Dayenu
Dayenu. This Bad Fish article might be a little out there for some, but here goes. Dayenu. A Hebrew term / song meaning “it would have been enough”. Right now the world is confused and fearful and makes little sense. We are dealing with covid-19 and some serious economic challenges. Our people are seriously underemployed / unemployed yet the stock market is high. We are printing money at a feverish pace. The senate is being briefed on aliens. You have got to be kidding me.
Dayenu.
“It would have been enough”.
As a salesperson, I spend a lot of time talking on the phone to other manufacturers and a lot of customers. We want to know how each other is doing. How is your business? Are you seeing any improvements? What does the future hold?
We all have an answer and we all have an opinion. Dayenu.
For Del Sol, Dayenu. Like others, we are hanging in there. It is not much fun but God is providing. He is providing enough orders for us to stay open, for our employees to keep their jobs, for the bills to be paid on time, for us to survive some of our customers not paying us, for us to survive some of our customers going out of business and sticking it to us (super fun by the way). Dayenu.
As we as a nation struggle through a challenging time, our government is somehow trying to lead us through this without pain. How can this persist? How do we magically print wealth out of nothing and call it stimulus. How do we exist as a basically bankrupt nation and keep on using the same broken formula? When will the U.S. declare Dayenu? When will we say we have enough? When will government stop its overreach into our lives? When will the government curtails its spending? When will our consumerism curtail (I thought it was when we ran out of money – I was wrong – we printed more to keep consuming). Dayenu.
Biblically and spiritually, the Israelites say…
- When God freed us from slavery in Egypt, it would have been enough.
- When God split the sea, it would have been enough.
- When God provided manna, it would have been enough.
- When God gave us Torah (the commandments and teachings), it would have been enough.
- When God gave us Sabbath, it would have been enough.
But even after that, God provided so much more. A promised land, a temple, great wealth, times of peace.
In the U.S. it is no different. It would have been enough if…
- God had given us a free nation
- God had provided remarkable wealth and prosperity for generations of Americans.
- God helped us win great wars and defeat evil in the world.
- God gave us so many homes, and so much land, so much agriculture, so much productivity, and such a place in the world.
So why isn’t God enough any more? Why does the government need to supplant God? Why isn’t living a life in the Torah (commandments) enough? Why are our forefathers being villainized? Why isn’t this great nation enough?
Dayenu. What is your dayenu? What is your enough?
We pray for your dayenu. We pray you and yours are healthy. We pray your business has enough to keep going. We pray you are paid for your efforts. We pray that you are well represented in the coming election season, and if not, we pray that godly leaders would rise up on all of our behalves. We pray for a moral America based on the founding ideals which created this nation – life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness…free and equal under the law…freedom of religion…freedom of speech…freedom from unwarranted persecution. We pray that we as a nation can come together in peace to solve the problems we face…together. We pray that God’s hand would protect you and yours. We pray God’s will over our nation and we pray that our nation will seek His will and quit trying to ram our personal agendas down other people’s and country’s throats.
Dayenu. It would have been enough…I pray that we receive and appreciate the many blessings we have been granted, take a deep breath, and really enjoy where we are and the good that our nation is. There is much to celebrate and much work to do.
Sincerely,
Bad Fish