Day 3254 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Luke 10:41-42 NIV

Or indeed only one.

But unironically it’s that one that we so quickly seem miss. Always hustling into a hastened hurry, here we are heavy-laden inside this lie seeing ourselves as the host without having all that much to give outside of a busy preoccupation that misses the beauty set before us. Consumed with chores and achievements, how many missed moments, missed miracles have we raced by not having the time to notice the movements made by another?

I’ve so many more questions all of the sudden inside this aftermath of a week I never saw coming.

What if life isn’t a cohesion of monumental milestones meant to overshadow the mundane miracles left lost in the middle? What if our time actually isn’t best spent aching for astronomical achievements but instead rather making the most of those many more not always quite so headline worthy? Yes, what if we’ve lost sight of life itself assuming it’s made for something that grabs attention, a mistake made in our always thinking we need to be noticed rather than noticing that nothing we do is more important than His giving more than we need?

No, I’m unmovably convinced that life is meant to be lived inside millions of moments not made to miss.

And yet so much of our time is spent either so far ahead, so lagging behind, so distracted out to the side that we have no idea what's right in front of us. We don't recognize the severity of every second as we've already lived so many of them mistakenly that we don't realize as we do the same all over again with the next that just passed unnoticed, unappreciated, unfulfilled.

A life heartlessly hinging upon this assumption that we've plenty more moments to take for granted before we ever dare consider the gravity of not getting any back that we've already missed caring about far too late.

Far too late.

That’s suddenly come to define almost everything I can think of in regard to my life and this line I’ve walked so wearily and wasted as if drunken upon this damnable ego that’s designed for me this inevitable dance with a reality so warped that all I can consider is what all I’ve really messed up and thus far missed.

It's a measure considered only in hindsight as we've all uniquely and yet collectively fallen into this gut-wrenching decision to dilute the immediacy of life into a recollection of wonder and regret only once down the line of a life we've failed to live. We wait until we've made the mistakes we didn't care to know we were making before we consider what we could have done otherwise. What might we have done had we not become so insistent upon missing it?

Granted, whatever that 'it' is is perhaps different for everyone, but considering that the collective distractions for which we've all been deceived are all more alike than varied, maybe that 'it' is actually more similar for all of us than we might imagine. But whatever focus you feel you've sought to find or further or favorite in your life, in your faith, in your time so often divided between the two as if opposing forces meant to remain separated forever, odds are we're still not as devoted as we ought to be.

Maybe it's because life here is so frequently lived so fast that we just assume it's made to be hurried. Maybe we're supposed to stay so busy that our faults and failures become these rather expected outcomes achieving for us a measure of pity when upon that day when we've nothing to say for the moments we missed or made into mistakes. Maybe He won't mind if we miss so many miracles and mercies more than those we've already failed to see.

Scales engraved upon blinded eyes unwilling to want for purpose as it demands the patience to appreciate it.

I think that's one of the more grievous misunderstandings made mainstream among mankind. That both our purpose and life's meaning are these mysteries meant for us to seek and find as if God would make our reason for being something we can only ever begin to wonder as we assume it hidden behind a life given to wander from misplaced preference to mistaken opinion and back again.

And yet as such is so clearly the undertaking most often understood by most, it's become all too easy to just agree to those same blinders of social expectations and commonly shared opinions. We've all fallen for this idea that our lives aren't really even for us to live, that they're just our personal collection of days or weeks or years to do as everyone else does as we've been so clearly convinced that everyone else has it all already understood.

That our meaning might actually be the same as someone else's. That though we differ in both look and direction, maybe God meant for us to lose our individual design in exchange for a more corporate effort unto a singular concession. Yes, surely that's it! That God wanted us all to come together in order to encourage one another only to fall apart as we drift away from what should be far more narrowed a perspective than this able to be so easily shared.

I've spent my life so busy getting myself ready for something. Doesn't matter the list of those something's as that I now see that part was never the point. No, turns out that the point has always been what I've always missed on purpose thinking the purpose was promised in the point I thought I needed to make for myself, of myself. With myself? Not sure anymore down this line of so many mistakes suddenly coming to life all over again.

A life of endless outcomes all always coming out differently, but for a reason I think we just simply want to misunderstand.

We don't want to admit that we're often too busy to be alive. Don't want to realize that our lives are so filled with everything that leaves them empty. Can't bear the truth that we've lost it all inside these lies to which our eyes have compromised our focus that could have and thus should have been given instead to something worth seeing.

That most peaceful smile upon the face of a stranger.

The laugh of a child without a care in the world. The smell of fresh air blowing away the troubled breeze of a broken society's insistence upon our staying busy so that we look as if we're most readily able to prove we matter. The cool fog of a misty morning falling in front of us so as to obscure our anticipation of the plans we've been making for a perfect day which never comes.

What have we missed right in front of us? What did we fail to say to that opportunity that God gave us to step beyond our routine hurrying of life? What might we have heard had we had time to have a quick chat with someone carrying a heart so heavy that they needed someone just to listen more than they even needed their very next breath?

What blessing went unnoticed, unrealized, underappreciated because of our being locked inside a life only able to appreciate our schedule?

Mary chose what was better. She chose to set aside the normal expectations of a society, who now as then, assumed hospitality best accomplished via clean floors and a neatly organized dinner service? Yes, she chose instead of getting the laundry out of Jesus' way and double checking the evening's meal to rather sit and listen. To look upon the face of someone so very different that He was, and yes, still is, so entirely worth doing then something different that not making that change was not even considered.

She chose to put Jesus into focus, her only focus at least for a moment. What if we could accomplish that feat for a second or two ourselves? What if we might make Him our lone priority for a day even? Indeed, what might our lives be like now that they could have never been before, back when busy was our reason for being? What might be different if we weren't always so busy being whatever we've bought the necessity to be?

See, this world tells us that life is this collection of time that's running out and that as such we need to hurry up and get as much done as we can so that we don't leave anything unfinished before our road runs out. That our plans and the dreams which made them seem too important to miss have left us only too able to miss everything we haven't planned, everything we couldn't even begin to dream.

Yes, we're made to believe that to believe is to waste time that we could use actually busy doing something that accomplishes something tangible. As if the seen is truly all that's able to be possible, a list of chores completed then better than a single hope which has us still in pursuit of impossibility.

These recent years have brought some amazing opportunities to realize some remarkable changes that I'd always hoped to experience. But yet as I sit here reflecting on the distractions and newfound frustrations those changes made idols have become and begun, I see now just how quickly we invite distraction into an otherwise already too divided life.

Always trying to get done what we think we need to do in order to impress, to appease, to please whomever we seem to actually think is still at all interested in anything we do. A life lived so busy being normal that everything outside that box of our understanding remains standing unseen by these eyes so blinded by a misplaced belief that's convinced us we're here to be normal.

What is normal anymore? Like I said yesterday or the day before, anyone who believes that a 9-5 and a 30-year mortgage is truly a reasonable goal for this life we've been given has no right to tell me what matters most, let alone what I should be doing according to their opinion of such. That's not at all to say that those things are bad or worthless, no, just that we've all so sadly set our sights upon assuming our worth through our own accomplishments that we risk never seeing what He's already finished for us to simply enjoy.

To judge anyone for appreciating the opportunity of an employment which provides for their family is indeed foolish and a most disagreeable stance. But to say that said job or the house for which most of those earnings are given to afford is of an equal importance to Christ and His calling us toward a home we can’t afford to miss is the error against which I’m speaking.

Because it’s that worldly devotion that’s left this whole world living as if peace is such this impossible perfection that it's rarely worth even considering let alone actively pursuing. But friends, I'm finding every day a new reason and a renewed need to speak to the fact that peace is simply beyond simple to find. Because He found us. See that? Peace found us, came to us, brought life to this death we still consider a way of living, earning a living as if life can somehow be earned or rebought once spent.

If we continue to find more unrest than reason in life, for life, then we've only so clearly missed the Way that is the Life as His truth is still not in us. Because that truth tells us that we're not here to be normal, to please people, to impress those we're usually impelled to idolize. No, we are not here to be or become so busy that we miss every moment that isn't of our making.

We're here to lose everything that didn't come from or doesn't lead to the Prince of that peace we've been told isn't worth trying for anymore. All because the rest of the world is trying so hard to look so good to so many that they've lost so much of themselves to their work given to everything worthless that they just stay busy so that they don't have to sit with what they've become because of what they've done.

Which is something we've all done. We've wasted our years trying to spruce ourselves up a bit before inviting Jesus in, knowing He has no reason to like what He sees here inside this cluttered unto corrupted soul filled with the stains of everything that purchased His suffering. We're avoided church as if we'd burst into the flames we deserve should we step our soiled souls into those solemn seats. We leave our worship a whisper so that our tone-deaf attempt doesn’t hurt the ears of He who we considered cursed upon that cross.

Personally, I've developed this weird habit of rehearsing my prayers before I pray so that they sound right and I remember everything, as if He doesn't hear my getting ready.

Friends, that we've missed a life is not up for debate. What is though is how much more we let slip through our fingers. How many more days will we exist in the peripheral vision that's become our way of looking at life rather than the straight-on toward the right in front? How many more miracles will we miss while we work away, waste away wanting to make our own so we've something to show for the time we didn't give to letting Him be the Savior?

This past week has shown me just how much I've missed in all these years spent getting ready. Because there is no getting ready for life. We cannot prepare for this journey we were never asked to plan. No, we can't predict or forecast the meaning of any moment, but we can slow down and focus in on making the most of every moment we haven't yet missed. We can set down our worthless little efforts given to things of this world's expectations and make priority far more simple.

Because the truth is that if we have more than one priority, more than one focus, more than one purpose, we've missed the point altogether. And if we so foolishly agree to continue spending our last remaining days assuming we're getting ready for what we can't possibly know, then it just shows we know nothing as if we did we'd give nothing to anything that isn't focused entirely on Christ and His will for us.

He didn't, doesn't call us to find a job but to embrace His calling. To be ready to open the door once He starts knocking. But how can we do that when we're locked in the other room with all the noise of all these divided devotions creating in us a commotion that prevents us from hearing anything but the coming of a work whistle signaling our need to hurry up and finish what we started on our own without worrying about His always being right in front of us?

Friends, He's always been right in front of us, and so thus life has too always been right before us. Maybe we should start to worry a little more about living the life that's right in front us instead of cleaning up either that which is already behind or assuming we're able to prepare for what isn't yet here.

Because He is here. He is now. He is waiting. So for what, toward what, toward whom are we still working? See, it’s not the working that creates the problem, but rather what or who we’re working for that opens the door to missing the most of every moment. Because if the only answer as to who and what we’re working for isn't obviously Christ, then we're just still obviously lost.

Mary saw something new in Jesus, something so foreign to the normal that it demanded an abnormal focus. And it wasn’t taken from her. The peace she saw, the hope she found, the purpose she witnesses was never lost upon her, removed from her. No, she saw what mattered most in hearing the Messiah.

If we want to stay busy in the other room cleaning up what He’s not even talking about, that’s our choice. But if we choose to lose the hassle of a hurried life spent too busy to believe in something better, that peace we’ll see will never be taken away. Ever.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold