Day 3229 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Romans 5:21 NIV

He came to live a life here that He meant to die so that we might see that to die to the here is to find life once more, waiting where we’ve not yet been but now have the chance to be before long.

Because He did what He does best, flip the script by stealing the pen back from the sins we’ve sought to win in order that we might dare to lose what we’ll anyway leave behind soon. It’s His choice to inspire us toward the chance to make a change that literally changes everything. Everything. Death defeated so life might begin. Sin no longer sought as eyes open to see that to lose self is to gain all we could never be on our own.

Our cost covered so as to implore us to stop charging so defiantly into charging against our souls a weight we can’t bear, accomplished through His bearing what we began by ending what we’ve come to know as the end.

In Him, our end is now where life begins. And in Him still the more, what He began will never end. Our well-earned end compounds in an unending end that is death in sin. But in the life of limited time He lived, He allows us to live life in love found without such limit as time or space or any other boundary behind which we’ve settled, beyond which we’re now in Him welcome.

I don't know that we can ever fully know just how much God's given in Christ, at least on this side of forever. Because it is, He is everything we've never known. The entire antithesis to our existence. And simply put, something that radical as redemption won on our behalf, found on our part through repentance even before we found the death to self that allows for such sorrowful turn back toward where we've never been before, just takes a while for us to even begin to contemplate.

Thankfully, as shown in the reason for this season, our salvation isn't on us. It's not our part to figure it out. Not our job to cover the cost. Not even on us to pay back He who did so so fully upon the cross our sins were made to carry. No, the more I think about it the more I'm convinced that literally the only thing we have to offer, the only thing we can offer in response to such a righting is the humility which long lay dormant, nigh dead inside the wayward hearts likewise described the same.

See, we've been so blind to who we've become that we couldn't possibly see what all we won to the wrong that shouldn't have been done at all. So many mistakes so violently hideous that even our Father had hidden His face from us. Wouldn't see, wouldn't hear, shouldn't expect Him to. No, we shouldn't expect God to want to see our sacrificing ourselves to the many godless gains we've turned into gods we've served.

That's sin. It's making something else, someone else god in His place. Giving time to every hollow hope found here rather than the hope of Heaven which here cannot fit. It’s placing in our priorities a perusing of all that's punishable by perishing. If it would make for a misplaced preference, we've made such our main penchant. Wherever this road of life forked, we went left toward the loss rather right into the light of He who scattered the darkness that's all but come to define us.

Christmas is this celebration of gifts. It's an exchanging of displays of our attention, our intention to invite someone else to, for once, have a share of our time and attention. It's one of scant few seasons scattered throughout a year in which we lay aside our otherwise normal and take up the opportunity to put others first for a moment. And it's beautiful.

The gathering of families and friends all exchanging gifts, many but even mostly those unwrapped between the presents as memories made while simply allowing love to win for once. Sharing meals and milestones with those blessings most often taken for granted. Yes, Christmas is a time to slow and soak in all that usually flows right past our appreciation.

But where did this come from? Where did we find, stumble upon this idea to take a day and die to self? Because such isn't who we are. Giving isn't at all what we've sought to gain. Showing love should have been always the standard, but instead it's the vehicle of holidays, something shown especially, perhaps only in times of customary celebration as has become somewhat obligation, a reminder of just how far we’ve fallen.

No, we're not a people who put others first, who love without reason, who give simply to gain the chance to see a smile inside an often otherwise too dank world. So where did this come from?

Well, "Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows." James 1:17

Ah yes, it's a reminder that there's this immense remainder of righteous responsibility reserved within the One we ought to revere. It's a gift given from He who has no reason to further reward a fallen people failing in futility still. A show of sacrifice as such is so opposed to our pretense that it’s supposed to open eyes to see something that might allow a heart to melt a bit from the cold embrace offered the rest of the year.

John 3:16.

You'll see there inside what is arguably the most well-known and oft-quoted verses of Scripture that little bit again about eternal life. Because that's the gift that God meant for us to receive, and made Christ for us to revere in response. Eternal life. Everlasting existence. Unending opportunity to keep on breathing. Yes, it's what is altogether an impossible outcome of life here as we've come to know it, because this life holds for each a firm and fixed end which none can move, none can miss.

No, that reality is the well-earned response for our living in lack of reverence. It's God's just reward for our having given His blessings only a moment of fleeting appreciation, if that even. Death is our due for having always resolved to do what shouldn't have been done. Every misplaced priority, every wrong turn taken, every poor word chosen, every moment in which we could have, should have chosen the One who for some reason chose us.

All nailed to the place we should have ended had it not been for He who's a penchant for turning tables.

See, that's the ultimate beauty held inside Christmas and He who loaned the holiday share of His Name. Jesus came to this earth to turn all we've known, all we've been upside down so that we might dare to live again. Indeed, His entire plan was written what almost seems backwards. I saw someone share yesterday this line from a Christmas church service that I think really speaks to the undoing Jesus went through to do what He did.

"Many babies have become kings but only one King became a baby."

We think of many things when we think of Jesus. All the words written in red, the bread upon which we breathe as such was breathed just for us to have such benefit. All the steps He took and the stripes they led toward. All the pain He must have felt, even before the physical hurt began there near the end. All the sorrow He saw in seeing some, seeing many turn away from what they couldn't afford to reject. Indeed, He suffered through life before our arrogance insisted upon rushing Him to His end.

But see, tables turn! Because what He began at His end has become the end where we can finally begin. In fact, what ended as He hung in our shame is the same as what He started: Life. He ended the messed up mistake of it we’ve made for ourselves and offered in exchange the chance to change the old for His new. Only this new one is, can be, should be now lived without the sin that made our first attempt so worthy of destruction, decimation, damnation.

Yes, He came to leave so that we could follow suit.

Come to the cross, count old lives as loss and thus find the freedom to move, moving onward, moving upward, eyes fixed up above as there's now nothing more to see here outside of reasons which shine forth a darkness we know now to resist, fight against, flee from if need be.

Indeed, all that's left of life in this world, the lives we've known well the way of is our leaving behind all that came before we knew what He planned to do. Because simply, if seeing Him die isn't enough to inspire us to chase after the new life He did all that to give to us, I don't think lost is good enough.

No, if we can't find reason to follow Him into the tomb knowing that both our death stays behind as sin is washed away therein and thus too does new life, eternal life begin, we're simply nuts, a kind of crazy that shouldn't exist! And if that offends, well then I guess take offense. But know that sometimes we need to be offended as such just might open our eyes to help us stop losing our minds to the wrong side of every thought we've the rare chance to think.

Ultimately this gift, this season, this Christmas, next one if we're here all come down to a decision. Yeah, scary isn't it as we're the only ones who can make it! But it is our choice as to what is the cost we believe He paid or doubt He did. It's our part to pick what we agree to and what we flee from. It's our job to decide upon what His Word, His truth, His life, His way, His gift of Himself means to us and even more what we do beyond that moment of miraculous decision making.

Because death will still reign in this world, as such is the outcome waiting for this world. This world will pass away and so too everyone who lives in it. Just comes down then to the of it. Do we continue to live of the world? Shall we carry on carrying along with us what we're used to? Will our lives today look the same as those seen before we learned that He came? Do we remain, assuming forever doing is actually possible?

Or do we see His death as more than enough evidence that we probably need to die to some things too so that they no longer reserve the right to reserve our place inside a punishment He showed we cannot survive?

Seems simple, but both self and this satisfaction we’ve sought in sin make it hard. Because that's what we've known. We've known how to be slaves to ourselves. We've learned how to live life as if this life we're living is our only chance to breathe. We've come to know, and rather well in fact, this outlook that has us looking out for ourselves so fiercely that we find ourselves eventually looking for ways in which to get out of what we all know is coming.

But again, death waits for us all. And knowing this inevitability, do we live waiting for it or taking hold of the victory He won over it?

He gave us that very choice, that very chance, this exact opportunity. Death or life? Let go and live or don't and won't? It all comes down to who we serve, who we appreciate, what we adore and what we honestly believe to be in store. Because if we want eternal life, death can't be allowed to reign in our hearts anymore. Death must die to us, and we to the sin that deserves it if we’re to ever hope to have the kind of relationship this needs, we need in order to be found across the only bridge we couldn’t build, and thus couldn’t burn.

That's what He came to teach us, show us, give us. Life after death, so that we might agree to die to all that's keeping us dead so that we don't die again. A switching of reigns, our fallen for His faithful. Our ending for His only just getting started. Our futile for His forever. Our foolish for His forgiven. Our fatal for His infinite.

Friends, what have we to lose except the way of life we can’t keep? Again, death reigns here as we’re still inside this temporal part of the story. But is this where your story ends, or is the cross where it finally begins? Choice is ours, as He’s allowed. But seeing the cost, safe to see who we need.

The One who overcame the cross, no longer we who made such sacrifice necessary. Let Him take the lead, because that’s where we can finally learn to embrace the loss that helps us gain everything.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold