The fifty word Gift

You cannot do everything. That's not a personal failure. That's just Thursday. 

We live in a world that sells the opposite idea at full volume. Remember when smartphones were going to set us free? We could be connected to everyone, informed about everything, available at all times. It sounded like liberation. It turned out to be a different world entirely. 

We're tired. We're stretched thin. And most of us carry a quiet guilt that somehow, we're still not doing enough. 

What if that feeling isn't a sign we need to try harder? What if it's a sign we need to stop pretending we're God?

Here's a story I love. Bennett Cerf, Dr. Seuss's own publisher, once bet him fifty dollars that he couldn't write a children's book using only fifty words. Fifty. Words. That's not a creative brief, that's a straitjacket. Dr. Seuss took the bet. The result was Green Eggs and Ham, one of the best-selling children's books ever written. The constraint didn't kill the creativity. The constraint unleashed it.

As we head into summer and schedules shift and the pace is supposed to slow down, maybe this is the moment to actually let it. I find myself returning to this theme every so often, not because I have it figured out, but because I don't. Scripture has been making this point since the beginning. God placed Adam and Eve in a garden. Not the whole earth. A garden. Something specific, something finite, something tended-able. And even that proved to be more than enough to manage. 

Sometimes we choose our own limits. But sometimes a season arrives that chooses them for us. Life slows us down whether we vote for it or not. And that's where the fear kicks in. If I step back, things will fall apart. People will move on. The world will keep spinning and somehow forget I was here.

Here's the thing about that fear: it's telling on us. It's revealing that somewhere along the way, we started believing the whole garden depended on us. That's not humility. That's the oldest temptation in the book dressed up in responsible clothing. We are not as indispensable as we think. 

The river doesn't stop when the banks hold firm. It flows because of them. Limitations are not the end of our contribution. They are the shape of it. 

Maybe this week, that's enough to sit with. 

Peace, 
Travis Segar
Pastor for Care and Community



Image: view of Atlas statue with St. Patrick's Cathedral in the background, New York City. Photo by Ramon Perucho via Pexels