strange as if a fish were repeatedly surprised at the wetness of water.

And that would be strange indeed;

unless of course, the fish were destined to become, one day, a land animal.

-CS Lewis

In eternity, there will finally be enough.

Until then, may God guide the use of my time,

helping me to do exactly what He designed 

for my hands to do today;

giving me a greater contentment in Him 

than in what I accomplish for Him.

 By grace alone.