In some cultures, going to market daily is a thing. In those places, there’s usually a local spot within walking distance where you can get fresh bread for your dinner table, plump fruits harvested at dawn, crunchy greens, cuts of meat still bright with the color of life, and piles of fragrant spices. You pick up just what you need for today and maybe tomorrow, because that’s the only way to have truly fresh food. It’s a way of life that I have visited from time to time, but it’s not the culture I grew up with or live in now. I grew up with Sunday trips to the grocery store, picking up enough for at least the whole week if not longer. Sometimes we’d even go to Sam’s to buy bulk spaghetti sauce or peanut butter to last us a month or more. We were fortunate to always have what we needed, but we also had more than enough on hand so we’d never find ourselves stuck without something.
So I took that mindset with me several years ago when I got to walk the pilgrim road in Spain to Santiago de Compostela. As a pilgrim you walk day by day, traveling toward this sacred place, moving to a new place each day. You carry a backpack full of everything you need except a tent and kitchen which is provided by various hosts along the way.
For the first few days I tried to carry enough food for several days - large bottles of olive oil, jam, apples....but my back was killing me at the end of each day. I had to do something different if I was going to make it all the way to where I was going. Even though I didn’t have the access to technology that would assure me each town I traveled to would have a small market, each day I found one. It took some time, but not too long, to learn that each day I could get what I needed just for the day. And I had to learn that I could rely on fellow travelers to help carry some of the weight and we could cook a meal together in the evening.
I had to learn to trust that I had enough for today, and there would be enough again tomorrow, even if I didn’t always know how and even when I’d experienced times where that seemed unlikely. I had to unlearn the practices of “more is better,” and “take extra just in case” and “protect your own” even if it’s literally weighing you down and killing your back. It’s a hard thing, one that runs through to the core of our being, to set aside or let go of practices, but even more importantly entire mindsets, when they aren’t doing us or our neighbors any good.
And the Israelites aren’t doing great in this scene from Exodus. The unfolding of their liberation from Egypt was intense to say the least - plagues, Pharoah’s cruel backlash, the shadow of death passing just outside their doors, a dramatic chase with an entire army at their heels, until finally...it was over...they were free...and they couldn’t keep themselves from singing and dancing praises to God with the prophetess Miriam leading them in the celebration. Maybe they thought things would finally be getting easier. But now, just 6 weeks into what they can not possibly know will be years and years of wilderness wandering...the reality of the desert is setting in.
I admit that I’ve been a harsh judge of the people’s complaining. I’ve been that leader on the receiving end of ceaseless complaints with no solutions when encouragement and support could have really gotten us somewhere, where it feels like nothing I do will ever be enough for some people. Their lament sounds to my ears like misguided nostalgia, longing for a past that wasn’t actually a good or better situation either...at least not for everyone. It’s one thing to get the people out of Egypt, it’s another to get the Egypt out of the people.
This warped history often takes hold whenever our NOW seems bleak, when we are afraid or feeling cornered, or grieving something gone. I’m sure part of my reaction is connected to this voice somewhere in the back of my mind, waging a finger, saying “You shouldn’t complain”, “you get what you get and you don’t throw a fit,” but that voice isn’t coming from God or the Bible.
After all, which one of us wouldn’t be cranky and perhaps not our best selves when we’re hungry, tired, displaced, and disrupted? These are always good places to check ourselves when we’re feeling out of sorts. Am I eating well and regularly? Am I giving my body enough rest? Am I calling on places of connection - friendship or meaningful places - to ground me? These things appear to be important to God too as God hears and responds and shows the people a way of holy “enough.” Apparently following God doesn’t mean ignoring or just “getting over” or “pushing through” basic needs.
And so God provides the promise that even here in the desert, they are cared for. Even here where the horizon feels daunting, there will be enough. Day by day, one day at a time...there is enough for today, there is enough for everyone. Jesus teaches us to pray for daily bread, reminding us that God is not only present and working in grand sweeping moments unfolding across eons, but also in the regular care of creation in an intimate, tangible, and daily way.
A physical experience of enough is one thing...and it is critically important, AND the promise of spiritual “enough” is tied to it. One anchors our daily being with God’s promise that there is enough for everyone, the other anchors our soul in the promise that we are enough unconditionally, a promise that ripens as we learn that we can trust God to care for and guide us along the way. The unlearning of scarcity and self-reliance, and re-learning of abundance in community is going to take some time to unravel and rebuild. Today’s it’s about meat and bread, but tomorrow it’ll be about the commandments that shape a community of care, and then golden idols, and then renewed covenants, and on and on. Back and forth, but God never leaves the table and walks alongside. God never runs out of “enough”s to give.
But we’re not always sure. Maybe we fear it’s too good to be true. Maybe we’ve seen and experienced things that don’t feel that way at all. Perhaps the opposite of the holy promise of “enough” shows up in the embodiment of the fear of our unmet needs. They say that people who are hoarders get stuck in two thoughts: “I might need this someday” and “this reminds me of…” The voice in the back of our minds says “I might need this someday” and then whispers “without it, I won’t have enough for what I need.” The voice in the back of our minds says “this reminds me of...a previous time of either having enough that I fear I am without now, or a previous time I didn’t feel like I had enough and it hurt me and I’m afraid of being hurt again.”
That fear can come out sideways and cause us to hurt ourselves and others. This fear of “not enough” forms the root of many other evils. If allowed to fester to the extreme, you end up with empire, toxic control, conquest, and colonization. It is not lost on me that tomorrow is Indigenous Peoples’ Day, a renewed way of being from what was formerly honored as Columbus Day. A day that seeks to unlearn the version of our story that answers fear with dominance rather than a promise of enough for all. A day to relearn our story from voices that hunger to be heard and cared for and recognized at the table of “enough.”
It matters that we connect these things because the Doctrine of Discovery comes from the church and this very story of Exodus is used to defend it. It is a legal and religious doctrine that comes from Pope Nicholas V in 1455 which says that any ”discovered” land, people, or property that isn’t Christian has no right to anything, and becomes the domain of whatever European Christian claims it first. The harm that was done and which continues to be done to Indigenous People in this country and throughout the world has at its root, a weaponized God.
In this way, the church and its people make the claim that there isn’t enough to go around, that they will be the ones, not God, to decide how this limited “enough” is given which stands contrary to God’s promise that “enough” rains down each morning and refreshes us each night.
And the basic theological premise for the Doctrine of Discovery….? comes from the book of Exodus, where God appears to sanction genocide against the Canaanites which is enacted by God’s chosen people, and fruitful lands are claimed by the chosen. We have to recognize and unravel the ways that Egypt still haunts us on our way to true and full liberation.
This is a journey we are still making, one that God is still leading us through. This is not ancient history. As recently as 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court referred to the Doctrine of Discovery as the basis for denial of land rights to an American Indian Nation. The U.S. government made treaty commitments to provide American Indians from federally recognized tribes with healthcare regardless of income. According to the Houston Chronicle, of the 10 U.S. cities with large Native American populations, Houston is the only one without an Indian Health Service facility. This leaves the area’s 70,000-strong Native American population without adequate health care.
The closest office for the Bureau of Indian Affairs, which aims to improve the quality of life, provide more economic opportunities and protect Native Americans, is in Anadarko, Oklahoma. That is about a 460-mile drive for Houston-area Native Americans. Additionally, the Indian Health Service, whose mission is to “raise the physical, mental, social, and spiritual health of American Indians,” does not have any facilities or area headquarters in Texas. And then just last February, the Alabama-Coushatta and Tunica-Biloxi of Lousianna, tribes that still call this regions hope...ppened the new American Indian Center of Houston with a goal to help the underserved Native American population that lives in our area.
These are theological issues, not just political ones. It doesn’t have to be this way. God proclaims that this is not what the way looks like. The irony is that Indigenous ways of being, and native spirituality, and the way it intimately joins people with creation, to notice sacred abundance around us, holds a richness of holy “enough.”
The landscape before us turns toward the promise of “enough” and we are invited to gather and taste and see the goodness of God day in and day out. It will mean letting go of the empty promises that claim to provide what we need. But it will satisfy a hunger so deep in us and strengthen us for such a journey in a way that nothing else can.
God provides a kind of enough that provides for our bodies but also our souls. Sometimes the way seems endless, but God’s enough, even in its daily-ness, is not about ceaseless toil. When God gives rains manna from heaven, God still includes enough for rest. “On the sixth day, when they prepare what they bring in, it will be twice as much as they gather on other days.” God’s holy enough includes providing the people with sabbath rest, with room to breathe, to experience joy and awe.
May this blessing of holy enough arise for you each day like the dew.
May you know holy satisfaction in the places of your deepest hunger.
May you be strengthened for the journey God calls you to.
May you grow to trust God’s ongoing and neverending care for you.
May you experience divine release from the places, people, and ways of being that hold your heart captive.
May you enter into deep restorative rest through the promise that God will hold you.
