Day 3314 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

1 John 5:4 NIV

That victory over life’s plethora of pains is sought by all, but that such victory isn’t within our own ability is what’s so seldom seen.

No, we’ve come to lean entirely too headlong upon our own intelligence, invention, intuition for us to understand that such a grand gain as life itself cannot be the product of our person. And as much as we were not able to have begotten ourselves, nor is it within ourselves to secure such a victory as this idealized life lived without misery. But as we see spread across the sea of humanity as anymore defined by our inhumanity, we’ve no lack of expectation toward otherwise.

For it’s through blinded eyes that we insist to see this best life that’s nothing but a figment of our imagination’s blending within our meager perspective as limited by our preferences as if opinions are able to define life itself into the perfection of peace we pursue from within ourselves only deeper into ourselves.

Indeed, such is precisely why peace and its promise is so infrequently found among society anymore. We’re a people looking only ever deeper into ourselves assuming that such victories as popularity and prosperity and political malleability are well within our life’s expected accomplishments. But what we seem to fail to see is that when only personal gain is assumed as life’s meaning so meaningful that nothing else really matters, then all one can possibly gain is a life filled with worldly ideals.

Ideals entirely limited to the time, space and expanse of this place and our impermanence upon it.

And yet such is obviously so widely considered acceptable, expectable that nearly everyone has turned off the path paved toward a promised life of unending perfection in exchange for this chance to dance within the confines of this world, seeking then only what might be found in or offered by this world and its way. Thus we see an entire creation desecrating itself in search for something more that is simply not possible when personal limitations such as our ability, our understanding, even our time are so fleeting and prone to failure.

But folks all over the world fall all over themselves because of the selfish pride and the venomous vanity that such a stifled assumption provides. Because we’ve become a people insistent upon being our own source, our own success, our own solidity, our own salvation even. Such violent self-dilution as this delusion into which we’ve descended has designed inside this idea that we ourselves can always be whatever we may need.

Leaving us then leaning upon only us and all that we can either do or inevitably fail to prove or provide.

And all this leaves, or rather should leave, one to wonder why we settle for such obvious limitations as ourselves and our abilities. Because surely we still understand the things of which we’re incapable. Surely we realize that reality isn’t as moldable as our mannerisms and machinations tend to attempt at times. Surely we can see those many times in which our best was at best insignificant and at worst entirely unable. Surely we can allow ourselves to agree to those moments in which our dreams were dashed and our ideals proven idiotically small in comparison to the impossibilities we experienced instead.

Or perhaps such honesty is among the many other things lost, forgotten, left behind or otherwise forfeited from our present understanding and its vastly limited perspective.

It’s truly heartbreaking to think about the things we’ve lost or missed or misplaced and made ourselves to have never known, never seen, never been. That’s something I think about often, perhaps too much so. All the things God placed right in front of me that I missed while working away on making my way seem the ideal I assumed myself capable of finding or feeling or proving or providing. What all of my life as written to be lived within His will didn’t I live as I insisted life be something else in that moment, those moments, those many years in fact?

Things like that we convince ourselves to never consider as they invite inside this idea that we’ve done foolishly rather than faithfully. No, the foundation of our inadequacy in terms of righteousness as defined and demanded and entirely deserved by God above is that we’ve long sought the path of least resistance. Leaving faith an afterthought scattered among all the other why’s and what for’s asked of hindsight’s finally seeing clearly what we just couldn’t seem to see in the moment in which all of our mistakes have been made.

So many mistakes made making then that victory in which we hope seem always a close cousin to impossibility.

Yes, we live, be it acceptant of or rather reluctant to the idea of impossibility being far more within our wheelhouse than our vanity would otherwise like to acknowledge. For such honesty as our admitting that we’re far more incapable than we are capable, well, that’s just rather offensive to our better opinions of ourselves. No, we’d rather live life lost in this lie that says we can than to humble ourselves to actually seeking out surrender to the One who has actually proven He already has.

Because I guess the fact that He can do, did do all that we can’t defines His power as completely obliterating our attempts to pretend our own is actually what we insist it should be.

No, seems there can be no humility found among humanity as such would instantaneously render us as lost as we could never accept we’ve become out here within this life lost within sights and sounds stealing us to enslavement upon this ground that we just can’t seem to agree that we are in fact leaving within the near inevitability. Alas, such mortality as what’s always defined our time upon this ground is a consideration left unconsidered as it seems and sounds inconsiderable to those of us who consider ourselves always enough.

And thus faith remains found by scant few as it’s a call to lose ourselves to the very point of laying down these lives that we can’t admit we can’t really do anything with on our own, of our own anyway.

But what if we could come to terms with our temporality and inability? What if we could allow ourselves to see our mundanity and the immorality for which it’s settled? What if our hearts were alive just enough to beat themselves to the breaking point we’ve long avoided as the loss of self we knew and know it to be? What if we could actually seek to imagine beyond ourselves and the obvious weaknesses and wonderings which hinder us to remaining within what we can know or assume we understand?

Might we understand that life isn’t for us to make perfect, to make sensible, to make successful? Could we finally see that it’s never been on us to be our own anything? Indeed, perhaps we could finally come to terms with the severity of faith and the enormity of the gift that it is. And were we to ever see the gravity proven from within that fact that the grave couldn’t hold Him, well, who’s to say that we wouldn’t find that door He left ripped off the hinges so that we might hope in Heaven rather than seeking only to harvest hope here.

For that is the beauty of belief. It opens unto us things that our wildest imaginations are not wild enough to imagine. It invites us to wondering at what if our impossible is all but accomplished already within another? What if what we can’t do has already been done by someone else? What if the limits of life that we either acknowledge or refuse to agree to have actually been decimated by the simple beauty of faith? Indeed, what if faith is more tangible than life itself, just that it takes a strange humility to be courageous enough to see it, to feel it, to find it?

Yes, what if faith is easier to find than life seems to be, for life comes but a day at a time whereas faith, well, faith never leaves, never waits, never asks, never needs.

Indeed, faith scorns the known and insists of a life beyond the seen. Faith does not settle nor will it be settled as it refuses to accept the widely agreed upon limits of possibility as proven by what’s seen and thus assumed known. No, faith demands the impossible for the possible is far too simple and simply too safe to afford a life its meaning or purpose or potential. Yes, faith refuses to believe that our meaning, our purpose, our potential are permanently bound within our ability, our understanding, our confusion.

Because faith cannot be hindered by anything or anyone, not even ourselves and our ability to always be more confused than certain.

Furthermore, faith will not be halted by certainty even though such seems to us more than acceptable, plenty good enough for us to live an entire lifetime leaning upon such stagnancy as meager acceptability. In fact, while faith appreciates the acceptability of what we assume good, what fleeting little seems there to be found among mankind anymore, still it strains for the best as it can’t help but believe beyond this good enough that we’ve been culled into accepting as the pinnacle of personal ability.

No, faith refuses to lean upon personal capability such as our strength or understanding, as we can only provide our own feeble figments of both, for to do as such would thus hinder hope into a mere product a person’s inherent limitations.

And hope shall not be limited as Christ did not give His life for some stagnant or starving ideal such as our feeble abilities and our tendency to languish hope within them. No, He died that we might have life, everlasting to be exact, to the full if we’re to be precise, and that such unending life would seek to know the fullness of an unbridled and unbroken hope that insists we see what cannot yet be understood. Because His mercy is far too incredible, far too beautiful, entirely too enormous for us to simply settle for leaning upon ourselves rather than surrendering to the fullest potential of faith as proven by an empty tomb.

For it’s within that tomb that we find His having left us an invitation to share in His suffering in faithful expectation that such a surrender will accomplish for us a share of the resurrection into the new and everlasting life He’s promised unto the few which find faith worth more than life itself. Indeed, it’s within that empty tomb that we find such an invitation wherein we exchange our inherent limitations for a hope and a joy and a purpose and a passion that exist for something so far beyond this life rather than our continuing this settling for something lesser for mere the fact that such leaves us to the simplicity of leaning upon our shoulders, thus relying upon and limited by our sight, our strength, our sense, our self.

No, if for this life only we believe in Christ then we are truly of all people most to be pitied. For He does not speak of rebirth through resurrection into the hope of Heaven for the mere opportunity to hear Himself speak, as we so often do. Rather He promised us such a place prepared that we might find in Him reason enough to believe enough that we may be bold enough to live out our last remaining days down here in humble anticipation of our chance to share in the fullest measure of His suffering so that just beyond our breaking we find His promised eternal peace.

Because that is our victory.

It isn’t a life of ease or safety. It isn’t a time of popularity or the prosperity which might seem to afford it anymore. It’s not some best life that all of humanity assumes possible as probable only because it’s the product of each persons present preferences and abilities. No, victory, if it were to be found and enjoyed within this life, it would only then be a temporary joy as this life must end as that is the way of all mankind. Indeed, dust to dust is the line we walk within this world as our flesh and bone only bind us to a soil that cannot contain a soul.

And so one day we will be done down here and soon thereafter moving onward to whatever He determines the reward for our life. Will He find the faith that He’s able to proffer into the righteousness we’ve failed to prove or provide? Will He find in us any of Him that allows Him to recognize us as His? Will we have sought to know enough of Him that He’s not ashamed to admit that He knows us? Will our lives have been lived walking by faith as done only in the following of His footsteps we can only feel? Or will we rather rely more upon sight than sense and thus insist that we can’t see Him enough to follow Him?

Sadly the latter is such the settlement shared across mankind. That seeing is believing, leaving a billion to believe in only that which is seen. Shame, such is truly a shame as there can be no victory in something already achieved. There’s no glory in a gain already understood. There’s absolutely no profit, no point, no purpose or promise inside something proven. And yet such is all that most insist upon living for anymore. Prove it and then they’ll believe it.

But what victory can come if we only ever believe in that which is proven or provable?

No, such is the antithesis of faith. It’s merely disbelief masquerading as personal piety assuming that we’re to be catered to, living always to be served rather than to serve as if denying that our lives are to be lived as sacrifices. And such counter to His accomplishment cannot in any way be anything considered pleasing or appeasing or acceptable in His sight. For He came to give His life to the faith that it might find in us the faith to insist we find Him before the chance has gone.

For such faith is our victory and the only way in which we might come to overcome the trials and torments of a life lived within this place that refuses to embrace His grace.

Let us then seek that most victorious reward as promised upon the culmination of the narrow road which ceases at the smallest of gates before exploding into the limitlessness of His fullness found and felt forever. For the other path, the path of least resistance as proven for its demanding the least faith and hope and courage and surrender, such path finds its ease now, here within this ending. And I cannot think of a more heartbreaking choice than to seek our peace and promise and prize within a life that dies.

No friends, do not allow for a joy, a peace, a hope, a healing that is ending. Seek instead the faith that opened the tomb and turned death into a door unto life. For that is the victory of our faith as it is the victory achieved by He who is our only reason to have such a hope. Let us not do as most intend to and muddy His miracle by assuming it means as little as what we might see or assume we know.

Because the truth is that the seen and the known and even the assumed require no faith. And that which requires nothing of us is the same which can provide nothing to us. And knowing of Heaven’s hope, it just seems a sure sadness to expect instead so little as some fleeting fun or impermanent perfection as anything enjoyed within a life which ends spent within a world that’s passing away.

No, faith refuses the temporary, and so let us chase instead the unending knowing that since we can’t see the end of His goodness, then we’ve no reason to assume His goodness has an end.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold