Day 3264 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Colossians 1:28 NIV

A passion for this purpose.

Because it's a promise for all people. It's a hope for all mankind. It's a door swinging so violently into eternal peace that it's been ripped off the hinges. A peace so perfect that even a billion poets couldn't find the words to adequately portray. A gift given that we cannot go on without. A life waiting for our willing to want this ruined replica to wave good-bye.

And yet it's just that, the end of this. It's the altering of our adamancy, a shifting of our stories and how we tell them, it's a salvation so new that to tell of it feels almost as insufficient as to remain silent. Because in this world we’ve become convinced that it’s considered best to stay quiet should you have something to say which might offend. It's better to leave unsaid anything which may hurt.

Feelings valued over forever.

We're a people perfectly content with the content of this present portent. We're fine abiding inside the here and now, stuck assuming life is meant to end. How tragic of an outlook? How hollow must hope come for so many to believe it's better to not believe? Indeed, when did we accept this idea that it's our ideas which achieve for us the fullness of what's to be expected?

It's been that way forever, people planning perfections only for those preferences to prove problems. Tell me you've not seen this truth for yourself, in your life, in your dreams, of your plans. Has there ever been anything we've imagined that worked out as we imagined? Or rather have our ideals fumbled the ideas that we've spent so much time wasting away trying to make?

I fear that that's perhaps one of the biggest objections to this faith and the One in whom it's to be found. It's the surrender. It's the humility. It's the ability to look at our lives and all we've so poorly made of them and admit that yeah, our best is pretty bad. Our greatest intentions and following inventions haven't really turned out great enough to keep following.

And yet we do, because we're afraid. Of both the rain from which we run as well as the failure of whom we are, fear defines our jaunt through this journey called life. We're afraid to admit that our way has basically only sucked the life out of us and left for dead insistent that we can somehow turn the tides and find the times for which we've been working. We just can't seem to let go of all that's let us down, made us drown down here inside this rock bottom to which we're tied.

Because to admit a defeat of our own doing would be to agree that we've indeed made a complete mockery of life and our every breath given as a blessing from the One to whom we must now turn and return, the One whose image we've tarnished trying for our idea of treasure.

And it's crushing. It's worse than a rainy day, which everyone hates for some reason. I've always felt the rather lone weirdo in that regard. I personally love the rain, thoroughly ecstatic whenever it storms. The sheer audacity of the thunder to do He pleases, His power seen as it’s bolting across the skies without hindrance, the clean cool clearness pouring from the clouds that give us a reprieve from the beating and berating of the sun.

But to others, rain is merely an end to the parade. It's a halting of the happiness, some sort of unwelcome ceasefire to the plans we're still always so busy perfecting. Almost as if we still don't get it yet.

That life is bigger than our wants and wishes. That sometimes what we need contends a content spent violently against our wants and wishes. That perhaps spending ourselves always working away at wanting those wishes is nothing more than once more following the world so lost in its ways that it hates every day that doesn't come just right.

Yes, truth be told, we've no idea as to what's best for us, a fact proven within every selfish inclination we've invited that only showed up to this party we're planning with regret as its plus one. As Scripture asks, what benefit have we reaped at any given time from the things of which we're now ashamed? Does not our shame, our fear, our thus hesitancy to live at all shine forth a sorrow found only in our so far serving ourselves to a furthered failure to find anything worth finding?

And yet such is the life to which we're now called to die. To walk away from all that's left us lost in a way walking away from the Way that spoke the Truth which provides the life none of us can live without. Crosses taken up in response to His showing us how. Yes, a death to self, but even so, it's a begging to this beginning to something bigger than we could ever be alone.

So why do we insist upon this loneliness down here inside ourselves seeking something as if miners maintaining there's worth hidden somewhere within our as of yet unthought of ideas? Is that not truly all we're doing in continuing along under own our strength, ability, wisdom, or rather blinded assumption of such intellect?

Fact is that wisdom isn't a prize we can provide. Much like our lives were not given to ourselves, and thus they not being something we can perfect for ourselves, nor is wisdom a creation of our own making. We cannot be the ones to decide what wisdom should be. Why would we ever think such a foolishness? If we're all left to carve our own understanding, then what is morality? What is reason? What is right or wrong? What is truth?

What is life if we fallen are the ones meant to define it?

Where's the worth in that? As I sit here, I cannot think of a more meaningless existence than one encompassing only what I know I like without any of what I think I don't. Because I've blazed down that road before. I used to hate eating healthy, now I'm all about it. Used to never exercise, don't feel right if I don't nowadays. Used to weigh over 300 pounds, don't miss the 130+ that I've lost.

I used to hate having to write research papers as such is the agreement among all school-aged kids who just want to run around like animals outside after freed from the horrifying confines of the school day. And yet I've sat here every day and written a book report on the Bible for almost nine years!

My point is that we've no idea the depth of our lives until we admit that there's other ways to live them. That is wisdom. It's an understanding that we can't possibly know everything, as such inspires us to keep learning, keep trying, keep growing, keep going in a direction we have never been well aware that there's something new out there.

This world hates that. It hates the uncertainty. It hates the constant change invoked by and inspired within such inconvenient discontinuity. We want today a repeat of the prior simply because it was good enough that we managed to have reached today assuming we didn't really mess anything up all that bad because we're neither dead nor in jail.

What if there is more to success than merely surviving? What if there's more to us than we've learned to settle for craving? What if there's more to life than these endless lessons we don't feel like learning? What if there's more to faith than all this fun we hate to see ending? What if there's more to hope than assuming we know what we're doing?

What if there's more to forever than we could ever pretend we're able to be seeing?

We can't see what awaits. We can't imagine what He has planned. We can't even begin to compare our best ideas with His unaltered will. Why? Because He's been working His to perfection without the limits of time or space or experience or past mistakes inspiring a slight shift in direction. We've been having our ideas for what, 20, 30, 60 years? Cool. God's design was perfected before a single human ever took a breath.

Yep, He knew what He was doing before Adam and Eve proved that they didn't. And just trust me on this, just because we have computers and cars these days does not mean that we've advanced. We just have more stuff to keep us distracted from the fact that we haven't learned anything in regard to everything He already said matters.

And that's why we over here on the outskirts of society are still stuck screaming about salvation. Because it's something we all need in light of our having lived only idolizing our wants. It's a gift we cannot live without, despite this version of life we're convinced we're living. Because the truth is that without God at the heart, life isn't lived. No, without Him, we aren't.

That is why He is the One we proclaim. The Christ. Jesus of Nazareth. The One is was and is and is to come, and that's the part that is either going to prove a perfect peace or a permanent problem. He is coming back. He is set to return. The King of Heaven holds upon the horizon, patiently affording us a few more minutes to come to our senses before He comes back to finish what He already finished.

Yes, He's just giving us each the chance to finish with sin ourselves so that we might be found among the few eager for His return rather than hoping it's all made up.

It isn't.

No, the One who created us has seen every mistake we've created. And seeing our inability to be anything but buffoons, He came to inspire us to stop doing this our way. After securing our salvation with a cross lifted and a stone rolled, He gave us a chance to try it His way. And well, we messed up that opportunity too. And so He sent forth the Holy Spirit into every heart willing to offer Him a home so that we might have a constant guidance to lead us toward life out of this death we lived.

And He's coming back to judge what we've done with that gift.

What will He see? Will He find faith in this earth? Will He see a people on their knees rejoicing that their exile from Heaven is ending? Will He hear the voices of any shouting praise and peace in His promise for the world to hear? Will He come to speak to a people whose ears have already heard His voice? Or rather will He just return to find a people so in love with our own noise that we never noticed Him?

Fact is that I believe that our every action, every choice, every word will be weighed upon that day. And because of that and knowing what we've all done with all the above, I know that every single one of us will be found lacking. Fallen short. A little light in the faithfulness department. A whole host of reasons as to why we're eternally unworthy of His anything but His wrath.

And I don't want that because I've read through those stories of what His wrath can do. I've read the part about how that day that's nearing will be worse than what happened to Sodom and Gomorrah. I've read that it would be better for people to have a millstone draped from their nape and then be tossed into the sea. I've read about armies drowning, walls falling, giants being dropped like a sack of potatoes.

And I've read about this place where there will be only weeping and regret. A great sorrow and so many tear-stained eyes that physically ache for a drop of rain to cool the torment. But I've read that in that place, that rain won't come. That hope won't exist. That pain won't end. And I don't want that. I don't want that for anyone. And honestly, I don't understand why anyone would live in denial of this free gift we've been given to avoid such misery.

Because it costs nothing but what we already can't keep anyway.

But I guess that's the problem. Easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for someone who thinks they're rich to enter the kingdom of Heaven. Too much to lose it would seem here in this world filled with this idea that we need any of what's here.

And such is why He's the One that I will daily sit down and try to find words to explain. He's the One that I will strive to serve and still fail to understand. He's the One that I will proclaim and the same that I will disappoint. I will give whatever I've left to the hope of a life lived honorably knowing well that such isn't possible for me because of a past already known about.

But we do this not to try and show ourselves flawless or faithful, intelligent or worthy. No, those who know Christ know we're not any of all the above. But He is, and so that's why He is the One we proclaim. Because in Him we all have now the chance to grow in faith and find ourselves a step or two closer to the only chance we have to find peace instead of punishment.

Because at the end of all this, those are the only two outcomes. Heaven or hell. And while that sounds unfair to those who are living like hell doesn't exist, it sounds a perfect peace to those praying Heaven isn't off the table.

Friends, in this life we'll hear all sorts of ideas and offers and opportunities. We'll hear of all these awesome lives people are living and we'll sadly scroll through their highlights as we waste away staring a little pieces of manmade junk calling our names from inside our pockets. But the fact of the matter is that all of life comes down to whether or not we know Christ Jesus as our Lord and Savior. That's it.

Because we've been told that this life doesn't last forever, and we should know that having seen so many reach that end before we have. But knowing that that same end comes for all of us, what have we to lose living like there's a promise of something better still to come? What do we have to lose in letting go of all these perfect plans that we can perhaps enjoy for at best a few more decades? What do we have to lose in letting ourselves believe in a hope that doesn't end?

What will we lose if we refuse to hope at all?

Truth be told, the goal of this life isn't to win some competition as to who has the most stuff. It's not about names or titles, trophies or accomplishments. This life is about everything we do and whether or not it's done with Christ at the center. Because if He isn't the reason, then it only stands to reason that nor shall He be the outcome. But if we leave this world without Him leading the way, we will leave our best life behind.

But if we leave this life behind and live for more by following the Son of God, then we'll only leave the worst and finally step into the best we could have never come close to planning.

Choice is ours, but just understand that we few called freaks over here enjoying the rain and embracing the humility it brings aren't really as crazy as we might seem. We're just trying to point out how crazy it is to waste a life missing the mercy He's been pouring out for all of us all along.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold