"Enough is as good as a feast."

Though this is a proverb I'm familiar with, I can't place it in my recollection.  I don't think it was something I routinely heard in my family.  As it echoes in my head this morning, it seems to have come probably from Marilla or Rachel Lynde in Anne of Green Gables.  As one of those slightly archaic aphorisms, it rings of truth and cliche simultaneously.

In the first lesson from yesterday's lectionary readings, Elijah instructs the widow of Zarephath to "make me a little cake of [the last meal she has] and bring it to me, and afterwards make something for yourself and your son" (1 Kings 17.13).  He tells a woman who is preparing to starve that in sharing what she has with him, she will save both herself and her child.  The conclusion of the story is that "the jar of meal was not emptied, neither did the jug of oil fail, according to the word of the LORD" (17.16). 

A small cake made of meal and oil isn't much, but in its endurance--in lasting--it amounted to a miraculous feast that sustains three people in the midst of famine and drought.

It was both enough and feast.

So this weekend, a few moments to deal with nagging household tasks, an extra hour to fall asleep in front of the television, enough time and money to share in a benefit concert for a local family, two and half hours to see my students work out Shakespeare on the stage, time for Mozart's Clarinet Concerto, and a blissful ninety minutes of food and wine and laughter with friends.  Even an hour or two to grade a few of the papers that threaten to overwhelm me.

We live in famine and drought of time.  As a badge of social honor these days we hold up to-do lists and packed-out schedules.  There's never enough time.

I'm feeling it, too, since I'm headed out of town on Wednesday (and so will be taking a break here until next Monday).  But time is also the sustenance we have, and even when there's precious little of it, nevertheless it can sustain us.

And so even though I'm swamped and feel out of time already, I am grateful for enough--and the scant wisdom I have to share it--and especially in sitting down over guacamole and cupcakes last night, time enough becomes a feast.