Day 3446 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

1 Corinthians 6:11 NIV

I am increasingly convinced that of all the miraculous mercies offered within the Christian faith, perhaps the greatest of them all is that opportunity at a life so changed that it allows us a were.

For without that shift from is to was needed to move a person from who they are to who they were, all we could forever be is merely what we’ve become and the hands of who we’ve been which have sealed our fate due to all we’ve done to become who we are. And looking back at that past built behind me I see only a betrayal of who I now have this alien hope to someday be as it is not in any way who I am today, but rather only everything better. And thus I know that it has nothing to do with me because I know that I’ve grown too prone to settling for good enough.

Indeed, I know that I’m always more than fine staying wherever I’ve managed to wash on shore so long as I needn’t enter the unsure of the unseen as in there I know nothing but fear for the failures that I’m sure to find inside a life I’ve never tried to live before.

That’s the perplexity of our hesitancy toward change in life. It’s that we know we don’t know what’s on the other side of a new thought, a different decision, a foreign effort given in a strange direction. We have no way of knowing how it might feel, just how fast we might fail, how difficult the new might be and when it might do as all other such newness always has and fade away into yet again another concession where we just stop trying at some point.

Because that’s the pattern of life we’ve come to accept. It’s all about these forsaken finish lines in which we lean upon what is always built as a pre-conceived finality that offers us the opportunity to stop. That’s why we make goals, dream dreams, invent these ideas that merge the two into our understanding of a best life’s outcome. It’s all about our figuring out where we can plausibly go within the frameworks of our efforts and misunderstandings.

Indeed, nearly all of life has been confined to this sort of contentment in which we construct these little vanities that afford us a sense of accomplishment that further allows us an aloofness that grants us a chance to give up and settle down and bask in the glory of whatever story we’ve written for ourselves, final chapter and all. As if it’s ever been up to us to determine for ourselves, decide for ourselves, define for ourselves when we’re done and where we’ll be by then, who we’ll be by then.

But friends, that’s the beauty of God’s benevolent blessing beginning in us a good work that has so little to do with us. It’s that we don’t get to call the shots or plan the endings anymore. It’s His will, His way, His work within us that is only undertaken to overcome us. Yes, and that is indeed why so many so fear this faith. It’s clearly not because of such things as forgiveness giving us a freedom that our fractured figments could never find. It’s obviously not the mercy that turns graves into gardens, tombs into turnstiles, headstones into a strangely hopeful beginning.

No, it’s merely because this faith steals the pen out of our hands and puts it back where it always should have been.

It’s only that our pride cannot quite manage to equate humiliation with humility. We struggle so much with the former that we never even begin to imagine the beauty of the latter. No, we refuse to be humiliated, to be corrected, to be reminded of our mistakes and the fact that they were all, every single one, our choice alone. We will not agree to that, and because of that, we never venture anywhere near the hope that only humility can offer.

We can’t see hope inside of something that is such a blatant affront to our arrogant assumptions of what are what they’ve always been, mere replacements, replicas of the real awarded within only reality. No, we’re far too content with our versions of happiness, of purpose, of meaning, of joy. In fact, and as far as we’re concerned, we seem to think that we’ve managed to make a life making due with our takes on all the above. And we’ve done so only because our versions equate to our staying the same but still somehow convinced we’re better.

Because deep down we all want to be better than who we’ve been, to do better than what we’ve done, to be further than these forsaken finish lines we’ve fought to pretend were proof of our ability to find our life’s purpose and worth.

We just can’t bear admitting that we were so wrong as to stop so short of what is still a life of which we’ve plenty still to live. No, we just can’t bring ourselves to confess that we died years ago thanks to all those goals we checked off that allowed us to mentally, physically, spiritually, emotionally clock out and quit. Can’t allow ourselves to imagine what could have been had we been a bit more willing back then to keep going past what we thought was best at the time.

Yes, at the time, in the moment, here and now, all very much idealized within this world racing so fast to nowhere further than a person wants to go. And so we’ve listened to all such lies for as long as we’ve been alive amongst those long since dead inside their dreams of things already seen, goals already reached, plans already proven and pasts proving that our glory days are dead and gone while we just live in the memories of kids who laughed at the sky pretending to be the limit.

No, we wanted the stars and couldn’t understand how some might see that our rocket ships aimed toward them had handlebars and training wheels.

That’s why Scripture tells us that the Kingdom of Heaven belongs to children, for it’s only that childlike faith that can find the courage to consider the things we grownups believe only to be impossible.

Like change. Growth. Improvement. Freedom. Love. Mercy. Forgiveness. No, those things have become but buzzwords that we speak from pulpits but not from hearts, ideas left inside minds that remain afraid to move beyond who we’ve been for the fear of not then knowing what might come. Indeed, no longer do we aim for the stars, rather we settle for this soil upon which we build our best efforts made of whatever asks the least of us.

And that is who we are as we are but the evidence of what we do, just the vessels that carry the concessions in which we pretend comfort so commendable that we can’t consider anything else anymore. All we know to hope for, hope in is just something easy, something safe, something that seems to make sense and finds others readily willing to agree.

Yes, we seek validation, affirmation, confirmation, justification of our just staying who we’ve become so we needn’t listen to that still small voice reminding us that we were made for more than who we’ve been and what we’ve done in order to become who we are. Indeed, we seem to think that should we hear the roar of crowds cheering their approval of our refusal to do anything, change anything, lose anything, then perhaps that noise will quiet that voice that says we can do more, be more.

And we crave that noise drowning out that voice all because it reminds us that who we’ve been is already over and that we’ve still got life left to live before we leave.

Thus it finds for us yet another decision that we alone can make, must make, will make, are maybe making already. We’ve been talking about the gravity of these gifts in life called choices that we have to make but often try to avoid. We just don’t like the responsibility of them for they bring about these consequences that can be anything from a rather jovial embarrassment as told in stories of dumb things we’ve done all the way up to soul-shaking shame that writes a story we seal inside so that nobody knows what we’ve done when others weren’t watching and thus we weren’t trying to please or impress them.

But you see, that’s the beauty of God’s mercy though. It’s that He’s known all the choices we’ve had to make, how we made them and thus what we’ve done in light of them. He knows what we’ve done when nobody was watching. He knows the fears for which we’ve fallen into this failure to keep trying. He knows the lies we’ve believed and the loss of another life we could have lived because we, at the time, didn’t care to embrace the humility of the truth that we don’t really know what we’re doing enough to assume we’re doing what’s best.

And yet He forgives every fear, every fall, every failure. He offers to overrule every regret. He promises to wipe away every presumption, every predicament, every problem and pretense preferred by pride. Yes, Christ came and died so that we might see in Him the value of life as we’ve not lived it thus far. For there can be no value in life, to worth to life when lived for finish lines beyond which we only stop trying to keep living for more than that line says we can settle for.

Yet there we find the question of all questions perhaps. What will we settle for? How much further will we fail to go knowing that He died to show us that the tomb wasn’t even meant to be where this story ends? Yes, where will our story end, and will that end be at our choosing, of our choosing, meaning only then the losing of whatever more we could have found, could have known, could have been?

Yes, how will this story end of this life we’ve still to live?

I know how I want mine to end someday. And it’s not defined in the way in which I’ve lived it so far. I want not my past to have been my best. I shudder to think that my best has already been found, been known. I cannot agree to that, not knowing the truth as seen inside hindsight singing this song of everything I’ve gotten wrong all those years spent thinking that I knew what I was doing. I can’t agree to believe that I am meant to be so little as to never know more than who I’ve been and what I’ve done to become who I am.

No, I cannot settle for who I am, not when I have a faith that says who I’ve been and what I’ve done only cost the Son of God His life so as to atone for what I’ve done with mine.

Not when I believe that He only did all that for me so that I could find in Him a reminder of who I was made to be, of how I was meant to live, of the fact that this life was never mine to write into all these wrongs for which I’ve settled far too long. Rather I was made in the image of God and called there to remain instead of all this running and hiding and lying to myself that I’ve been doing all this time. For we were not meant to be sinners who settle to stay as such.

We were made rather in the love of a merciful Father who created us to be His own and calls us now through Christ to come back home.

Friends, I don’t who you are, where you’ve been or where it’s all gone wrong. I don’t know the finish lines you’ve fought to not believe beyond nor why you agreed to those you drew in your life. I just know that all of us have them, and that all of them, every single one, are nothing but barriers. They’re these blasted barricades which begin only disbelief in the better that begins only beyond them. And I know that we are in Christ called now beyond them.

We are called now beyond who we’ve been, past who we’ve become, further than our fear of failure is willing to go. For the truth is that we need to fail at this so that we can find that it’s not about what we can do but about what He did to overcome all we’ve already done. Because in Him is found all the love, the hope, the healing and joy and forgiveness and meaning that make a life worth living. In Him is every bit of everything that we could ever hope to find, the better that we were at first made to be.

But if we’re to ever find that better that He died for us to have, to hold, to know for all of forever, we have to first leave behind the past that’s proven too long an anchor that holds us here to who we’ve already been.

Make no mistake, we will find validation no matter what we choose to do in life. This world loves to affirm and confirm whatever a person claims they think best for themselves. But maybe, thanks to pasts proving those many mistakes made while we thought we knew what was best for us, maybe it’s not best that we be the only ones thinking in that regard. Maybe humans as a whole aren’t really the ones who should be deciding what’s best for a life. After all, we didn’t create life, in fact we’ve only all but destroyed it thanks to our arrogant affinity for the wages of sin.

And perhaps that’s all the reason we need to hit our knees and face the humiliation of admitting what we’ve done and who we are because of it. And no, it won’t make much sense at first as it seems to feel like we’re only testifying against ourselves in a case we’ve tried to deny we’ve already lost.

But maybe that sort of humiliating honesty is the only way that we can finally see that He can really be who He claims to be as we can only understand His offering us that mercy through a humility that helps us see that we need His grace more than anything else. After all, we really don’t have any real reason to doubt that He can, nor that He did, other than our doubt that He already has as found inside our doubt that we’ve done anything wrong which needs that sort of brutal forgiveness.

I mean, He did lay down His life to prove that His grace will do whatever it takes to make us new. So maybe we can find in that the courage to now do something new, you know, now that He’s given us that chance to change. Maybe even something like seeking our justification inside the gift of salvation’s sanctification rather than from a society that so clearly doesn’t believe in such an opportunity.

Simply because it’s only found inside the humility that this place thinks is humiliating. Indeed, perhaps it's just that sort of social blindness that His mercy came to wash away so as open the door to the better we were made for, the better that shifts who we are into who we were.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold