Day 3408 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Matthew 19:21 NIV

And thus it would seem as though a faith’s perfection resides not in possession but rather in submission to the reality that hope in Heaven is far too big to fit within all this that’s considered somehow leaven.

For leaven is an addition which is supposed to add something to something that then makes the outcome better than the beginning. But we seem to insist that we fail to see the necessity of loss if we’re to find what we can’t afford to force to fit within the little room we’ve left after a life lived looking to the world to make itself at home in us. Yes, we’ve come to invite so much of this world to stay within our focus, as within it we think we’ve found our fortune, that we now know not how to sell off what to us has come to be worth the souls we’ve sold to get what we never actually needed.

No, such is the saddened assumption of a life as lived lost within this world lost in love with glitter and gold, so too do we agree that our lives must too be worth only whatever we hold.

But then what of all that we don’t have, not here? What of all that we can’t see, not yet? What of worth is there for us to worry toward if we’re, like most, plenty content with the content of this current concept of a life as lived for worldly wealth? Indeed, can we claim we care toward what’s not here, not held here, not small enough to fit down here when our lives are lived consistently, persistently looking only here for such things as hope, healing, happiness?

And is not such exactly what we’ve done all these years given to working and wanting for wishes of wealth as won within the ways the world says such works? Are we thus so blind to believe only in that our efforts are able to be given only for what we assume we’ll be getting, gains always gotten in gold and glory which to many tell the story of why we’re not at all sorry for such a settling of life as to have lived it lost in a land in which we’ll all lose it?

Yes, there’s that blasted betrayal again. The one we all pretend isn’t promised. The end of all we don’t want to end, and that is precisely the problem. For if our lives are lived inside anything in or of a world we’ll soon leave behind, then yes, to us death is most fearful as it’s the ceasing of a life we’ve truly come to live in love with. Missing then only the miraculous mercy contained in such a calling as that of Matthew 10:39, 16:25, Mark 8:35, Luke 9:24, 17:33, and John 12:25.

All of them spoken so as to inspire our walking now in the same way as walked by the Way who came to say that whomever finds their life and loves how it’s lived within this land will indeed lose it in the end, but then, as hope does, He promised a better payout in that whomever loves not their life so dearly as to demand they keep it forever will indeed find in forever a life instead lived better, for only there are all sorrows gone forever.

And thus I can no longer see why the need to live like we’ve something here, anything we have, everything we can only hold that we can’t afford to realize we can’t afford to live without.

Because the gracious gravity of the Gospel and the lessons learned by He who lived it and left it for us to learn from and aim for is that we learn things like what this rich young man didn’t care to know. That what we have isn’t who we are. Can we still not see that? For if it were, if our worth, our wealth, our very reason for being here were in any way tied to anything held here, then we’d be nothing but things held inside a world that’s passing away. Is that truly all we think of ourselves?

Yet is that not basically what we’re saying within all this material idolatry that’s consumed us all these years? Indeed, we’re saying that our worth, our wealth, our meaning, our very identity is either defined by or in some way confined in, tied to the things we hold. That our purpose is held in what we hold. But friends, the lesson Christ is trying to teach us here is that if it’s held in this world, then one day it will be gone. Because this world isn’t our forever. Whether we like that or not, and too, whether or not our worldly wealth allows us to see that or not.

For the truth is that this is just a warmup, a preamble, it’s all merely an opening scene to a billion lifetimes sewn together and strewn across an eternity.

How can we then tie ourselves, our hopes, our dreams, our meaning or identity or purpose or passion to things that only exist in this world, if not because they seem to matter to many in this world? Are we of a meaning that only matters while we’re in this world? For if indeed we do continue to live this way, because indeed we have, we may well awake one day to find ourselves rather dismayed by the disarray as, when all this dust has settled, it turns out that only all of this is in fact dust that’s not then, nor now, worth as much wealth or worry as we tend to spend upon it.

And yet that’s exactly what we do as taught to by a world that claims to not know any better than to do only what’s always been done. We read yesterday about Ephraim’s (Israel’s) boasting in their worldly riches to the point that they thought those treasures could prove them innocent. As if God’s to be appeased by our living for so much of this world that He doesn’t notice nor care to punish the worldliness in which we’ve walked, and wanted, and wasted in our effort to have all we hold so dearly down here.

Yes, we are truly a people perfectly at peace repeating the pitiable pasts of every prior mistake ever made. Still today we live as if we honestly believe that God can't see us nor the sins which define us if we live in mansions or castles. That He couldn't possibly witness our wickedness and its wrongdoings were we in the world's fastest sports cars. Yes, that He couldn't ever hear us saying evil or hurtful things over the roar of the engines on our private jets, assumptions that keep us flying above such an underwhelming outlook on life as to believe it to consist of worldly wealth alone.

That He’s not to be disappointed if we do as everyone has and live only as if the gift of life is worth only what we assume worthwhile within it, a list of distractions that grows whenever something new glows and shows that we need something new to be something better.

No, perhaps we need something old, something ancient, something so antiquated that it was forgotten the moment we brazenly marched out of the Garden. Maybe we need to go back to the realization that life is a gift given, not one only worth then something we manage to get while living it in this world in which we’re currently living it. Yes, maybe we need to rethink our worth and truly consider if it’s worth so little as worldly wealth. For I tell you that the peace they held in that Garden, it’s not to be found in anything with a price tag.

God’s peace is priceless, and so how dare we assume even a passing semblance of it is to be held inside something we can hold! As happens from time to time, this very idea hit my mind before my eyes opened this morning. And I do love when He does that! For to me it means I might be on to something, something maybe worth sharing, something perhaps helpful to someone. Somehow.

And, again as usual, it often comes in questions that I can’t help but feel myself consider and hope to somehow inspire another to peruse themselves. Questions such as, are we truly so gainfully impatient that we can otherwise afford to hinder our hope and our choices made there toward, simply for the sake of holding something we assume we have? And if so, as we do, how can we dare insist that what we hold, and therefore this claim to have, is somehow what’s best for us? And if we do believe that what we have as held inside what we hold is truly what’s best for us, how can we prove that when what’s best is always proven with a death?

Is not such a fact the reason that the Gospel is still inspiring hope in so many even still today? Because there must have been a grand reason for Christ to give His life, something far better, much bigger than just our hoping to have more of what’s here. And indeed, that He did lay down His life is, to me and I must then assume at least a few others, an act of such monumentally moving motivation that He must then see what I can’t as, to me, there’s nothing in me or in this world that’s worth what He gave for me to have even the chance to believe in it.

Indeed, for Him to choose that cross and pay for my lost way of life with the loss of His life is undeniable evidence that He alone knows what’s best, for He alone died to prove the way. And then too to say that we therefore have no idea, never have, as to where hope is really found.

For truth is that we’d neither die to get what we want nor to keep what we hold. And so how can we then assume hope is held inside what we hold? Is hope worth so little that it’s not worth risking our lives, losing our lives to find it in full? Because the Gospel paints this understanding in that while we have lived as if we’ve thought so little of hope, yet Christ came to die so we might indeed know a hope fulfilled, and not just here, not only now, but rather one found in full forever.

And He did this not to His own gain but rather for our benefit. So what then can we claim to know of what’s best? We’d not lay down our lives for anything we have, and so how can any of it really be worth anything to us? How can any of what we have be what’s best when to us it’s not worth our death to have or hold? Is it not because we know the undeniable temporary nature of things found in and of this world? Do we not know the fleeting feeling of this world’s failing fortunes?

I contend that we do, but yet that we can’t let ourselves be the ones who admit it around those who don’t get it. Because we don’t want to offend, and so rather we miss out on the clearly called steps to a closer measure of faith perfected. Go and sell all you have, because in that He knows we’d come to know that what we have as had here isn’t worth near what’s not able to fit in the present. And perhaps that is part of why He died, to help us understand the risk involved, the risk needed in finding what’s worth having.

For hope is no little thing my friends. And least it wasn’t to Christ, for He showed us all that hope is worth what He went through for us to have it. Question then becomes what are we willing to lose to hold it?

Because, as He makes clear here, hope might indeed be found only when we have nothing in this world to hope in, hope for anymore. Because, as always should have been clear, this world isn’t perfect, nor is it then permanent. And thus nor are our lives upon it permanent. And thus why this settling for assuming that we need to hurry up and heap up all in which others hope? Are we saying that the world knows something that God doesn’t? Or rather are we simply saying that we have something we hope He doesn’t mind us worrying about holding onto a little longer?

Whatever the case, the fact is that this place is one we’re closer to leaving than we ever were to staying. And so, friends, I think the time has come to reassess the situation through eyes not blinded by glory or gain but rather one looking honestly for hope and the one path paved toward it. He told us where our hope is found, if we then leave it hanging upon anything here, well, that’s on us to carry that disappointment when all we have here is gone and we’re left with nothing to look forward to after we’re gone.

The bottom line is that life and everything it’s worth living for, living toward is worth more than what we’ve so sadly agreed to make of it. It’s not proven in material possessions nor in the amount of money in our bank accounts as all of that is just manmade mayhem waiting to fade into oblivion when there are no people here left to convince us or anyone else otherwise.

So let us not live for what we’ll lose but rather lose what isn’t worth living for. Because the truth is my friends, there is a vast difference between the two, and the way this world’s going, it’s only getting deeper by the day. So then may we sell what will only cause us to sink so that we can swim for the shore of salvation before the tides change and that chance is gone.

Because one day it will be. Please don’t live a way of life that leaves you losing your hope or leaving it all behind when this world in which we’ve lived to keep it is no longer around to provide it. No, let us follow Him home, for if our treasures are there waiting, then we can trust them safe until He opens those gates.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold