Take my hand
Will you share this with me?
'Cause darling, without you
All the shine of a thousand spotlights
All the stars we steal from the night sky
Will never be enough
Never be enough
Towers of gold are still too little
These hands could hold the world but it'll
Never be enough
Never be enough
Never Enough is the hit song in the 2017 musical The Greatest Showman sung in the film by actress Rebecca Ferguson (playing Jenny Lind) with a voice over by singer Loren Allred. The song itself emotively walks us down the path of unsatisfied desires and its affect in our life. It’s a poignant and important truth worth pausing to reflect on.
Director Michael Gracey places us right in the middle of the struggle of desire by giving us the third person perspective of an opera house scene where Jenny Lind sings Never Enough with several key groups of onlookers: P.T. Barnum, Barnum’s Wife Charity, Phillip Carlyle (Zach Efron) and Anne Wheeler (Zendaya Coleman). The song and scene highlights the struggle of desire in each character.
While traveling with P.T. Barnum, Jenny Lind finds herself with strong feelings towards the married Barnum and expresses the depth of her desire in this song by declaring that her life is incomplete and unsatisfying without him returning that love. Her perspective is that no matter what success she experiences, it won’t mean anything if she can’t have her desire for him met.
For P.T. Barnum’s character, there is never enough success to satisfy him. He always wants more. His dreams are never complete despite having a family that loves him, a circus crew that adores him, and booming entertainment industry at his fingertips. In this scene the camera pans to Barnum as he watches Lind breathtakingly perform for the crowds and he feels his dream of having the greatest show on earth within reach. In her he has all the right pieces to create the spectacle needed to achieve his lifelong dream. Barnum’s loving and supportive wife (Charity) experiences a dagger thrust through her heart as she watches her husband placing all his hope in this other beautiful women with so much talent to bring him the success he so desperately is searching for.
The final couple shown in this scene is an unrealized and unmet satisfaction of a relationship between the heir apparent Phillip and social outcast Anne. In a breakthrough moment he gently holds her hand but as his parents look back disgracefully upon him he lets go of her hand. His desire is to meet the expectations of his parents, desiring to not let them down, and “marry up.” His desire is pulling him apart from the inside out - a desire for Anne and a desire to please his parents.
Lund desires Barnum and won’t be satisfied without his love; Barnum desires achieving his dream of success in the worlds eyes; and Phillip desires the acceptance of his parents and his love for Anne.
The moral of the story is not that desire is wrong, rather, it highlights the deceptive nature of desire.
In each of these accounts there is an assumption that the thing that will satisfy their desires is found outside of themselves. “If he would just love me back,” “If I can keep her in the circus,” “If I can just keep my parents happy.” Each person is placing the locus of their contentment in something external to themselves. This is our nature, we look for our desires to be met elsewhere either because we want something fixed in our life or we want something to be better in our life. Thus we naturally look elsewhere because we don’t already have it. We look to others to fulfill our desires, the accolades of those around us, our bosses approval, our spouses attention, our friends praises. None of these are wrong but they will never be enough. Never enough. Why? Because our desires cannot be quenched in this world or by this world.
The Christian answer to desire is not to eliminate desire (Buddhism), desire less (Stoicism), or desire the right things, but rather the Christian answer is to realize our desires can only be met in Christ.
The desire for approval is good but can only be satisfied as we rest in our approval in Christ. The desire for being loved is good but can only be satisfied by knowing we are loved in Christ. The desire for success is good but only satisfied when we find our success in Christ.
The problem is not our desires but the smallness of what we think will satisfy our desires.
In his book The Weight of Glory, C.S. Lewis insightfully observes, “It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”
All of us will struggle through life and aimlessly spin our wheels until we realize that only Jesus will be enough to fill that empty space that exists within each of us.
Where are you looking to have your desires met? If it is not Christ, it will never be enough.
Even as well intentioned Christ followers we so easily look to discover the "right” knowledge, the “right” community, the “right” experiences, the right “wisdom,” the “right” practices to give us something we desire, to solve our problems, or give us meaning we long for. All of these are good and fine but not enough. They are fools gold.
All the shine of thousand spotlights, all the stars in the sky, towers of gold, the world in your hands…. all will never be enough.
Jesus alone will fill what you long for.
John 4:10-14, “Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” The woman said to him, “Sir, you have nothing to draw water with, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob? He gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and his livestock.” Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”
Every week we gather as believers and receive Christ, the chief of those being His Words to us and Himself in Holy Communion. We come forward with empty hands, acknowledging our desire can and will only be met as we abide in Him. Feed on Him and allow your soul to be satisfied in Him.