This isn’t promised, I think to myself as I wrap my arms around my wife, drifting off to sleep at the end of a long day.
Not this moment. Not the next.
We are still, barely motionless except for the breaths moving slowly, methodically, in and out of our lungs.
How much I take that breath for granted.
How quickly things would change without it.
“If He should set His heart on it,
If He should gather to Himself His Spirit and His breath,
All flesh would perish together,
And man would return to dust.(Job 34:14-15)
I want to grow old and wrinkly with this woman. I want to hobble around the house, griping about all the aches and pains that come with our latest decade. I want to sit on the front porch with her, holding hands across two rockers, watching the sunset while our grandkids play in the yard.
There are a thousand things that could happen between now and then—a thousand things God could let happen—that could end those dreams in a moment.
I want a divine guarantee we’ll share that future together. I want it to be promised.
But it’s not.
I think about the tragedy, the cosmic irony of it all. How many thousands of people choose to end their marriages every day—and yet what earthly possession, what impossible task would I not offer unflinchingly, if it guaranteed one more day, one more hour together?
* * *
During Passover, it’s customary for observant Jews to recite the Exodus story and then sing the Dayenu—roughly translated, “It would have been enough for us.”
The whole song is a reflection of gratitude for what God did in bringing His people out of Egypt and into the Promised Land—and how, even if He had stopped partway through the process, it would have been enough.
Here’s the translation of a few verses:
If He had split the Sea for us and had not taken us through it on dry land; it would have been enough for us.
If He had taken us through it on dry land and had not drowned our oppressors in it; it would have been enough for us.
If He had drowned our oppressors in it and had not supplied our needs in the wilderness for forty years; it would have been enough for us.
And on it goes—God’s gifts of manna, of the Sabbath, of the Torah, of the Promised Land, and of the temple—each of them, one more blessing piled onto a heap of blessings—and each of them, without the others, would have been enough.
Enough reason to praise. Enough reason to obey. Enough reason to trust.
Dayenu.
* * *
The immediate, physical future I yearn for isn’t promised. But it’s also not a future I’m entitled to—one that God might choose to rip from my grasp without warning. It’s just one He might choose not to give me. That’s different.
But I still struggle with it. And I know others have struggled with it—not just in theory, but in practice. Something beautiful, ended before we were ready. Before we feel like it should have.
As I lay beside my wife, there’s a tension in my soul. What I hold now, I might not be holding in the future. There’s no way for me to know. There is discomfort and, yes, a certain kind of fear in that knowledge. But holding it in my head also makes these moments—moments I was not promised, moments I do not deserve, blessings poured out from God beyond my wildest dreams—so much more precious.
As I wrestle with these thoughts, her breathing changes. A soft little snore takes its place as she drifts off into sleep.
If all I had were these moments and nothing else, dayenu.
It would have been enough.
But oh, God—let there be more.
Thank you Jeremy! You always hit the nail right on the head! Happy Sabbath to you and your family!🙏⚓️❤️