Never Enough
Life has too much sand to offer our thirsty souls. The arid climate of life dries up whatever reserves we possess, shriveling our water-skins as we drink what we have managed to hold back. Moment by moment, we toil to preserve enough to wet our whistles, desperate to saturate our parched throats. Like camels, we slurp and squirrel away the invigorating moisture in our humps for the trying journey to come, never knowing when we might stumble across the next opportunity to drink real refreshment. There is never enough, save for the next instant.
When we wake in the morning, promised nothing, the burdens of the day wind their way around our intentions. The routines of life and family and church and friends wash over the days in a rushing current of doing. This unceasing cycle feels like sleepwalking. Through our frenetic activity, we unconsciously reach toward the untenable standard we have set for ourselves. If we’ve managed our emotions, energy, and time well, we can rest easier at the end of the day, feeling as though we’ve accomplished something. If, however, we find ourselves exasperated, drained, lifeless, and joyless, we may wonder what went wrong.
If we’re honest with ourselves, the rhythms we thump out with our lives create a droning flow of breaths. But no matter how successfully we utilize those twinkling and precious breaths, still something nags at us, pulls our attention away from the moment, and arrests our thoughts.
Jesus wasn’t joking when he said, “Sufficient for the day is its own trouble” (Matt. 6:34). God’s promises are real and true and trustworthy. Believers stake their lives on them, but they can be hard to remember when the sapping drudgery of each wink of the clock streaks through our consciousness never to be recovered. Believers invest in a future that hovers just beyond our grasp, told over and over that contentment comes from accepting God’s graceful provision for today. But achieving that contentment is hard.
Regardless of how content we know we are supposed to be with our lot in life, our discontent and unrest can turn our gaze inward. We dig deeply into our hearts and find regret and resentment and irritation. Staggered by our need for reconciliation and our desire for the redemption of the cosmos, we find ourselves vexed over the state of our lives in this sin-soaked world, displeased with the outcomes of our industry. Subsequently, the ever-ticking clock warps our sensibilities.
It’s pretty doom and gloom, right?
But, if we stop and think about it, why would it be any different?
We live in a fallen world with decaying bodies in a crumbling culture that is increasingly turning away from absolute truth. As the world spirals farther and farther from perfection, the centrifugal force of sin pushes the edges and expands the boundaries of acceptability. And we feel the loss.
As a result, we grasp, claw, kick, and fight as life around us spins out of control into an ever-increasingly wide orbit. We just want it to stop. We want to be drawn inward not pushed outward. We want ease. We want the comfort of safety. We want peace of mind in the face of the chaotic nature of a culture gone akimbo. We want to believe things will be okay for us, for our children, for our grandchildren.
Eventually, everyone and everything will be drawn back into the center, whether it wants to be or not. The snap-back will come. Somewhere down the road, Christ will return, and every knee will bow and tongue confess that he is Lord to the glory of God the Father. On the horizon lies a day on which all life on this world will find itself aligned with ultimate reality again, but until it comes, our discontentment only deepens as truth collides with existence.
So, what do we do with the heartsickness, with the increasing ineffectiveness of our efforts, with the lurking dissatisfaction over our “could have” and “should have” regrets? What do we do when every breath we draw threatens to turn from blessing to poison?
It is natural to feel a growing sense of inadequacy. In fact, it is not only acceptable, but it might even be healthy for a heart to be filled with desperation about the state of things. If you can imagine, God wants us to feel this distaste for this life. Why? Because there is nothing in this world that can fill the hole in any man, woman, or child’s heart.
Nothing.
People eventually figure out, in full view for all to see, that their pursuit of peace or fulfillment or happiness or significance, or whatever it might be, is ultimately in vain. The preacher of Ecclesiastes would call it “vanity of vanities” (Ecc. 1:2). Every substance, every accomplishment, every task, every joy, and every satisfaction we throw into the void in our souls fails to slake the hunger for something that gnaws at our contentment within us. There is only one balm for this yearning: Jesus must be enough.
Where life offers dribbles from polluted puddles, Jesus offers the wellspring of life, a crystal stream of refreshing grace. Paul writes that all of God’s promises find there yes in Jesus (2 Cor. 1:20), promises for our good: an eternity at his side, a hope, a future, a glorified body, and much more. Through Jesus, God fills our cups to overflowing. He turns our mourning into dancing. His Son came to take our death upon himself. He bore our sins to the cross, suffering and dying to save sinners from themselves. By his sacrifice, we stand justified in the Father’s eyes. We are made right because God lavishes with kindness upon kindness those who trust, believe, and call on the name of Jesus, imputing to us Christ’s righteousness. And because of the obedience of God the Son, God the Father, eager to give good gifts to his children, pours his Spirit upon us to guide us to truth, convict us of sin, empower our work for God’s kingdom, and seal us for an eternity with him.
We may not recognize the blessings when they come but God sends them all the same because he wants to be the one to fulfill our needs. In both the physical and spiritual senses, he desires his people to turn to him for their essentials rather than to try to meet them apart from his provision.
We look to things of this world to satiate our needs, it may feel good for a moment because accomplishment is gratifying, but before long, success fades, and we must achieve another success, then another, and another, and another. That cycle never ends; it is never enough.
Jesus once put it this way, “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” (John 4:13–14). There is satisfaction to be found in Jesus, a rest from our efforts to fix what’s broken in us. The elixir to get us through our day and ease our aching and pining hearts pours from the cross.
God never intended for us to be satisfied by the world. All earthly blessings display his goodness yet simultaneously create a longing for a fulfillment we cannot find here. Our deep longing for peace, stillness, and tranquility can only be filled when we allow ourselves to rest in the finished work of Jesus. Our dissatisfaction with this life incites our spirit to search for a truer anchor to which we can moor ourselves. We will only find the truest rest, truest peace, truest comfort, truest acceptance, truest satisfaction in God alone. For he offers our thirst, not stale drips from a rusty tap but brooks of pure, restorative draughts that cool and revitalize blistered hearts.
Bob Allen and his wife, Mandy, married in 2003 and have two daughters, Lucy and Daisy. They recently moved to Rolla, Missouri to serve as the lead pastor of Salem Avenue Baptist Church after spending the previous six years in Davenport, Iowa where Bob served as the Associate Pastor at New Life Baptist Church. He served the Baptist Convention of Iowa from 2020–2022 as a member of its Pastor and Church Support team and has held various positions for Missouri Valley Baptist Association. He holds an MTS with an emphasis in Preaching and Pastoral Ministry from Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and a BS in English from Missouri Baptist University. In his spare time, Bob enjoys reading, writing, pickleball, and hiking with his family. He also has an affinity for good coffee and the St. Louis sports scene.