posted 8/21/2025
This story is a part of a series of missionary contributions where you’ll hear more about their “why” for defending and celebrating life with Biking for Babies.
Rachel is a first-year missionary from Connecticut, having recently completed her first National Ride as a rider missionary with the Maine Team.
Biking for Babies has been a vessel through which God has taught me so much about what it means to truly live. God is continually pouring His love out to us in each moment. When we free our hearts to be present to the moment He has us in and receiving His love through the gift of the person placed in front of us, we can come to know God more intimately and experience true joy. Those moments of experiencing God through one another are some of the most powerful and tangible experiences of God’s love for us as humans.
In the final moments upon the cross, there are two final remarks Jesus made and continues to speak to us today. One is the promise of eternity with Him to the repentant sinner who seeks refuge in Him (Luke 23:40-43). The other addresses how we should live our lives in relation to one another:
“When Jesus saw His mother and the disciple whom He loved standing beside her, He said to His mother, “Women, behold your son”. Then He said to the disciple, “Behold, your mother.” And from that hour the disciple took her into his home.” – John 19:26-27.
This moment is so significant for us to ponder. Jesus thought that addressing His mother Mary and the disciple and telling them to care for one another as kin was important enough to be one of His final words. This speaks volumes about how we should love one another and how much God desires to give His love to us through the vessel of one another.
During my experience on the National Ride, I experienced this encounter of self-sacrificing and unconditional love so tangibly in each moment through my teammates, our generous hosts, and each person we encountered along the way at churches or even the most unlikely of stops.
This intentional encounter with God’s love is what stirs true joy, a desire to choose to embrace the abundant life that God has waiting for us, and frees up to allow the Lord to use us a vessel through which He allows others around us to experience His love.
I have come to recognize that this is truly the foundation and purpose of the pro-life effort and the Biking for Babies mission at large. If a mother and father know the love of God for themselves through the care they receive from those God has placed in their life, they will have an encounter with true love and can more freely choose life for both them and their child.
Yes, being pro-life and the Biking for Babies mission is about helping mothers and fathers to recognize the beauty of life of their unborn child and to assist them in getting the resources to choose to carry their pregnancy to term, but, more deeply than that, it is about loving those parents in a way that they understand their own dignity, worth, and experience God’s intense love for them.
And this extends far beyond solely mothers and fathers who find themselves in challenging pregnancies. It is for every person.
God desires first and foremost for our own souls to have an encounter with His love in the present moment we are in, and yes that means right now as you are even reading this God is desperately pouring out His love to you and desiring you to be open to receiving it.
Once we receive and know His love for ourselves, we can be free to be God’s vessel through which He allows those around us to experience His love. This is what I believe was in part what Christ was pointing to when He said those final words to His mother and the disciple. They were first receiving His love for them through His sacrifice on the cross and then He turns them to one another and commands them to be the vessel through which they will continue to experience His love.
Rachel’s awareness of the all-covering nature of God’s love within the pro-life movement is stirring. We hope that you, reader, are open to receiving God’s love even more today.
We are proud that Rachel is a Biking for Babies missionary, for life!
You can find similar impact stories throughout our blog.
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