Day 3294 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

John 15:20 NIV

In this life, in this place, in this way, I am last.

Because that’s right where I need to be. I’ve no business being out front pretending to lead anyone toward anything, not knowing all that I’ve found following my lead all these years. I’m not worthy of being listened to, learned from, applauded or even noticed. Because none can gain a thing should I worry about living inside such a way that insists I’m who this world needs. Nor can anyone profit from my pretending a prophet with some perfect parable as to the workings of life, some word not already said a million times before.

No, there is indeed nothing new under the sun, and so here inside this serving the Son, I’d be a fool to expect something new.

And yet we so clearly do. We walk this line as if it’s wide enough for the variance our preference might prefer. We pretend this path possibly painless, hopefully profitable, perhaps even at times popular and appreciated. And within all that we can see clearly what we don’t want to admit. We can see clearly the audacity still being designed by these desires lighting fires inside. We can see without question where at least some measure of our hope resides.

In us.

In our outcomes being somehow somewhat different than the One we’re claiming to follow. We seem to assume that inside this faith are found equalized replacements for the things we’re entirely hesitant to lose. We carry ourselves into this belief as if we believe that His freedom will find for us a better perfection to the life we still don’t mind living. A lane stayed with success and achievement so amazing that it’s applauded by the audience all around. We almost insist this path be paved with peace and prosperity, even have novel versions of the Gospel to prove as much.

But in such it seems we’ve most direly missed the most direct decree about this path laid out for you and me. It’s not going to be widely wider than the narrow upon which He trod. This journey shall not unfold with considerably less loss or cost than He came to cover, in the way in which He covered it. Our lives spent following this faith will not find for us the peace we prefer as fast as we’d like it found. In fact, as the world around unravels and dishevels, our portion of peace will be ground down into where it was always supposed to be found.

In Christ alone.

For He is our portion, is He not? And if He is, then His path is ours to follow, is it not? And if it’s His path upon which we’re welcomed to walk, then we might should expect a share of the same steps, should we not? And if we should, well, why don’t we? Why don’t ache for the things that bring breaking knowing the beauty of what He began as this world tried to break Him? Why don’t we appreciate the grating, the grinding, the ground all around falling from under us as if to ensure we understand both the size and severity of this narrow lane?

Indeed, why do we still seem to insist upon our finding of something to prove we’ve nothing to lose? Is not such still done only because we are who we’ve always been? A people asking for a sign. Show me and I’ll believe. What will be the sign that He shall come? Can we have an ETA pretty please? Or if not the particulars, how about a bit of peace or some time without problem or pain or persecution? Can we work that into this working? Can we barter, bargain, beg and beg and be given a little of what we want from the Father who knows what we need?

Why do we still contend so fiercely for wants when needs are so mercifully covered?

Is it not simply because of that same tired assumption spent assuming all He’s doing might happen to miss the misery in our story? That maybe He can work through us without the world hating us? That perhaps His path has some wiggle room to accommodate a couple wants or perhaps a few wishes? He does love us, doesn’t He? And if love is what we’ve come to insist, then doesn’t He want us comfortable?

No, He wants us changed.

And He knows that this kind of change demands we be challenged, because it’s only through challenge that we might be converted, because the truth is that we need that kind of intense conversion from the perversion proven in our assuming that His only concern is our wellbeing within this world we’re leaving. It isn’t. News flash. Breaking news. Extra, extra, please go grab a Bible and read all about it. Our comfort isn’t His biggest concern. Shocking, I know. His most prolific purpose isn’t our prosperity as proven in worldly profit. Mind-blowing, believe me!

As to why such reality seems still so crazy is only possible because we want otherwise. We don’t wish to see with our eyes the sights and sounds of a world chasing us down with venom in their eyes. We don’t want for the people in this place to be set ablaze with such a hate for anything we do, anything we say, everything we are. No, we don’t want His outcome as it’s the most perfect antithesis to our understanding of a sense of accomplishment.

But friends, we should have noticed by now that basically everything in God’s will is upside down from this upside down world. To give is to gain. First and last trade places along this path. Gifts are given that demand and deserve them then being given away. Who works to keep their life will lose it while those few who lose it are the few who find it. Indeed, in Christ we claim that life is found in death! So where is all this confused hesitation coming from?

If not from within wicked hearts still wandering through wanting something a little easier than the full measure of this faith?

Neither the when nor the why seems all that clear as to this idea that we’ve attached ourselves to telling us that faith is easy. Simple, yes. Easy? Nah. And yet because of that misunderstanding, miscommunication, misappropriation of our mission and its meaning, we seem stuck assuming that His path through this place is peaceful. It wasn’t, still isn’t, doesn’t need to be. And yet we want it to be, almost as if such is this necessity we need to keep us going into the fog of knowing well what He went through to get through the fog that’s found us so lost inside ourselves and these worthless wants we want more than life itself apparently.

No, there comes a time along this line wherein we have to decide what we’re doing this for. Who are we doing this for? What is the ultimate reward for which we’re following, finding, fighting to find a reason to keep following some days? Or is our faith of such substance that it brings us so little struggle and strife that we’re well able to go on living much the same old way of life with little to no concern about craving more than we’ve come to crave, come to become?

Just being blunt, such does seems the stunt. Seems we’re trying to mix our mess with His message, our ideas with His ideals, our ways with His will. And friends, if we truly think any of that is in any way possible in this path we’re bigger fools than anyone we know. Because there should be so little of us left after accepting what He’s done that we can barely remember what it’s like to want of this world, a fading memory not fading fast enough.

And yet instead how quickly we forget what our ego wishes not remembered. Like mistakes made, promises of pain, proven persecution and the cost of the cross. Don’t want to remember any of it because all of it has entirely too much to do with nearly all the aspects of life we don’t like. No, we want glory and gain, not loss and pain. We want peace and prosperity in every situation, circumstance and outcome.

In fact, we want only for every situation, circumstance and outcome to come out bringing only the brand of blessing we like.

None of that surrender or sacrifice stuff, no worldly profit in it. Feel free to skip the humility and hostility as neither afford us affluence. And don’t any dare mention any meaning or mission that might make of us a mockery or our life lived in contention against a culture of competition. No, we want to win. We want to accomplish. We want only to succeed. Most of all, we just don’t want to bleed. Don’t want to hurt. Don’t feel the need to find the way that led to the grave, maybe we can skip that part.

But no friends, there is no fast-forward in this faith. Just because we’ve come to accept Christ as our Lord and Savior doesn’t mean we’ll be suddenly saved from suffering. That’s just not how this road unwinds. That’s exactly what we’re told here. That as servants, we should by no means and in no way ever expect anything other than what was seen by our Leader. We should never assume that our stay here in this life we’re leaving behind in the form of dust daily shaken should be somehow easier or less trying than His time here.

In fact, we should inside this new mind find ourselves strangely wanting such a share of His suffering as such is exactly the proof, the sign we’ve always sought. We want sign of His being with us? What better than our lives unfolding like His? What better than hatred mixed with hardship poured to excess inside a suffering we don’t want to endure? What better than the audacity to ask for His will being done knowing well what His will did?

Indeed, if we do want the same outcome as resurrection into eternal life, we should be ecstatic at the hastened shedding of this temporal time of suffering at the hands of those who hate us.

Because the thing we’re missing as we sit still seeing through these eyes so blinded by preference and prize is that we can win and accomplish and succeed inside this faith in ways that are utterly and entirely non-reliant upon such a fallen and sullen society such as this among whom we walk and work. Indeed, upon that cross Christ offered unto us a chance to a change of perspective that purchases forever a passion that welcomes whatever might gain glory for His Name. He walks so patiently with us through pain and torment knowing well the feeling, but too the finding of both faith and forever such hardship brings.

We should know this as such is the genre of the Gospel in which we claim to believe! That even should a story be written demanding a demise, if such shows in other eyes a wanting for their share of something so powerful in which to hope then we’ve done something mighty. Indeed, that is in every way the very lesson learned by His sacrifice, that losing a life is a mighty victory for the many who might find life inside such a selfless sight.

And so in this faith, though pain and persecution will come, purpose and the power to make an impact for another felt forever come with them. That’s what we so often miss or fail to realize inside eyes still seeing success as merely a life lived with the means to avoid the suffering. We miss seeing that suffering offers us a chance to smile while it happens, obviously such a strange undertaking that it just might undermine the misunderstandings of those many still standing outside this faith. How much longer can we afford to miss those kinds of opportunities?

So you see my friends, not only should we not seek to be better than Christ in terms of outcome, hoping selfishly to avoid the suffering, but we should indeed glory in our sufferings as they show for all around a willingness to put our faith where our feet are as we boldly stride into the strife of life with a smile shining every step. Because no, we are not better than He nor should we dare therefore expect better experiences or outcomes within this life lived within a world so unchanged from the scenes in which we thought Him shamed.

No, He scorned that shame and so we shall too. Because He is our Head and thus His feet will lead us where we may not want to go but where His glory is best gained. Into the rain, into the pain. Whatever may come, it comes for His good. And if it’s for His good then it’s undeniably for our good too.

What we need to understand is this vast discrepancy between what we assume peace to be and the peace He promised to provide. He does not give as the world gives, some sort of peace in pieces as proven in times of happiness hustled away by hatred. Friends, He didn’t die for such an easy peace. In fact, that He chose, yes chose, to die upon the cross, a most demeaning and humiliating outcome, that He chose that end defines that His peace is a promise worth fighting for, worth fighting toward, worth fighting to by fighting through the hatred and hardship that demanded His demise.

Yes, He showed for all once for all that Heaven is worth going through a sort of suffering unable to be fully imagined. And that He wants Heaven so badly for me that He chose to suffer for me to find that hope demands I never again discount such a gift as often done in seeking peace along this passing path passing through this place.

No, we are not greater than He nor will our worldly outcome be. And so I shall not seek nor assume peace is either possible or promised in this life as His work proved most certainly otherwise. After all, He didn’t refer to our sharing in His sacrifice by accident. Suffering shall come. Hurting will happen. Hardship is promised. But friends, so too is peace perfected just past the end of this path. Let that hope be our goal, not some half that can’t last.

And indeed, since this life cannot last, nor shall the suffering felt within it. Hate lasts only to the horizon, and so let us live looking beyond the here toward where home really is. After all, that is where our treasure is stored and waiting is it not?

#LeaveNoSoulUntold