I threw myself a birthday party at the beginning of December. I’ve never thrown myself a birthday party before, so I’d made endless lists and checked with ChatGPT for suggestions and ran around like a chicken with my head cut off for a solid two weeks leading up to it. God bless my close friends that received nothing short of just enough texts about it that they considered bowing out.

Then, right before the party, I stood in my living room, wringing my hands, going through the lists in my mind of things I’d cleaned, drinks I’d purchased, people I’d invited, and wondering what I’d forgotten.

The forks.

I’d forgotten the forks. I’d been planning all week to get some, but I never got around to it.

I scrambled around my kitchen and ended up throwing eight plastic Chick-fil-A forks into a glass to set out on the table. I’d invited fourteen people.

Hopelessly, I looked at my best friend (who kindly arrived early to watch me panic) and said, “It will have to be enough.”

Enough. 

It’s a word I’m not sure I understand. It’s one I want to understand. The Greek word is ἀρκετός (arketos). Sufficient. Not too much and not too little. 

But what is enough? How do we measure it here? How do we know when it’s time to stop pacing and surrender?

If I were to theorize… It’s a kind of faith. The underlying belief that makes “sin boldly” an acceptable thing for Martin Luther to say. 

It is enough to pray. We pray because he told us to. We have no control over the results of those prayers, and that is the point. We lay our troubles and gratitude in his hands and say “It is yours, after all. Do something about it.” 

It is enough to serve with shaky hands. To be tired, to not have the perfect, most enthusiastic attitude, to be scared of what it means to serve… these things he takes right along with the service itself. After all, you are his hands, not your own. 

It is enough to simply live a day. To get up, pray, eat, serve others, do your duty, report to your employer, call a friend, water plants, and spend time in God’s word. Perhaps that is really the life we are called to anyway, to bask in his presence and love, enjoying his creation, communing with his saints, and serving those in need. 

We can always do more, but that would be to live as if it’s never enough. Sin boldly. 

Even the good we do is as a dirty rag. Sin boldly. 

The flowers we offer our savior are just dandelions, weeds when he deserves so much more. Sin boldly. 

In that boldness, we don’t shrink in fear that what we do for Christ and through his Spirit will somehow be wrong or not good enough, that we might somehow soil it. We do it with the confidence that the Father will work all things out for the good of those who love him and obey his commandments. 

Maybe that is the prayer. 

“Father in heaven, do your will, work your good, and use me as your hands and feet in the process. Let it be enough.”

Let it be ἀρκετός.

Anyway, no one used the forks because it was all finger food in the end.

‘But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.’

2 Corinthians 12:9-10