You've heard a "three wish" joke before.  The jokes follow various formats, but usually go something like this:

Three men are stranded on a deserted island when a lamp washes up on shore.  A genie pops out and offers each man a wish. 

Man #1 wishes to be in Paris, and he is immediately transported to Paris. 

Man #2 wishes to be in New York, and sure enough, he finds himself in NYC. 

Man #3 is now lonely so he wishes he and his friends could be together again...

But what if you were given three wishes?  What would they be?  Go ahead, fill in the blanks.

1.

2.

3.

Maybe you wished for a super power.  Maybe you wished for a new job.  Maybe you wished for financial prosperity.  Maybe you wished for more wishes.

In Proverbs 30 a new writer appears on the scene and replaces Solomon.  His name is Agur, and we don't really know who he was.  But in verse 8 he gives us his version of the "three wishes."

30:8  Keep falsehood and lies far from me; give me neither poverty nor riches, but give me only my daily bread.

These are really prayers more than wishes, and there are really two prayers here, and not three.

The first prayer is that he not become a person of deceitfulness, that instead he would always be upright and honest.  That's a good wish/prayer.

The second is that he always have enough - not too much, and not too little.  And really, daily bread would be an answer to that prayer.

Read Proverbs 30

In verse 9, Agur shares his reasoning for his second request.  "If I have too much I won't have a need for God.  If I have too little I might steal to get what I need."

So he opts for "enough."  If he simply has enough, he will be good.  That's a lot of wisdom right there.

When we have too much, we're tempted to be self-sufficient.  Too little?  We're tempted to take things into our own hands in a different way.  (For most of us, we're more in danger of having too much.)

So maybe you need to say, "I have enough."  And maybe you need to pray that that is all God gives you, because why would you need more?

Today's wisdom:

Let enough be enough.

Brent Wood