It's Not Enough

I believe that there are two lessons that our liturgy offers us this weekend. The first one is presented in Isaiah’s words to the people of Israel:

It is too little, the LORD says, for you to be my servant, to raise up the tribes of Jacob, and restore the survivors of Israel; I will make you a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth.

“It is not enough,” God says, “that I created you. It is not enough that I called you in Egypt; not enough that I led you through the desert in safety; not enough that I gave you My Law to guide you and keep you holy; not enough that I established you in the Holy Land; not enough that I gave you security from your foes; not enough that I have blessed you and sustained you all this time.

“I still have good things to give you!”

This super-generous attitude of God makes me remember my grandmother. You probably had one like her. Almost every weekend, my family would gather at her house for dinner. She would have a special dessert sitting to the side for after dinner. If that time came and I did not want what she had prepared, she always had an alternative: “No cake? How about some cookies? No? What about some ice cream? Oh, I have another cake as well; would you like that?” No matter how many times I told her I was full, she continued to offer more and more good things.

That’s how grandmothers are.

And that I how God is. This is the first thing I want us to remember from this weekend. The Book of Lamentations tells us that The Lord’s acts of mercy are not exhausted, his compassion is not spent; They are renewed each morning.” In other words, no matter how many times God has blessed me, He is still planning good for me for the future. No matter how many times God has forgiven you for the dumb things that you have done, He is not finished being merciful. And that abundant mercy is incredibly good news.

The second lesson we learn this weekend has to do with what we do with those blessings. God never blesses, endows, or gifts us with anything that He wants us to hide, keep, or grasp to ourselves. Every blessing that God gives us is meant to be shared. As our proverbial cup is filled, it is meant to overflow – and to overflow to be a blessing to someone else.

We have the risk today in our culture of failing to trust that abundant goodness of God and to hold on to whatever we can to secure ourselves and our future. This is not how God works, though. All material blessings are passing; and they should pass through us, not end with us. I have seen it time and again in my own life that the more generous I am, the more I am the recipient of God’s blessings.

He never fails.

Our sin can be that we believe at any given moment that “this is enough.” I can’t possibly have or receive more. The message of this weekend’s liturgy is that God says, “It is too little! It is not enough.” Never make the mistake of believing that God is done with you – in His blessing or in His mercy.

That is the message I would like us to understand as we enter this new year: that God is never finished; He is never satisfied with how He is blessing us. With this in mind, we should expect to see new blessings, new opportunities, new miracles. That is how God is; He never fails.

As John noticed, the Son of God is in our midst. He is at work. And His work is to bless, to save, and to reveal the abundant goodness of the Father.