Miranda Karen

Is He really enough? 

How can I feel the throbbing grief of this world and really believe He is El Shaddai, “God is enough”?

Like Jacob, on the moonless, jetblack nights, we wrestle in the dark with He who allows this dark, this anguish. “I will not let you go until you bless me.” Like Jacob, we struggle with God. Why this? Give me something different! Do you not love me? I didn’t ask for this, I don’t want this. The pain of this is unbearable, inhumane. Bless me! Bless me!

He renames us. We are Israel, the God-wrestlers.

On the pages of Scripture, He first introduces Himself as El Shaddai to a man, a woman, writhing and wrestling with their portion, their cup. Hadn’t He heard their pleas for a child, a babe of their own, with Abram’s eyes and Sarai’s nose, to hold close and dream over? Month after agonizing month, Sarai is empty, nothing moves in her, their nights have no little one to swaddle and comfortingly kiss. They simply cling to each other in the moonless silence. God had promised. But has given nothing—or something: cutting sorrow.

They self-medicate the pain. Sarai gives her husband Hagar and says. “Go. Sleep with her. Do what it takes to takes away this burning ache. Relieve this sore soul.”

Come a night nearly a year later, the dark is pierced with a baby’s cry. A child! One to hold! A babe to rock, a son to love, a man with their name! The dawn must be close and warm? Instead the nightmare continues, Hagar and Ishmael this thorn stabbing deep in Sarai’s side. For thirteen long years, the moonless night hangs.

When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the LORD appeared to him and said, “I am God Almighty, El Shaddai.”

El Shaddai. The God who is enough. A quarter of a century since the promise was made, and no dawn. Thirteen stretching years of the pain of Hagar’s son while Sarai’s womb shriveled.

In the smothering dark of that night, God comes and says “I am enough.” The situation is hopeless, impossible. But He says, “Come. Know me as the One who is enough, the sufficient God, El Shaddai.” 

Yes, so it is the same word used in Judaism’ celebration of the Passover: “Dai, Dai, Eynu.” Dayenu. It is enough.

Is He really enough? Elizabeth Elliot writes her intimate experience of this God who makes such a claim:

“But it is precisely when we do not have what we would ask for, and only then, that we can clearly perceive His all-sufficiency. It is when the sea is moonless that the Lord has become my Light.”

I circle back and grope her words again. Is it so? When I do not have what I would ask for—peace, certainty, painless days, settled nights, soul satiation, a home filled with all good things and no ache— when I don’t have all that my soul cries for, it is then I stumble into the mysterious, buoying truth: He is enough. He reveals Himself as the light, the dawn, when my night is the darkest.

Transparent, heart-wounded Boothe writes courageously, movingly, of her moonless sea of sadness:

“Sitting in the sorrow means embracing all the emotions, all the incredibly painful stabs of disappointment and anger and frustration and agony that jab at the heart almost every single second of the day. Sitting in the sorrow means refusing to self-medicate.

It means finally, finally, embracing the fact that He has created nothing that will give us as much joy and peace and fulfillment as Himself.”

On dark waters, we ride into the knowing: nothing else is enough. It is good that we have wrestled, for now we know. He alone is El Shaddai, the one who shows Himself to be enough, precisely when we do not have what our heart howls for.

Like Jacob, we haggardly come through the night, we overcome this agony, and know the other side. But the wrestle has left us changed. In the black, He has touched us. We limp and we remember. We name this moonless night Peniel– God’s face— for in the middle of the black, we have seen God face to face. And feeling along His features, we find Him to be El Shaddai: Enough.

The dark becomes the dawn.

Lord, let the dark give me eyes to feel Your light, know Your face, rest in Your all sufficiency.

Today’s drink of Scripture: “He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will rest in the shadow of El Shaddai.” ~Ps. 91:1