Day 2894 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

1 Corinthians 15:19 NIV

Considering what we've been offered, it really makes you wonder why this incessant focus on making this life in this world our priority. Why, in light of the gift of eternal salvation, are we still so adamant to make this temporary jaunt so lavish and comfortable? Is it that we don't fully understand the concept of eternity? Do we not fully believe in the idea of salvation?

Or is it simply that this way of life here is all we've known, and our ability to find peace in the known is simply far more pacifying than allowing our minds to grasp for that which we can't possibly imagine?

I was thinking about all this last night as I lay in bed. There's this little girl named Riley that you may or may not have seen posts about on social media. This little lady has gone through so much in such a short life. MRI's, CT scans, numerous surgeries, countless hours spent in hospitals and waiting rooms. Cancer is a truly horrific thing, and for anyone who has been impacted by it, the toll it takes is seemingly insurmountable.

But when it's a child facing such a battle just to be healthy, it almost immediately unleashes all these thoughts and questions as to why. Why a little kid? Why all the suffering? Why so much pain in this world? Why do some seem to have it so incredibly hard, even if they've not been here that long?

All of these questions undoubtedly lead toward what is in all honesty a wrestling with faith and our instinctive doubt in it. They all point us to this breaking point between a God who is supposedly all about love and compassion and the clear misery faced in a life that can be very far from easy, let alone perfect. How do you reconcile the suffering we see, or even feel ourselves, with this hope of a God who loves us so much that He sent His Son to die for us?

If God can give sight to the blind, allow the deaf to finally hear, and even raise the dead from their graves, then why can't He just erase all the suffering and pain and darkness and hatred and evil and violence and fear and sadness?

We've all battled with those questions when faced with any random assortment of life's trials and tribulations. But as I found myself with those all-too-common wonderings beginning to bounce around my mind once more, something altogether novel hit me.

Somewhere along the line, we got it in our minds that these worldly lives could be perfect. We settled upon this idea that we were somehow owed an easy life. We bought this lie that is unfortunately common that tells people that comfort and health and contentment were an expectation that we could assume to find throughout our stay on this earth. We accepted this misconception that God exists only to ensure our peace, provision, and prosperity.

And so, when that mindset comes face to face with the reality of life in a fallen world, the human heart simply doesn't know how to balance it all. We don't know how to equate our human expectations of an easy and comfortable life with the clear struggling that many, in fact all, in some way endure during their time here. We almost inevitably find ourselves kind of stuck in this state of numbness between what we always assumed and the very clear reality in which our assumptions are proven inaccurate.

As I'm going to assume you'd assume, I tend to try and look at everything through a lens of faith. And while that brings plenty of interesting challenges in a world so clearly faithless, it also brings many moments of solace and peace. Even in the midst of things that seem strange or painful or what we would characterize as unnecessary, our faith is able to remind us of the temporary reality that encompasses the entirety of earthly life.

But while our faith is a constant beacon beckoning us toward the hope that for the moment resides upon the horizon of this life, it still doesn’t make this ride any easier. And so, when faced with this oil and water mix of a faith that brings peace and a life that so often doesn’t, we’re forced to choose what it is that we remain focused on. And unfortunately, it can be hard for us to make all of this make sense, and honestly, I think that effort is what causes so many problems.

We tend to find an extraordinary amount of comfort in things we can understand. I guess we feel that if we can manage to figure it out, then we can somehow find power over it. If we can understand it, then we don't have to surrender our desire to control in exchange for the hopeful trust that we can in no way control. That's why faith is so difficult. It asks us to let go, to trust in someone else, to place our hope in the ability of another rather than in ourselves.

And while that is exceedingly difficult for a bunch of hard-headed and adamant folks like us, the reward it carries is equal to the difficulty it holds. Our faith is so incredibly special because the more we give to it, the more we get from it. The more we surrender, the more we find. The more we hope, the more we find peace. It's all this really foreign kind of life that really doesn't make sense to our worldly minds that are used to living worldly lives.

But, in a world where much no longer makes sense, the alien ability of our faith to make sense through the most uncertain and uncomfortable of circumstances offers us a glimpse to the power it holds. As to why we don’t seek more of those revelations through the furthering of the surrender of our will to His is a question for another day. But the fact is that our faith largely remains weak and at risk of snapping simply because we still hold to this idea that life here can somehow turn out exactly how we want it to go.

Thus we continue to find ourselves often grappling with that inability to reconcile the misery we see with the reality of a God who loves us. Again, that misunderstanding is undoubtedly upon us, as we are clearly the ones who can always find a way to muddy even the most pristine picture, and complicate the easiest of concepts. And what makes matters worse is that we usually don’t even realize we’re doing it. But all of this clinging to selfish expectations only serves to create a stumbling block over which our faith may not be able to climb.

We've been talking about all of these false gospels that are spreading around. They're all unique, and yet all focused upon the same purpose: to make faith more pleasing to our selfish nature. They all promise to offer us something in this world in exchange for our trust. They offer us wealth if we just ask God for it. They offer us health if only we pray a certain way. They tell us that all things will go just right in our lives as long as we follow everything to the letter and make sure we do our part to earn His favor.

And I really think that effort to always mesh faith with selfishness is what has caused all of our problems, misconceptions, and misunderstandings. We're trying to take this Gospel of Christ that demands we die to self and find a way to keep some of our self alive. We try to have both the promise of eternal peace as well as the hope of worldly comfort. Humanity seems all but adamant to refuse to let go of this foolish desire to have it all.

So when we look at a little girl suffering through cancer, or a family torn apart by addiction, or a homeless person and their dog sitting on the street, or yet another senseless tragedy unfolding on the nightly news, we find ourselves faced with this sudden realization that we can't have it all. We can't have this picture perfect live in a place that's simply nowhere near perfect. We can't have peace in a place that won't allow for peace. We can't have healing in a world that's ripping itself apart.

It’s truly as if we think that Christ exists only to fulfill our every wish. It’s like we think faith is just a hobby to graft in alongside our other pastimes that keep us from being bored while we’re here. We just can’t seem to fully let go of this vision of a life of perfection even when presented with the glaring fact that life here cannot be perfect. And until we fully surrender those desires, we won't know peace because we'll always be upset that something didn't go just right. Until we forfeit our need to understand, we will never understand that God has a purpose for everything, even the pain and suffering of life.

Until we let go of this world and our efforts and expectations to make it perfect, we simply won't be able to imagine the gift that awaits us at the finish line of life. Because part of us will still remain convinced that we can find some kind of reward or prize on this side of eternity.

Friends, my point is that our faith isn't about making this life easier. It's about helping us see that it's what comes next that we can trust to be perfect. This life in this world will never be all we want it to be, and as much as that may sting and make us angry at times, it only makes the promise we've been given all that more beautiful. After all, we couldn't comprehend the idea of a place without pain, fear, suffering, sadness if we didn't experience our fair share of all the above on the way home.

As much as we may loathe life sometimes, the difficult things we go through only serve to make Heaven that much better when we finally get there. God is a loving God, and we simply cannot continue allowing our momentary miseries to keep us doubting that. We are stuck in a very darkened world for the time being. And like it or not, that is our fault alone. The sin in which we revel has caused humanity's separation from God. And while many see that as freedom, we know it's only enslavement to self.

All of the hurting we see is our fault caused by our sins born out of our incessant desire to satisfy our selfishness. God is still the same loving God who sent Christ to save us. Christ is still the same loving Savior that died to set us free. But so often, we are still the ones who choose to remain enslaved to our own hopes and dreams centered upon the only life we've ever known in the only place we’ve ever called home.

Now, I'm not saying that you or I gave that little girl cancer. I'm not saying that we caused the homelessness that so many are facing. Not saying that we ourselves spurred on the drug crises that continue to ravage and ruin lives. But we are the ones who still seek to carve out some kind of perfect life in a very imperfect world. And that effort only leads to our doubting of faith, of Scripture, of prayer, of our Father when it just doesn't work out like we want.

And when we give into doubt, the sin that we’re fighting to keep at a distance quickly starts looking like the release we need to shake off some of the disappointment we’re unknowingly bringing on ourselves. And thus the vicious cycle of sin and shame continues onward.

If our faith, Scripture, prayer, Christ are only there to make these lives in this place easy and comfortable, then I'm afraid we're only limiting ourselves. If our goal in living a life of faith is to glean some kind of worldly reward, then we’re only planting roots in the wrong soil. If all we hope to gain from a life of faith is a life of ease or prosperity or happiness, then we're only restraining ourselves to a world that's passing away.

If all we need or want Jesus for is to make this temporal life a little more perfect, then I guess we simply don't trust in Heaven to be what He said it is.

Because if we truly believed in the glory and peace found in a home that we'll be in forever, then all this temporary stuff wouldn't matter so much. Not that we wouldn't still rather see people not having to endure illness or hardship, but because we know that they don't last forever. Not because we don't wish life weren't a bit calmer at times, but because we know that Heaven’s peace will make all this calamity fade the moment we’re home.

Be it the prosperity gospel or simply our anger over a child suffering, it's all centered on this idealistic idea that this life in this world can be perfect. And that lie only serves as a stumbling block to true faith when life inevitably goes sideways. When will we stop causing ourselves to trip over our ideals and simply set our sights on the hope hanging on the horizon of life in this place?

Our reward isn't here. It's not an easy life free from pain and filled with prosperity. Our prize isn't a worldly life loaded with worldly gain. Our reward is Christ, and He offers to lead us through the gates of Heaven where we will finally free ourselves of all the struggle and strife that define life in this world. But in order to ever reach that promise, we have to stop looking for it here. We have to surrender to the fact that life down here will suck sometimes, but that it will only help us appreciate what we've been offered all the more.

Life in this place isn't our chance at perfect peace. It's our chance to learn what perfect peace is so that we can enjoy it once we've finally found it at the next stop of our journey. Why are we seeking to settle for focusing on something that won't last when we've been given the Way that leads to something unending?

Would life be better if it weren't hard? Yeah. Would we enjoy more of the time we've been given in this life if it were perfect? Sure. But if this life in this place were perfect, then we might very well reach the end and be sorry to leave it behind. In truth, we should grow more excited with every passing day at our chance to leave this part behind and finally see what all of it is leading toward.

Please stop seeking to make faith conform to your hopes of a life you want to have. Stop asking God to compromise with your wishes for an easy and comfortable existence. If we ever hope to understand the true gravity of what our faith is and what it promises us, then we have to stop trying to confine it to a life that is ending. Because in the end, what comes next has always been what matters. And our time here is just to help us learn that.

Christ and our hope in Him are able to do far more than give us a short-lived life filled with the fulfillment of our every wish. He bridges the divide between a life of pain and misery and hardship and fear with a place where none of those exist anymore. We already know they exist here, so stop focusing here. Focus instead on getting ready for what's to come.

Because when we finally get there, all this will be immediately forgotten. Forever.

Faith doesn’t need to be made to fit our lives. Our lives need to be fitted to a faith that’s not confined to the very best we can hope for at the moment. Because if all we truly hope for is that the passing moments that make up this temporary life are as wonderful as can be, then we are the ones who are truly suffering. If all we want out of faith is comfort here and now, then we’re the ones in need of healing. If all our faith means is a way to help us escape the imperfections of life, then we are the ones who need prayer.

Friends, if our faith only brings us the hope of an easy life, then we are truly the ones to be pitied. Because we claim to believe in a promised home where no misery exists. And if we allow our worldly strife to make us doubt or forget that, then we’re the ones who lose. It’s not those who go through hard times that have it bad. It’s those who go through hard times and grow bitter and angry because of it that are the unfortunate ones. Because it shouldn’t be that way.

Life’s hardships can either push us closer to Jesus or pull us away from Him. And if our hope exists only in this place, they will pull us away from Him. And that my friends, is the saddest story ever written. Because we allowed ourselves to be beaten by that which He already overcame.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold