The Life-Giving God

What, if you lost it, would make you feel that life wasn't worth living?
Think about that for a minute. 
That's a weighty question, isn't it? 
 
I've started listening to an audiobook this week. A novel called 'The Midnight Library' by Matt Haig. It starts with the protagonist losing her cat to a car, a whole list of deep life regrets around unrealized dreams, disappointing relationships, and most of all disappointment in herself as she slowly cut herself off from people she used to know. Suffice to say - the beginning is rather depressing. And she decides her life is no longer worth living. 
 
Then she ends up in this 'in-between' place called 'the midnight library' where she has the opportunity to revisit past regrets and see what her life might've become if different choices and outcomes had been made. Would life be worth living if she married 'the guy'. Would life be worth living if she took a chance on the band of their young adult life. Would life be worth living if she'd just been less anxious? And if life is worth living in any one of those alternate realities, she will have the choice to stay in it. 
That's what I assume the rest of this book is going to explore - but I haven't got there yet. 
 
What I find interesting already is that so much of what we seek to fill our lives with for meaning becomes demands that we can never quite measure up to. Whether it is power, approval, comfort or control that we strive for, we never quite 'make it'. They become our modern-day idols that promise life but deliver a million tiny deaths before the big one whenever we don't end up getting those things. 
 
Jesus demonstrated that he can deliver us from death. He proved that by actually overcoming death himself. Jesus' resurrection delivers us, not just from a literal death, but also from the "million deaths" we will suffer before we die if we've put our trust in power, approval, comfort or control. 
 
Let's go back to that weighty question: What, if you lost it, would make you feel that life wasn't worth living? 
See if your answer to that leads you to one of those little idols. 

God's love for you doesn't depend on you measuring up to certain demands, because Jesus has already measured up for us, if we put our trust in him. That is the difference between little idols and God - our God, is a Life-Giving God. One who loves you unconditionally. A life with God, is a life worth living. 
 
Amy