“Is ‘ENOUGH’ on your bucket list?”
March 31, 2023
Do you dream about spending a month in an exotic country some day? Skydiving? Or becoming a millionaire before retirement? These are a few ideas that might come to mind when you think about bucket lists. The phrase, bucket list, refers to what we might like to do or accomplish before we “kick the bucket”. It became popular after the movie, “The Bucket List” was released more than 10 years ago.
In the movie, the two main characters (played by Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman), decide to stop treatments for their terminal illnesses and enjoy a series of adventures they wanted to have before they died, or “kicked the bucket”. While there is no limit as to what can be placed on a bucket list, common themes include travel, attempting daring things, enjoying family and friends, and becoming wealthy.
In Proverbs 30, we find a bucket list of sorts. Agur asked two things of God before he died. First, he asked for personal integrity, and secondly, Agur asked to have neither poverty nor great riches and for food that was needful.
7 Two things I ask of you; deny them not to me before I die: 8 Remove far from me falsehood and lying; give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with the food that is needful for me, 9 lest I be full and deny you
and say, “Who is the Lord?” or lest I be poor and steal and profane the name of my God. – Proverbs 30:7-9
Agur’s requests were motivated by his desire to not be so rich that he did not need God, or to be so poor that he would use his poverty as an excuse to sin and steal. Either extreme might have caused him to deny God, and Agur wanted to glorify God rather than his personal needs. Admirably, he did not ask for excess. He humbly and simply asked for food that was needful and enough.
As I read several bucket lists, I did not see any desire for “enough” listed as something that anyone wanted before they died. I didn’t see it on my bucket list either, until I reflected on Proverbs 30:7-9.