Day 3536 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

James 4:5 NIV

Tis an increasing oddity to find oneself feeling out of place within the only place said self has ever been.

Almost makes you wonder as to the reason and where it might be leading.

For in truth, there seems this rather deeply seated sense of disconnection planted somewhere inside each of us. It’s this almost visceral detachment in which we all feel as if there’s just more to this, what’s becoming a nearly visible realization as to the superficiality of all this social abnormality. Yes, we all, whether we’ll admit it now or not, know well this understanding that where we’re standing, so limited by such things as sight and even life, it’s simply not able to encompass what can be proven a life’s purpose.

For why should we be here to know only, have only, see only, hope in or for only what is here?

No, this seems an altogether failsome undertaking as it’s one undertaken by all of us, granted to different degrees and too in quite vastly different directions, but a human condition nonetheless. Yes, we’ve each given way to this idea that we could find something, buy something, build something, become something that would finally make our lives feel whole.

Because we know the hole.

And I know we all know this hole because still we awake each and every day trying, mostly in vain, to fill it with whatever we can find that we might feel worth such a welcome into our hearts, minds, eyes, lives. And yet despite a few billion tries within the trillions of lives that have been lived or are being lived now to find that somehow that somehow seals our success and satisfaction and safety, security, we’ve none of us found much of anything close. Not yet.

Yet still we watch the world run on past the point of perhaps no return, buying more things that will be returned, trusting in more triumphs that will tarnish when sat upon the same shelf as all the other reminders of things we think we’ve won, pleading for that one last gasp at what feels a hope not too distant as we know all hope should truly remain. For who hopes in what they have? Who finds it a dare to trust in what they see? Is there any difficulty in believing for what’s already been proven before?

Do we really believe that our lives will find their meaning should we offer someone some sort of evidence of our existence achieving some subjective best?

For since when was it on the part of the created to assume an understanding of why they were created?

Sadly it’s normal though, all this novelty and nuance knocking upon our hearts as we bang our heads against the wall of a world so filled with everything we want and somehow still nothing we need. Incredible how we still seem content to live as if we cannot see the two different. For truth be told, a new car is nice but shoes don’t run out of gas. A bigger house might offer more space but if it invites more space between those who live inside, not much of a home. Climbing that corporate ladder might matter to most everyone you talk to, but without time to talk to anyone, who’s there to be impressed?

And yet, it’s all these things that we not only want, not realizing that within that wishing that we’re not in need of any of them, but indeed we live in what’s become a jealousy somehow built within all these wants. Yes, all jealousy is watching another enjoy for themselves what we want for ourselves. And be it cars or shoes or jobs or journeys, we’ve placed such meaning upon them that we pawn ourselves off for them, just certain that we’ll be at least closer to life’s meaning should we meet them.

But what’s the meaning to be made in our making our way only to what cannot offer life?

Such is that warning resounding from deep inside that understanding that nothing near where we’re standing will ever prove enough. No, as one of my favorite songs by the band Lifehouse puts it, “I’ve seen enough and it’s never enough.” For honestly, if it were, would we still be looking? If contentment where concealed inside the content carried about by container ships, wouldn’t we have bought it by now? If our purpose was to be proven within another person, well then why do we listen to own thoughts so much more than the words others say?

Yes, if we’re as jealous for life as we were for a wife, well then maybe we’d realize the bride’s already been given away. Long before we stole back what was never ours to begin with.

I had this idea hit me right out of bed this morning, thinking still about yesterday’s attempt at making sense of all this. Thinking about how God opposes the proud, but more about how He gives grace to the meek. It’s yet another backwards beginning in that it seems contrary to how things try to work down here. For here we wear ourselves thin trying to prove ourselves strong. We sign away hours a day to a paycheck that doesn’t ever seem worth half of what we had to give to get it.

Yes, our vocations have become of such value that they seem to be the very first identifier asked for by those meeting us for the first time. What do you do? Not who are you? What matters to you? Who do you live for? For what do you live toward? No, what do you do as if what we do can encompass who we are. No, I think we know well that it can’t, but we’ve bought it as a willing replacement knowing that we don’t know who we are anymore without some title or company preceding our name.

Because we’ve forgotten whose we are.

And this is proven by minute anymore. For why else would we chase after so much that doesn’t matter? Why would we prioritize all these things that themselves do not have life and thus cannot provide life? Indeed, we’re all so busy and worried over and for so many things. We could list a length of them, but they’re all the same. They’re all things here, even if thoughts and theories, still they’re found within our minds focused here on lives lived here and things done here and stuff won here and lost here and last year was the same. Will tomorrow the same remain?

Because there’s going to come a time in which we find that all we’ve worried about never meant anything. All the plans we pursued and the prizes we purchased as if souvenirs along this trip of a lifetime caught within a lifetime, none of them can truly define us unless we agree to think ourselves worth so little as this novelty coffee mug picked up a truck stop. Yes, each of us are like long-haul truckers carrying a cargo we couldn’t care less about as our trek is all about the finish line we live as if we believe is waiting somewhere within this world.

Yes, this world! It’s always been where our biggest hopes lay in wait.

But why?

What have we managed to find? And if it was truly so worth the time and trial we took to take it by the horns into our hearts, why still do we not feel at home? I contend that, as with all matters of Scripture, faith, hope, trust, salvation, sanctification, perhaps the questions we ask most often are all wrong after all. Because they’re only spent asking us for our perspective.

What about His?

That’s what hit me this morning. How heartbreaking it must be to look down from Heaven only to see this people you’ve made turn always away after all these lifeless things. A creation created out of love falling out of the same with He who at first created them, called them to simply stay the same inside that same love, and yet still came to save them when they couldn’t allow themselves to consider not having something else.

And yet that’s why we read what this verse says today. That’s why He’s jealous for this Spirit He’s caused to reside inside. It’s because it’s His, and in fact, it’s Him. It’s a reflection of His devotion to us, one echoed even for all to see upon the cross that He took for you and me. Indeed, we are all made in His image and endowed by His purpose for our having been so created. And so to watch these little reflections live in rejection must feel a brutality that made the cross worth the cost.

Still, don’t see it from His perspective though, do we?

No, especially when our own point of view is to what we’re all but married to. Indeed, we have come to so prostitute ourselves to all that isn’t Him and thus isn’t life that we now balk at the belief that we should be the bride. And again, this must be the proverbial knife in the heart of He who gave us our start, warned us to the deception in our heart and then still came anyway to save us from having not heeded the warning but instead had led ourselves into a chosen captivity.

Yes, it must be tragic to see us continue to turn always only away, repeating again the very same sin seen inside Genesis, thoughts always evil all the time. Must make no sense to our Savior to see us still walk away.

Especially when He knows the plans He’s made.

Indeed, He alone knows the plans He has for us, and we should know this by now as Jeremiah 29:11 is in the running for the most often quoted verse of all. And as He does know His plans for us, thus He knows they’re not worth such doubt and denial as shown from behind our betrayal of watching us always from behind as we run off toward more of what we’ve already known. No, He knows His plans have always been for our best, a full life and all the rest.

Perhaps we should try to see things from His side of life, after all, our side only dies.

That’s why He’s jealous for this Spirit He caused to live inside and died to revive back to life, only this time, in Him, a life lived without such end as that that we’ve always found within everything else that we’ve thought could mean enough to not need Him or that blasted humility He asks us to try.

Because that’s what He made us to do. To try. To risk. To trust. To think outside ourselves, wondering beyond our tired assumptions of something of substance hidden in wait within a world we somehow hope to never leave. Yes, He made us to be alive, not to give our lives to world destined to pass away. And yet we do just that, give our worries to the world, believing our best is still waiting here for us to find it. It’s sitting inside some store, parked in a car lot, waiting in agony just beyond a job application.

All things that might add to life but still don’t provide life. And there is as big a difference as we could ever imagine between the two!

It’s a difference defined by jealousy, only this time that seen from His perspective as opposed to ours. Again, all jealousy is felt in watching another get what we want for ourselves. And we feel this way because we so think that should we have won this object of our affection that we’d do so much better by them. And yet how much deeper must this feeling feel when the One who feels it doesn’t have to think it? For God doesn’t have to think that He would be better for us, do better by us than all these idols, ideals and ideas that we give our time and attention instead of giving it to Him. No, He created us and so He’s the only One who truly knows full-well what’s best for us.

For who knows what’s best for a creation than the One who created said creation?

That’s my point for today, that He alone knows our point and purpose, and so perhaps we shouldn’t purchase all these hollow replacements.

Maybe we shouldn’t continue to place our hope or seek our happiness in things so lifeless as social ideals and selfish ideas, idols the lot. Perhaps instead we could look back to the One who watched us walk away, and who, rather than just watching us leave, chased us down, all the way to the grave, so to save the one sheep who just couldn’t stay with the rest. For such are His plans as His plans for us have always been life, and He even laid down His own to prove we’re His own.

Have many of things or thoughts we’ve laid down a portion of our lives to speak to life managed to bring life to us? And if they have, again, why still do we seek something more? Will the next something better be the last we need to hope for? Will the next promotion silence the commotion calling us to prove ourselves within a higher pay scale? Should we track down some trinket that takes any time or attention, intention or invention to find leave us having found life without end?

Because His path did.

And sure, it’s something of vast debate within this place, this foundational truth of a Christian faith. For we’re up against the whole rest of what the world has and thus wants, and so it seems too insane to suggest that perhaps our life’s meaning was given us by another who simply asks that we put Him first, even before all that we think we need.

For if we were truly of such little value as to evaluate ourselves upon the basis of exchange rates and dinner dates, why would He have died? Is the way we’re living this life worth what the cross says the cost? Can we truly claim we believe in forever when anything here still seems to matter? And if anything here does still matter, can’t we see that such is the reason for His jealousy?

Shouldn’t He be all that matters? I mean, we’re literally not here if it weren’t for Him. And that’s just this life, not even taking into account the promise of the peace to be proven within the next once this one’s past. We wouldn’t be alive if He didn’t breathe this breath into our lungs.

What are we still looking for?

All that we need is all that He gave, and all that He gives is all that lets live. That may not make any sense anymore, to anyone, because we’ve lived for so long looking to the world to tell us who we are as determined now by what we’re supposed to have or want or do or say or share and assume. Is that it? Is that all a life is for, just what’s here and nothing more?

Again, I personally can’t see as to why He’d die for such a sum as our having everything here only to still leave it behind. Doubt that if you will. But just know that there is nothing else within this world that can so fill a life as His purpose has already planned. Because friends, our preferences are but for a lifetime. His plans for us, well, we apparently need all of eternity to even begin experiencing them. And I ain’t missing that. No, not knowing that He died for me to even have the chance!

For if He would lay down His life just for me to have an opportunity to see inside such blatant humility the hope of Heaven as promised unto those who walk by the Spirit, what more might He do in me, for me, through me to see me all the way to and through that blessed eternity? Let us find out, shall we? Because if His jealousy found reason to embrace mortality as proven all the way to that grave, there must be some reason, some meaning, some reward and feeling to be still found that nothing in or on this ground can come close to competing against.

Because if He gave His Son who gave His life to save our own, well then Spirit inside must be worth far more than all the money in the world and all the fading applause that this place so pursues. And so perhaps we could just try to see things from His side. Perhaps we could imagine what that day will be like. Perhaps we could believe that there’s more to this life than whatever we’ve come to fill it with only to feel it empty again.

Yes, maybe we could allow ourselves to believe a little bigger than some golden bull or a little more selfish glory. After all, why live just to die when He died to prove there’s still life awaiting on the other side? Because He did so only to prove that He only wants back what is His.

And considering the mercy proven in the Messiah, why continue to live as if we’re not?

And if we don't believe we are His and called to be only where He is, well then what are we longing for that's leaving us feeling so out of place within this only place we've ever been?

#LeaveNoSoulUntold