Day 3347 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Isaiah 55:6 NIV

Seems anymore that I see so many questions that I’ve insisted go unanswered all these years, leaving me just now wondering if I’ve perhaps missed the gravity of this opportunity.

Did I find the heaviness of hope too late for sake of my fear of proving unable to shoulder the load of the sort of surrender deserved of this faith? Did I happen to ignore the many open doors that God had wanted me to walk through as I was running instead toward all the things that I knew I couldn’t miss? Did I focus on all that’s left me faithless and foolish, favoring my ability’s need for ease over my soul screaming that’s been starving for life, for hope, for meaning that might mean something more than I’ve made my life seem to mean?

Did I find the heaviness of hope too late for that hope to take root and grow into the childlike belief that’s meant to build a bridge that I cross only to burn so that I don’t return to a wasted life I’ve always loved?

For that is indeed the trek I take most days. Returning to the rebellions and revolutions that I’ve always resolved to revolve around. Each and every day finds me finding only reasons to muddy His clarity, to confuse His calling, to mistake my life’s mess for this misunderstanding that has me thinking that a life’s meaning is that it’s meant to be this way. That life is supposed to be confused and chaotic, a collapsing chorus of considerations and communities all vying against each other for the little attention I’ve left to give without question.

Why is it that we do seem to so often fail in regard to asking whether or not what we’re looking at, listening to, chasing after is worth the time and effort given at such the expense of things like peace and purpose? Why have we, how have we managed to equate peace and purpose with the likes of profit and popularity? When did we agree that peace is the prize of the powerful or that our purpose is proven in public applause?

It seems that for me personally such a line was crossed well before I ever knew to look for it. Just a kid thrust into the company of other kids all exposed at once to this structured life spent always learning, just not at all learning the gravity of naivety. For this world does indeed instruct us all in a great many things, but the things we see and hear and learn to be become for us part of our identity. And as for me, well, it seems I’m finding too late that not all lessons are things we should learn.

Not everyone who calls themselves our friend is truly there for friendship’s sake. Not every headline tries to tell the whole story. Not every celebrity stops performing when the lights and cameras turn down. Not every song we sing is sung in the same mindset as those who wrote it from perspectives we’ve never known. Not every idea we hear is one we should share. Not every belief is truly believed by those who claim themselves believers. Not every word is worth the air used to speak it. Not every sorry comes from a heart truly repentant.

Not every moment is meant to be made for us. No, turns out that all this time perhaps we should have had a little more skin in this game than we’ve wanted to risk.

Because the sheer reality of a relationship is that one cannot walk both lanes of a two-way street at once. And yet that, at times, seems exactly what we both ask and so selfishly assume God can do, will do, has done. That He’s both carried our cross as well as erased the one we don’t want to see sitting beside us still today. That He’s purchased our forgiveness but too that He can prevent our failures going forward. That He spoke the truth into our hearts but that He’s supposed to be the one who agrees to allow them to change.

Yes, Christ is indeed our everything as He’s the One who encompasses both the life we’ve yet to live as well as bringing that hope through dying the death we’re still living. And yet it sometimes seems still that we take His accomplishment as evidence of our needing to offer nothing, do nothing, change nothing, become nothing, or rather just stay nothing in return. That He’s already met us where we are and so He knows where to find us should He need us to do something, say something, change something.

But far be it from us to take a step toward Him, for we know where His footprints lead.

And perhaps that’s why I’ve missed it all these years. Afraid of letting go what I thought I needed to hold. Scared of the sort of surrender He showed. Yes, terrified of the trials and turmoil of a life given away in this world where life is supposed to be gained and glorified. It’s truly remarkable in the most heartbreaking way possible just how many misunderstandings you can make room for when you’ve never wanted to learn the gravity of going it alone in a direction you don’t want to understand.

Because you see, that’s precisely what this faith is. It’s something we’ve never known, a sort of life we’ve never imagined, a truth that’s entirely offensive to every lie we’ve come to live and live for. It’s a reliance utterly outside of ourselves, needing this sort of jailbreak from this institutionalized understanding that we’ve come to waste within. And yet the difficultly defining this tragedy of our not trying toward Him is that we think freedom already found inside these cages we’ve become.

For we awake every day to do as we please, paving more perfectly the paths that purchase proof of life for this forsaken pride that simply won’t die.

But it’s a strange thing to feel still the rain fall from within the parties and picnics we’ve come to assume life is supposed to be. It’s like there always this reminder that maybe we’re wrong, but again, pride won’t have that and so we miss that. Insist we miss it, perhaps ever joyously so. Why? Easy. It’s safe and comfy here inside eyes blind to hope because of our having learned to disbelieve in it being possibly beyond everything we hope to find or feel or fix for ourselves in these lives we insist our own.

They’re not. And honestly that’s something we should have all realized by now. I mean we wake up anymore only to be hurriedly thrust once more into this deepening depth of noise and nonsense, such a violent tempest of trial and turmoil, lust and lies invading our eyes demanding we broaden our concerns to encompass all the misplaced devotions of a world devoid of reverence for God. We’ve come to either notice or rather ignore due to desensitization the dire dilemma we’ve designed inside these eyes denying our only chance at life.

And this reality, it’s become like this weight upon my shoulders sinking swiftly and solemnly into my heart that just keeps saying it doesn’t need to be this widespread and wrong, so wicked and wandering as into each day defining, demanding some new attention we don’t have left be given to something that doesn’t deserve it. No, it just seems to me that when He said that narrow is the way, and too that He is the Way, well then where’s all this confusion coming from?

Narrow.

How can we narrow this as narrow as Christ said it should be, as narrow as He said that it is? How can we turn off the noise we’ve tuned into, turned into? How can we escape this place when this place is in us so deeply simply because this place is given our attention, our devotion? How can we break devotion? Can we break devotion? Can we maybe just exchange devotion? Can He really break down walls, because it seems like we’ve all built a whole lot of them.

Yes, we’ve built castles meant to make ourselves feel as if kings, but instead these walls of the wrong focuses have formed for us prison cells which prevent our caring about this chance we have in exchange for the chance we won’t have to change from this life we’ve come to lose in live with worrying only about watching all the world live for us so that we needn’t accept the burden of being wrong.

I think that’s the realization that I seem to have missed all these years. That I’m wrong to have focused on so many things that never mattered only to keep missing the simplicity of what always has. That I’ve given my life to having things not realizing that they things started to have me. That I’ve worried so much about getting it all right that I’ve managed to get most it wrong. That I thought righteousness was something I could be or become by myself.

That hope was sitting on shelf somewhere, just waiting for me to notice it and take interest in its simplicity.

How I still manage to miss that hope somedays when I write these every day, I honestly don’t know. I guess maybe this journey is one that’s a little slower and far more measured than I imagined. Maybe I’m still rather insistent upon stumbling, fumbling along this path I can’t follow well enough. Maybe I’m not moving at all, just somehow maniacally convincing myself that I am, that I have.

But what do I have? What am I? Where am I? Who am I? Is who I am, where I am with what I have really what life is meant to be? Should it be this confusing? Why do I keep it so confusing if not to help ignore the time I’m losing to take advantage of this chance that isn’t coming again?

Because that’s just it!

Christ is coming again, but this chance at salvation isn’t. For when those clouds part, it’s done. Time’s up. Clock stopped. And yet we live like His return isn’t scheduled for years, decades, centuries perhaps. We live like we’ve all the time in the world to wait to figure out what matters and what we want to do with that understanding. But friends, that’s the problem! We have only all the time in this world, and once our time in this world is over, our chance at this chance is over with it.

Yet we’ve come to assume that this life is somewhat a season meant for experimenting. Try it all! Taste whatever sounds good, looks good, feels good. If it makes sense or seems right, give it a shot! Who knows? Who cares? Have fun. Live it up. Do as you please and ask permission after. Make mistakes and seek forgiveness later.

When is later though? Is later tomorrow? Next week? Sometime this summer? When is later?

See, we’re so used to such subjectivity that we’ve come to assume for ourselves both the right and thus the apparently ability to determine for ourselves basically everything in life. It’s like we believe only that we can insist tomorrow into existence so that we can live today planning for the mistakes we’ll feel bad about in the morning. That we can spend one more today wasting inside wanting and wishing, and then just try and wash it off tonight. That we can dissolve into puddles of selfishness assuming that we’ve plenty of time to plan for pleasure, pretending that that’s all that matters.

How long can it matter?

Because the fact is that we’re running out of time. None of us know how many tomorrows we have left to assume. We can’t possibly understand just how razor thin this life really is, nor just how close we are to that edge we so often pretend isn’t there. But why do we pretend that edge doesn’t exist if not for the fear it inspires inside at the realization that we’re both running out of time, but also running the wrong direction?

You see, we like to assume that God’s grace will always be there, just waiting for us to care about it, to consider it, to roll around in our lazy minds the potential necessity of it. We’ve become so sterilized to life’s severity that we can’t see anymore just how fleeting life is, nor therefore just how slim the door that’s closing to things such as the hope and peace and purpose we’ve always yet to find down here inside ourselves

No, we have so little idea just how much time we don’t have to consider the things we don’t want to admit.

Like our sins, our struggles, our failures and the foolishness with which we keep finding them. Nor do we want to consider the existence of a God who has seen all those mistakes we’ve tried and failed to forget. It’s all the very epitome of humiliating. But perhaps from a slightly different angle, maybe it’s all just the beginning of humility. And as we’ve talked about, maybe humility is the necessary precursor to wisdom. And maybe since we need humility to seek wisdom, maybe wisdom isn’t really reliant upon our understanding it.

And maybe if we don’t have to lean upon our own understanding, well maybe we begin to learn how to trust in God with more of our heart as we pull it away from this rock bottom we’ve sewn it to. And if we can yank ourselves away from this wreck we’ve made of ourselves, maybe then we can start finding the courage to submit some of our ways to God and see what He can do with them, knowing well what we’ve done to them. And if we do taste and see that He is good, that He is kind, that His will is really for our betterment, maybe we can begin to trust in Him with even more of our heart.

And maybe then a relationship will start to bloom where things such as religion and irresponsibility have always grown into this tangled mess we’re still struggling to understand our way out of. Indeed, maybe we can learn that while He is there to help unravel all this confusion we’ve become, truth is that we need to fight our way out too. Not in order to earn salvation, but just because we want to prove we’ve come to admit we need it more than we’ve ever considered before.

And maybe all of this will take some time, and hopefully we have enough to start down that road. But that’s my point for today, we have to start. We have to get up, get going, get moving because that hope on the horizon doesn’t get closer if we don’t race for it.

Yes, Christ came to save us, this much is true and entirely foundational to this faith. But friends, if we don’t seek to know more of Him, to grow more in Him, chances are we won’t. Is that the kind of chance we’re willing to take? Because it is a chance we’ve all taken more than enough already. How much more time are we willing to wager on our not messing up, making mistakes, needing help?

I know I’ve lost more time than I ever wanted to, simply because I didn’t want to realize how little of it we really have to begin with. This life seems long, and so our mistakes and our enjoyments and our hesitancies to change either seem pretty insignificant. But Scripture says that one day they will prove far from insignificant. And knowing how much I struggle today because of mistakes I’ve made and the fear I’ve had to let go of the way of life that I enjoyed while making them, I just can’t keep agreeing to that anymore.

Something has to give or nothing will ever change. And if nothing ever changes, well then tomorrow I’ll still be confused as to why He seems so far away some days. And I can’t take that anymore. No, I don’t want to miss this chance, even if what it asks for is everything I’m afraid of. The letting go, the moving on, the admitting and confessing and repenting, it’s all hard. But friends, maybe it’s time to do what’s hard so that we don’t keep missing what’s worth it.

Because He wouldn’t still be there reaching out for us if He wasn’t willing to help us through the shift it’ll take to trade this death we’ve lived for His way we haven’t. Just please don’t wait until you understand it, until you feel like you can do it, until you’ve made less mistakes so that you feel a little less guilty for needing His mercy. It doesn’t work like that anyway.

No. Reach out for Him while He’s there waiting to help. Because while it might be hard to admit we can’t do this on our own, that’s far easier than waiting a bit too long and never knowing His hope at all.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold