Enough

(The Midweek Encounter is a ministry of Encounter Church in Kentwood, MI. These posts are a reflection on Sunday’s message, which can be heard here each week: http://myencounterchurch.org/#/hear-a-message)


I've been working at my full-time job for nearly eight months, and while I like it, sometimes I feel--and know, really--that I'm not the best at it. There are others who have been doing a similar job for many years, and they have got it down. They know just what to do when an odd situation comes up, how to handle people who can be tricky to work with, the right people to call when they need something done. In the normal day-to-day of work though, I don't always think about the "advantages" they seem to have. But when I stop and look at the people around me, I start wondering if I am, in fact, good enough for this.

Maybe for you it's in your parenting or classes at school or on a sports team or in a variety of other places. Those other parents always seem to have happier, more well-behaved kids. When papers are handed back, you look with dismay at the grades of your classmates, seemingly always a letter or two higher than yours. Everyone else on the team seems more coordinated and always scores more points than you. It's easy to allow these comparisons to overwhelm us, to let the idea creep into our minds that maybe, since we don't seem to be as good as the people around us, God sees us that way too--not quite enough for him to use. 

In the story of Mephibosheth, told in 2 Samuel 9, maybe he felt not enough for anyone. The Bible refers to Mephibosheth being lame in both feet on more than one occasion, and it's not hard to imagine that his life had not been easy because of it. When the servant Ziba originally told King David about Mephibosheth, Ziba didn't even refer to him by name--he simply referred to Mephibosheth as "a son of Jonathan; he is lame in both feet." Upon meeting King David, Mephibosheth goes so far as to refer to himself as a "dead dog." It seems evident that Mephibosheth did not consider himself enough for anything. 

Yet King David invites him to live in Jerusalem, gives Mephibosheth all the land that belonged to his grandfather, and insists that Mephibosheth and his son always eat at the table of the king. "Like one of the king’s sons," 2 Samuel 9: 11 reads.

There wasn't anything about Mephibosheth, besides whose son he was, that qualified him to sit at the table. He didn't have a list of awards, a shelf full of trophies, a wall full of diplomas. He didn't have enough of anything to sit there. Like Mephibosheth, we don't have enough to earn God's favor. We will never be good enough at our jobs, perfect enough parents, smart enough students to earn a seat at God's table. Instead, it's an open invitation. 

Our worth shouldn't come from being more good-looking or smarter or funnier than other people--our worth should only and always come from the fact that we have been invited to the table as children of God. We are not enough because of what we do, but because of what God says we are--his.

[Brianna DeWitt attends Encounter Church and lives, works, and writes in Grand Rapids, MI. Words are some of her favorite things, which is why her hobbies include reading, writing, and talking. She also shares on her personal blog at http://awritespot.wordpress.com/ and tweets @bwitt722.]