Day 3387 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

1 Corinthians 6:11 NIV

Were: A second-person plural proving a past predicament potentially permanent or permanently different depending upon the person and their present purchase of either pride or making another proud.

Which is perfectly what He’s proven us able to now achieve within how we respond to what He did on our behalf. For you see, that the cross defines the line of a promise drawing the difference between the proven past and the present’s potential as a gift all should be unspeakably grateful for its having been given so undeservingly to a people such as we who at times tend to teeter toward again who we were in fear of the fight we’d face to find who we now can be. But as much as we’ve become afraid to fight for that more, no, I find every day only every way in which I fall apart again from the hope I say I’ve found in the One who found me.

And simply put, such failures I find no reason to allow to remain as much a part of my very identity as they’ve long been to me.

No, whenever I think about what Jesus chose to do and then went through to get through to me, I want to live a life that makes Him proud of me. I want to do now what I’ve not done before, because what I’ve done before is what He died to atone for. And since who I was is what cost Him His life so that I might have this hope I don’t deserve, I realize that I cannot now remain the same but that rather all of me must change. For I, like most, have known the way of life lived to take pride in myself.

And now I see only death in the pursuit as I’ve opened my eyes yet again to one more day in which all I ask is that He again search my heart for anything left of who I’ve been so that who I’ve been holds me back less today than it did yesterday. For that is the fight into which we’re called. It’s called freedom. He calls us to freedom, and too He’s proven it worth the fight. Problem is that we’ve never known just how far from freedom we were.

For alas this world in which we walk is one working itself to death in order to please self and find as many ways as possible to make such seem so reasonable and rewarding as so many seem to so sadly assume. And it’s always been that way. And that’s only making this remaking even more confused into leaving us thinking we’re making only a mistake should we continue taking all these steps toward all these losses of all these things that we at one time loved, things that this world around us still loves more than their very own hope in something more than everything here.

That’s the tragedy of who we were, who we are. It’s that for so long now we’ve allowed ourselves to remain eagerly convinced that our lives, our meaning, our worth, our wealth, our health and happiness and healing and hope are all somehow held in a world we are but strangers upon. Indeed, we’ve chosen to forget that we’re finite, fleeting, at some point fleeing this finality of a life we assume still contains an end defined by the death we deny with the way of life we live.

Yes, we live as if sin can save us simply because it satisfies us, and so we succumb to such selfishness as often as possible for to us, and to most, things such as pleasure and pride are well worth what we might waste should this not be the last we’ve lived but merely the first as promised upon the cross that emptied the tomb and thus transformed the here into nothing more than a hastened confusion filled with a rife delusion that we now must, but indeed can war against so that who we were remains not who we are.

Sadly though this world again makes this gift a great big burden at times. For this place has become so lost as to celebrate who we were, who we are. Indeed, this world is worried almost exclusively about who a person is as defined by what they think themselves to be. This month is one that anymore comes as if a bullet train straight into the heart of hope itself, utterly decimating the design, or at least vainly trying to do so. For we’re a people so prideful, and too so stubborn in that regard, that we’ve lowered ourselves to being so self-absorbed that we now craft holidays set aside for the celebrating of what we’ve always been:

Vain, prideful, arrogant, greedy, prone to idolatry and gluttony for all the above.

And thus never knowing the beauty of becoming something better.

No, we think ourselves incapable of better as if our best as imagined by us is truly the pinnacle of possibility and potential. That we can’t improve, can’t be disproved, won’t be reproved despite the reprieve such a gift was meant to give by He who chose to give us such a gift. That’s what we’ve been talking about for a couple of days now. That God chose, for reasons at times still unsearchable, unknowable, to show Himself unto us as the very epitome of love and mercy.

And yet, despite said Messiah, no, we still reside inside the mess.

For that is who we’ve always been. Pigs in a wallow. Slaves in chains. Sinners in the shadows assuming safety in such animosity as that which has always been between the dark we’ve become and the Light that came to shine a salvation into our souls so starved for hope that we’ve literally settled for assuming it here. But as I asked a day or two ago though, if hope can be had or held down here, well then what is hope and why want it if it’s indeed so fleeting and fragile as to be found in this world we’re leaving?

Always manage to overlook that part though, don’t we? The severity of life. The fragility of life. The sheer gravity of life as given from within a grave, a tomb which still turns out to be the very place where a life is forever lost. Question now though is whether we’ve the faith to find the life waiting within or if we just do as most have, as most are, as most will and simply reside inside the assumption than such a finality as death is simply too inescapable for life to live beyond it.

Sad outlook I’d say, but alas I’m not given the authority to speak for anyone else other than myself, and even that done in strange futility and foolishness most days.

And yet I press on only within this audacious hope that anything I do, anything I say, anything I am and all that I might be might be able to give glory to another, honor to the Father, a faith so infrangible that the only part of me that in any way remains fragile is only all that must be broken and left bleeding behind me anyway. Yes, that is indeed my very last hope as had here in this world. It’s merely that I might cling so tightly to His promise that this world isn’t my home that I come to hold this life so loosely that I know not when it has finally fell from my hands into the past I long allowed to hold my hope.

Yes, I want to hold everything in and of this life in and of this world so lightly that I know not what here I lose but only know what I’ve found within He who found me as all else becomes as it’s always been, just dust shaken into memories that fade faster than my regrets ever have.

See, that’s oddly enough the true beauty of His beginning in us this good work that ends us. It’s that we do come to see such things as regrets and the shames which they carry. It’s that we’re shown the ways in which we’ve lived within the wrongs of this world of wickedness and wanting always more of only that way of enmity against even sanity. It’s that we come to witness the ways we get things wrong, learning lessons we’ve long ignored. It’s that we finally get to grow beyond the glow of a nightlife defined by neon signs and seedy scenes shown before eyes stained by assuming such is all life is meant to enjoy.

No, that’s who we were. And this is indeed one of very few ways in which I can contend that I am in no way lost inside the hypocrisy that tends to find me afraid of not practicing what I pretend to be. For I think often of who I was, of the person I still am, of the things I’ve done and do that I don’t want to. I sit inside such gravity as asking that He show me the ways in which I get this wrong, wrong Him, a wrongdoer from way back. And indeed, like everyone else who happens upon admitting their faults and failures, I too find a great fear within a passage such as this one.

For a couple of verses prior to this we see a list of those who “will not inherit the kingdom of God”. And the list which follows that pronouncement of our predicament contains a great many identities that I indeed must ashamedly agree to having adopted at times in the past. For yes, I have been a slanderer, a swindler. I’ve been a thief, stealing things not mine simply because I wanted what I wanted so much that I couldn’t let my inability to afford it legally keep me from the enjoyment of having what I didn’t need. I’ve indeed allowed such greed to become me that I’ve set my desires first in my life, a list of priorities all out of line.

I’ve given way to idolatry, chasing and serving and craving things made by man, worshipping mankind even in images marked with ink scattered upon every wall I could find. I’ve chosen immorality within looking at images of a vile delusion I still cannot entirely forget. I’ve agreed to lust, letting myself be controlled by the wicked impulses of a life knowing little in the way of love, or so I thought. I’ve hurt people, lied to people, left people lost, lost people I didn’t care to keep around. I’ve taken all of life for granted, so very greatly as to allow such to become my very identity.

A wrongdoer from way back.

And yet, by some power so clearly outside of myself I’ve found myself still able to have that hope I mentioned above as the last of its kind left in my life.

That who I’ve been isn’t who I have to be anymore. That what I’ve become is something I can now come away from. That the way I’ve lived my life, lost my mind has left me just lost enough to be found by the only One who could have found me in the dark. Indeed, and He did! He’s done just that for so many so far. He will do it all over again for any who again agree to see who they’ve been as who they pray they can someday say they were, thus not are anymore.

No, who I’ve been is not who I want to be. Who I am now isn’t who I want to remain. For though I’m not who I was, nor am I as far in faith, as close to Him, as near to home as I want to be. Because in Him I believe I can always be more, always be closer, always have less of me to leave here when He says I can go home.

And that is my last hope, that home.

The very home His very Word says I shall never know should I remain who I’ve been.

Thus the change and my choice to choose it. And while yes, that choice means I’ll lose a lot, leave a lot behind, want less going forward, wish perhaps as I now often do that this world would just leave me alone to leave in peace, I find in that the very outskirts of peace. For I know that this world has well helped me become who I’ve been, but I pass no blame. The choices I’ve made are choices I made, and thus the guilt for them all falls entirely on me.

Which is why I find myself increasingly thankful that He says we can cast our anxieties upon Him for He does care for us. And too, within that very same passage in 1 Peter 5, that in due time He will exalt us above who we were into the hope He’s given of who can now be in Him.

That’s all I want of life anymore. Just to be in Christ as far as He might find reason to welcome a wretch like me. For that is who I’ve been, who I am more days than I’d like to admit. But that’s just it, the gift of His grace is that it’s given to those who don’t deserve it. Wouldn’t be grace if it wasn’t. And so in that gift we find that He’s given us the mercy to make the past the past, agreeing finally to the line drawn by the cross over which who we were cannot come.

For on that cross we were washed by the blood of the Lamb who laid down His life for His enemies. And in that mercy may we find the meaning: That it’s meant to make us into His people. For yes, we were His enemies, but yes, He died to change that.

May we thus embrace the courage to consider, as He did, all things lost for the surpassing glory of knowing His version of our story, no longer the sorry version we attempted to steal from the Author of life and the Artist who drew the Way back to where we now have the undeserved hope to be.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold