ISBC 11 - Hope is Enough
Chapter 11 of Hope: A User's Manual
Part of the Jewish Passover Seder is to recount the story of God bringing the people out of slavery and into freedom. There’s a song that names these moves, with a refrain of dayenu, meaning “it would have been enough.” Had God brought us out of Egypt, only brought us out of Egypt … it would have been enough. Had God given us the Torah, only given us the Torah … it would have been enough. Had God given us the Sabbath, only given us the Sabbath … it would have been enough.1
It would have been enough...it would have been enough...it would have been enough. I love this. I love this part of what MaryAnn wrote and I love this part of the Passover Seder meal. It is so tempting to want everything perfect and everything set and everything to go perfectly but life is never never never like that.
Our family was invited to the Seder meal hosted by friends of ours and, by a lot of measures, it didn’t go fully as planned. We were in a small dining room with a LOT of people, there were several little kids present some of whom had some more pressing needs right during the Seder readings that caused some major distractions for their parents. Some of the people there (cough... us ... cough) knew a little bit of what we were doing but also were clearly not in our regular element.
But here’s the thing. It was enough.
Dayenu.
It was enough. We were together. We shared the food. We shared the stories. We shared community. It was enough. Here are some edited photos of that day. I have edited them a bit to give a sense of the gathering but since I didn’t have permission to use everyone’s photographs…
It might be tempting at this point in the book to feel like, “geez...I don’t have this all together and clearly MaryAnn does or clearly Ed seems to.” She doesn’t (she’s said as much in her book and in person) and I definitely don’t. We are fumbling around and at times we get it right and times not so much. But each step is enough.
Dayenu
How does “dayenu” speak to you today?
Grace, Peace, Love, and Joy,
Ed
McKibben Dana, MaryAnn. Hope: A User's Manual (p. 58). Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.. Kindle Edition.
"...each step is enough." 💜
A lovely sense of gratitude and peace—that would be enough. I’m also thinking of the sweet song from Angelica to Alexander Hamilton —that would be enough.