“More” is Never Enough (9/7/2022)

What do you need more of in your life? More peace? More rest? More chocolate?

A second silly little handful of salty sweet cashews wants to be my “more” this afternoon. My appetite high, my blood sugar low, my mouth wide open and ready to lap it up—I sip my water instead.

I still want more. Inherently my emptiness inside needs filling, needs coaxing to be something that it’s not—fulfilled. There is no means by which my hunger is satisfied forever.

Nothing of this world, anyway. So I keep drinking, maintaining the pursuit, waiting for what will relieve me where the hollowness hits hardest. This may be just me, the food addict talking, pleading for a comfort that dispels the need. Even more water isn’t quite enough.

“Worldly comforts always fail us. Bigger homes, softer beds, nicer clothing, and overflowing bank accounts will never be true comfort when suffering strikes and all of life swirls around us. It’s a dead end,” Gretchen Saffles writes in her book The Well-Watered Woman.

Ah yes, the bigger house.

We just downsized quite a bit during our move from Atlanta to Houston. A square-foot gut-swirl was not what I was hoping for. The financial overflow from the sale of that house didn’t last long either. Medical bills, you know. So I just reach for the cashews and shake my head. What then? Do I need a new bed, nicer clothes? Grabbing my tumbler instead, I sigh. That won’t work either.

Where are you tempted to search for comfort? Your job? Your hobby? Your accomplishments? Success is only uplifting when someone else notices it. That brief moment of pride, that pat-on-the-back smile that shines for about as long as Haley’s Comet before it’s forgotten for the next 75 years.

But. There is a way.

A Way. Not a what-where-how, but a Who. A Who that understands our need more deeply than we do.

Saffles continues, “Jesus came and showed us the way of the Cross, which leads to eternal comfort. Though the cross of Christ is not comfortable, it is comforting, and that’s what we truly long for.”

How can a Who, this Who, this Jesus, be the “more” you’ve been looking for? The “more” of this world fleetingly fills the momentary craving, evidence only of the greater pursuit: a spiritual soul-level thirst for meaning, for acceptance, for significance, for hope. Yes, there is a Cross involved, flipping this worldly “more” on its back, and there is a choice involved, flipping you on your back too.

Jesus is the one Who flips you right-side-up again. His ways are not our ways; His thoughts are not our thoughts. We learn this by reading the Bible and letting Him do the rest. The Cross may not be appealing, but the hope of true, forever fulfillment is.

Saffles, Gretchen. The Well-Watered Woman: Rooted in Truth, Growing in Grace, Flourishing in Faith (Carol Stream, Illinois: Tyndale House Ministries, 2021), p. 85.