Day 2988 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Isaiah 53:3 NIV

It's amazing all the things you can't understand when you think you know it all.

This fact is proven rather perfectly in the ironic realization that the One we’ve thought unworthy of our attention or acknowledgement is the very same One to whom we now turn whenever we feel unworthy, unloved, forgotten, alone, afraid, uncertain and ashamed. The Christ that we’ve ignored is the Savior we cry out to help save us from all we’ve been. And because He knows both who we’ve been and who we can be, and because His love won’t do to us as we’ve done to Him, He offers to lead us to the better we’d never find within the assumption that we were good enough already.

Because, if we’re to be honest, our good enough would have found us wrapped within the crowd gathered at the foot of the cross thinking it was just some random guy hanging up there.

Sadly, our minds seem to have this rapid shut-off switch hidden somewhere deep inside. It's this assumption to which we resort whenever we feel the need to continue learning or listening no longer needed. As soon as we think we've enough information to make a decision, we make it. No need in wasting any more time, right? Just go ahead and get on with it because we've got other things to do than ensure we're not doing something wrong or making yet another mistake.

And sadly, I think that's maybe one of our biggest problems. We tend to sort of just gloss over the mistakes made in our rush to the finish. All of this living by trying to jump ahead to the conclusions has in fact led to a wide array of really foolish errors. But likely, or rather obviously, due to our ego and vanity, we choose to not really give those errors the time they should have. We just chalk it up as a simple mistake and move on ahead.

But one of the best things about making mistakes is that they provide us the opportunity to learn. Now I know, if learning isn’t in the same ballpark as truth, well, it's at least in the parking lot. As much as the truth is hated anymore, it seems that learning is a sad victim of that outlook. Folks don't seem to be all that interested or invested in learning anymore. Guess that's because in order to learn something you must acknowledge truth and fact and reality, and well, most have seemingly agreed that those just hurt and hinder too much.

So society continues opting for the option to forgo the opportunities offered to learn from our past mistakes and transgressions and other rampant foolishness. And we wonder things aren't seeming to improve. Interesting predicament there! Could it simply be that we're still holding a bit too tightly to that theory that we're more right more often than not? If so, I'm almost positive that means that our folly knows no limit.

Because there have been a great many times in life in which we were just certain we had things figured. That's one of our better abilities, this egotistical outlook upon life wherein we're fully capable of understanding everything and never missing the mark. But of those countless times in which we were certain we were right, think it's safe to say that the lessons learned the hard way thereafter showed us otherwise.

Or at least they should have.

I reckon that's why they say hindsight is 20/20. Just takes us a while to see the full picture, and sadly, due to our arrogance, we usually jump to the conclusion that we see enough to make a good postulation. But in all honesty, we're usually only willing to carry on our postulating until we come up with something that makes enough sense to seem right, and then we just speed off to the next quandary hoping we were right, and not interested in realizing if we weren't.

Maybe it's because my outlook is largely geared towards the truths and realities taught by our faith, but I think the life and lesson of Christ is arguably the best example of this sad human condition we all seem to share.

Throughout His time walking amongst us, He did things, said things, taught things that carried with them such clear power and authority that His legitimacy should have been perfectly evident. The miracles, the healings, the parables that hit home in a way that even clear truth may often fail to do all pointed to the fact that here is this Man who just has something different.

But still they missed it. Even with all the obviousness about Him, they missed it. The water turning to wine, the lame carrying their belongings off into a new life spent upright, the deaf and mute conversing, the dead waking up and walking out for all to see. And still they missed it, overlooked it, denied it, simply clung to the assumption that He was something other than what He Himself said He was.

And sadly, even all these years and all the advancements later, still we miss it. And I guess you could say that we have more of a right to be wrong in regard to Jesus as He's not literally, physically walking beside us. He isn't sitting in our churches giving His lessons. He isn't strolling about from town-to-town healing folks or turning tables or anything like that. So since He's not here to be seen, well, that affords us a bit more leniency in maybe being wrong, right?

Guess you could see it that way, though I'm kind of confused as to what's to be gained from it. In reality, our lack of faith is still an obvious excess of doubt. Doesn't really matter if we can see Him or hear Him, and holding to those as reasons in which to why we're not quite sure who He is or what He is is only our arrogance showing. It's nothing but this ongoing refusal to believe. Simply because we've jumped to the conclusion that seeing is believing.

What is it that we gain from continuing to reject and refuse? What do we benefit from failing to hope in something unseen or currently unknown? What kind of life is it to assume that the only things possible are the things upon which a majority of society agrees are plausible? Do we really want to live our lives constantly hindered by the demand for indisputable proof? Can't we see the sadness in that?

Yesterday we talked about all that Christ is to us, for us and how desperately we need it. We discussed the help and guidance and wisdom being offered in order to help us face this life of insanity. But sadly so many still miss it. They allow their assumptions to assume their loneliness. They refuse to believe that there could be a Savior, a healer, a guide for this incredibly difficult journey. And so they're left with this sad existence faced all alone because they just can't see it any other way.

I think all of us in one way or another fail to fully understand just how fully human Christ is. He is both God and Man. He is every part immortal and still clothed Himself with mortality in order to help and reach those of us stuck and confined to a certain amount of time. He became like us that we could understand Him better. And should we fail that, forget that, miss that, well, we've only ourselves to blame because He made it perfectly clear.

As we talked about yesterday, He has literally walked through the hardships and hassles of this life we know. He's felt the pains and perplexities of life as we ourselves know it. He's been where we're going, seen what lies ahead, carried the full weight of it all, all so that we could have a solid Rock upon which to lean when that full weight of life was crushing down upon us.

He truly was a Man of suffering, of misery, of torment. His life, the little time spent here, was filled with hardship and challenge and sadness over the state of things and just how far they've unwound. He was rejected, ridiculed, mocked, denied. All because society then, just as society still now, assumed that He couldn't be what He so clearly was. Simply because it takes too much faith to believe in something that seems impossible.

Especially when our hearts have been hindered by the need for proof, for evidence, for something verifiable in which to trust before we agree to trust.

For a long time now people have assumed Christ to be nothing more than maybe a prophet at best, a really good teacher with some decent ideas, a priest who had a bit of something about Him. But that's about as far as humanity has been willing to go down the road of faith. Any further is just too risky for a people clinging to these theories that have them convinced that seeing is believing and they've already seen enough to know enough to get by.

I think one of the most amazing parts of all this Gospel is that He knew. He knew how folks would respond. He knew the doubt was so deeply engrained in so many that even the most obvious display of divine power wouldn't be enough for them. He knew that most would find some way to deny Him and reject Him, and that denial and rejection and the hatred held within so many hardened hearts would eventually lead to His painful exit.

And He did it all anyway.

There's a truly profound lesson in that kind of humility. Knowing that hatred and rejection and denial and a seemingly failed attempt to help a people entirely lost didn't stop Him from doing it all anyway for those who had and would have the courage to look beyond what their eyes could see.

So often our assumptions only consider one side of something. In regard to the Gospel, much of society assumes that the cross speaks only the punishment of sin. And as a terrifyingly sinful people, that perspective clashes so painfully with our delusions that it must be refused. They think God only a God of pain and punishment and judgement and hatred, because they see the message of the cross as the reality they don't want to admit.

But if folks could just try to see past the pain He endured, they could see the reason He chose it. It wasn't just to testify against a fallen world, but to try and help that fallen world see that they could rise once more and try again to do better and be better. It wasn't just to clear away the sins we often don't want to rid ourselves of, but to show us the reason we need to tear them out of our lives so that they don't continue breeding death inside.

Yet, we miss it. We stubbornly focus on the one side we've chosen to look at and refuse to consider the bigger picture. And as a result, we're still a culture falling apart simply because we refuse to acknowledge the fact that we can't hold it together. Our arrogance and our vanity and our pride and the stupid assumptions chosen in the wake of all the above will be the death of so many.

And it's so unnecessary.

But still our world esteems Him not. He's not possible. He's not logical. He's not been scientifically proven and for all we know any proof of His life or death or resurrection is circumstantial at best. And for a world that demands seeing before believing, believing is therefore impossible. And sadly, without faith our death remains ours to bear. Simply because our foolishness won't let Him bear it on our behalf as He so clearly chose to do.

We still think we know it all, and that asinine assumption will go on preventing growth and knowledge and wisdom and even eternal life. Because we can't learn what we need to learn when we think we already know all we need to know.

Friends, the proof is there if only you have the willingness to see it. It lives inside each of us. It lives inside so many stories of new lives found out of impossible circumstances. It lives inside every testimony of every heart that's no longer hard as rock. It lives inside the fact that we can somehow still manage to find hope in a world so clearly hopeless. It's there, He's there. He's just beyond the range of our sight as that's where faith truly begins.

If only the world could realize what they're missing and how little effort is required to receive it, nobody would be so willing to walk away from the gift we've been given. Sure, we can't see it yet, but if we just have the guts to believe then we can feel it. And I don't care what anyone else says, seeing even has its limits. But when you feel your heart beat a little differently than ever before, you don't need to see anything else in order to believe.

Christ came to this earth and left us with all the reason we need to finally hold Him high in our hearts, to give Him the honor He deserves and the esteem He literally earned. We just need to find a reason to believe that doesn't rely on all the foolishness and arrogance we've always demanded be appeased before we're willing to try.

Please don't miss out on who He is and what He's offered simply because others can't see it. Open your hearts wider than your eyes and I promise you'll see just how real He really is.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold