A Life Half-Empty Without Jesus
“The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.” —John 10:10 ESV
One of the beautiful things that the Lord has revealed to me in these first three months of motherhood is how FULL life can be with Jesus.
Without Him, life looks a lot like it does in the book of Ecclesiastes: “Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless.” (Ecclesiastes 1:2 NIV)
And he’s right.
A life without Jesus—without the cross and the hope of the gospel—is meaningless.
The author of this 3,000-year-old scripture lists a whole laundry list of things that are purposeless without the Lord: riches, pleasures, folly, toil, advancement…even wisdom. I’d even say that marriage and kids would be meaningless. There’d be no eternal purpose to it.
I realized this soon after birthing Rome…
I was making my coffee one morning and thinking about one of our friends who isn’t a believer…
And I just thought, “man…all the sweet things I’ve experienced this year (pregnancy, labor, being a first-time mom) would feel so much less full if I didn’t know Jesus.”
I imagine a life without Jesus has gotta feel a lot like a “glass-half-empty” life.
Of course you don’t know this as an unbeliever—you haven’t yet tasted and seen that the Lord is good. You don’t see the people and things in your life as beautiful gifts from God. You don’t see that there is an extraordinary Creator behind everything you get to enjoy in life: food, water, nature, sunsets, babies, dogs, the stars, the mountains, the ocean, the list goes on forever.
But boy oh boy, when you DO believe in Jesus, you experience a richness and FULLNESS of life that nothing compares to.
Why?
Because everything you do suddenly has purpose…
Why?
Because everything becomes an offering to God.
The purpose when Jordan and I were trying to conceive: learn to trust in the Lord’s timing, not our own. If I didn’t have the Lord during this time, I’d be freaking out and spiraling—wondering why I wasn’t getting pregnant right away. Instead, I was able to find peace by meditating on Proverbs 3:1-3…"Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding…”.
The purpose when I was pregnant: co-create with the Creator of the universe. One of the coolest parts of pregnancy was that I didn’t have to try to grow my baby. By the Lord’s extraordinary design, my body knew exactly what to do every second of the day. God was knitting together an eternal soul in my womb. All I had to do was nourish my body and get some rest.
The purpose when I became a mom: sanctification, or becoming more holy. This purpose kept me grounded during the fussy newborn stage…AKA: the four hours of crying every night for six weeks straight. It’s what kept me from throwing a pity party for myself when I didn’t get enough sleep one night. It’s what gave meaning to the 8+ feeds I was doing every single day. I kept going because I knew there was a divine PURPOSE to what I was doing. The Lord was making me more selfless—more like Him. How purposeFULL is that?
And now, as I near the end of my maternity leave, the next purpose I can focus on: learn to find my hope and joy in Jesus, not my present set of circumstances (ie not being able to be a full-time stay-at-home-mom yet). Without the Lord, I’d be bitter and frustrated. With the Lord, I can muster up a grateful, cheerful heart like it exhorts us to do in 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18.
In short, life and motherhood without the gospel feels hard, pointless, and downright exhausting.
But WITH the gospel?
That’s a life rich with purpose, joy, and holiness.
