Day 3541 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Colossians 1:18 NIV

That there may be, in Him, a supremacy, indeed a sovereignty over even the suffering of or to or through what seems a sacrifice of self to the very point of a self’s loss of life.

But only because it is.

And it’s within this that we can consider the cost of this call as ringing still from within that last place we’ve any of us ever sought to assume a life to be found. And yet it’s within this finding of a life waiting within that last place we’re wanting to go walking that we can now see that He is certainly even a King of what’s now a supremacy over even the loss of life, achieving in that which was lain down the taking up of the counter productivity of a life spent inside the mundane monotony of our mankind assuming its own supremacy.

Just without the ability to actually overcome what’s always been our only outcome here.

Firstborn from among the dead.

This promise, this purpose, this now proven providence so profitable that it only allows left dead all which is pitiable and profoundly purposeless, it’s provided unto us, each of us, this most merciful meaning that finally finds our lives able to mean something that doesn’t demand we be the ones who figure out how to do what we never could in order to become what we were at first. For way back before we began all this blasphemic backsliding, He began this all to behold His benevolence.

And that we’ve so lost sight of such goodness is both why we’ve now to die but also why He came to beat us to that end so as to show us that, for some at least, the end is now just where it all begins all over again inside of what is a hope that we’ve not held and thus not turned into a horror.

For that’s what we’ve made of everything within all this making we’re trying to make make sense. We’ve commandeered everything from culture to comfort and combined the lot into our being now only lost inside a maze of our own making made of things we keep making that make us only more lost with each idol that is a turn or twist within what is a life so lost that we think it’s the end from which we should run. Indeed, we’ve become convinced that just as soon as all this ends, well then, that’s pretty much where our certainty and conservative conservation must end as well.

Because there sure seems to blind eyes bound by doubt and disbelief little life left to live in what is a grave that nobody seems to ever walk out of.

And yet He did.

That is the foundational backdrop for all of every belief as perceived from a newness placed within us that allows us to see now beyond us and this blasted betrayal of hope that we’ve all but become. For again, that is simply all we know to be, having now been such for so long. We know only to trust in the widely known, the commonly agreed upon, the culturally considerate and vastly degenerate. Yes, our lives have devolved into a distinguished distance from the light of life as still burning just as bright as this dark world seeks still to deny.

Why?

What is it that we gain by all this cursing of the rain and the pain and the main point and purpose of them both? What have we benefitted by becoming so belligerent as to disbelieve the relief as found for us by He who is better than and thus before us? Are we truly so proud as to refuse to lose this life lost to living as if first is all we deserve to find, feel, see, be? Does it really matter all that much what or where we place when this place is the place in which we race always only away from where life is to begin again?

Why are we so worried, so afraid of that new beginning, you know, considering how we know just how well we need it for our having not lived what is this first chance anywhere near anything well?

Well, it’s because we’ve so taken life in our own hands that we cannot contemplate how His might hold it better. Indeed, seems sadly still we scream, “Save yourself!” “If you’re really the Messiah of such miracles as we perceive the Messiah to be, come down off that tree!” For why would God so confine Himself to lose Himself in a life lain down for those who may never, in that, take theirs up again? Is there no other way? No other idea? Nothing to be done but to die?

Why?

Other side of the coins, friends.

Why do we always insist we got this figured? Have we lived a spotless life? Have we gotten everything just right? Has even today unfolded without a measure or moment otherwise unforeseen? Can we see everything? Do we really know everything? Do we even know anything?

For it seems to me that still we see only that which has always been seen, just us looking to us to tell us who to be and how to be it as best we believe we can. And this selfishness is of such self-absorbed substance that we’re now all but bound to this ground in what is this assumption that death is nothing but life lost and thus something we cannot dare even accidentally come across. Let alone actively seek for, want for, for what for?

What is there is to gain in losing a life? Once more, right back to our perspective. For the equal side of that question, a plurality all its own, is what do we gain in losing a life? For isn’t it, in some way at least, somewhat sensical to sacrifice a lost life in the hopes that we find one not lost in the process? Granted, we don’t think so, but only because still we stand and thus still see from only this side of eternity. And in this saddened and quite shortened sense of sight assuming only what we can see to be all that can be, we see that all we can be is just bound to this side of forever.

But only for a moment more.

And that moment only allowed for because we’re afraid of finding out that we’ve gotten it all so wrong that God, in His unending understanding, saw fit to send the Son who gave His life to help us see what is right and how it’s never been what we’ve become. Because if we’ve really gotten all this so very wrong that it took the spotless sacrifice of Christ to even give us the chance of being made right, well then we might not know anything near what we think we do.

And that just sucks!

Or does it?

See, that’s the underlying beauty of this faith that’s found us, for it finds for us that everything in life has an alternative, a counter, a flip-side, an unseen. And it’s this ever-unfolding of His perspective that has become, for me at least, the only last interesting thing in life. Because I’ve always seen from side of the street. I’ve always walked my way along this highway toward what is hell. I’ve only ever wanted to imagine things from within my imagination so compromised as to trust in only my imagination.

And so now getting to see just how un-me He’s always been, this brings me every morning, every moment almost, a brand new opportunity to undo all I’ve done that’s become all I now know is what I never wanted to be. Despite wanting it all so very badly, that it’s all become evidence of His goodness as proven within all the badness in me that I know I’m not anymore, it’s such a 180 that it can’t be measured. Truly, it is the most miraculous mercy in existence.

Because He went first.

He chose to be treated as the last, the worst, the very epitome of everything nobody wants. Because let’s be honest, nobody wants to be hated, mocked, ridiculed, berated. None of us are aching to be left aching and hurting and hearing the slurring of such violent hatred that it demands our very demise. Indeed, none of us wish for such a loss of life as that, get this, chosen by Christ. This is something I mention quite frequently anymore in that we all seem to avoid still those crosses He left lying beside us because we still think we know what crosses do.

And while indeed we do, we only seem to see one side of it still.

For sadly, still we think that crosses only kill. We assume graves the place where only bones grow, and that only cold. We still think that the finish line of life is a headstone and a few words left to encompass our life and all we thought it meant as paraphrased by those who hopefully knew us enough to know what meant most to us. We indeed think that life means only what we think matters. We think that hope is something we hold in our hands. We believe only in what we can see, talk this out all the time. We chase after only what comforts or comes with a crown of gold, as in only that do we glory.

Indeed, that is the story as stolen by us to be told by us as if it’s all about us. But it isn’t.

For we first will be last, and those last will be found first in what’s always been a race run best backwards in what’s supposed to be the opposite direction, and even better, upside down. And if you don’t believe me, consider this: What if, if even just for a moment, we had the audacity to imagine that the tomb is where life begins.

Humor me here, if even just for a second.

What if this life is the end? What if our birthday is the closest we’ll be to a life’s end, as it’s where sin begins to feel a friend? What if the moment we arrived on this earth is the same moment in which this earth was invited to start confusing us into our trusting us? What if all we’ve gained is actually only what we’ve lost? What if fear is faith in reverse? What if truth is only asking us to stop lying to ourselves? What if hatred is love afraid to live? What if love is truly life, and thus life only lived in love? What if all we know is all we’ve forgotten about what we could have known instead? What if everywhere we’ve never been is where we should have always gone?

What if letting go is the only way to hold on?

Because does it not take such audacious, auspicious humility to even begin to believe that getting to leave what we hold is the only way to hold hope? Doesn’t it demand a degree of self-sacrifice to imagine a better life than the one we’ve lived trying our best? Indeed, doesn’t it ask of us a slight denial of self to even suggest that our best is worthy of what He went through?

But didn’t He go through it all so that we could see that all of what we’ve done is what deserves what He went through?

And indeed, didn’t He choose to lead the way through that night, through that tomb, only to show us that even the misery of laying down a life leads somewhere, and even more, that it leads somewhere so worth going that it’s worth welcoming the suffering that comes before it in order to find it?

I know this may be perhaps my strangest post yet, but friends, I feel that we’re at the moment in time in which we need to begin to unwind all we’ve never understood, because we just can’t afford to keep running away from what we don’t understand back to the self-perceived safety of what we think we know. Because until we do otherwise we’ll never be able to stand against what we know let alone for what we haven’t known yet.

Such as how Christ came to save us by becoming for us the firstborn of all who’ve died. For that’s what we read here, that He is “the firstborn from among the dead.” And this means that if He’s our Savior, then we have to die in Him if we’re to live in Him and He in us and thus we where He is. We have to take off the temporary, even thoughts, and put on the eternal, especially thoughts. We have to start learning how to think about life upside down from how we always have.

Like how the church isn’t a building as to have a permanent address is the antithesis to its purpose in this world. Or how our always running and gunning to get our glory by yelling our story for all the world to hear is only keeping silenced the only story that matters. Or how salvation isn’t safe. Or how forgiveness is only found within a fight. Or how mercy is maybe the dirtiest word in human language in light of where it goes to lead us out from where we’ve gone.

Or how the cross carries peace. Or how the grave is where life begins. Or how His Word is supposed to offend. Or how it His hands that best hold our every hope despite the holes we nailed in them. Or how we have no hope so long as we’re looking for it down here. Or how down here is already gone in what was always only the blink of an eye when seen from eternity’s time.

For to Him one day is a thousand years and a thousand years but thus a day. And so what does any of this matter all that much, let alone enough to remain adamantly uncertain as to how His way might work best when ours hasn’t really worked at all.

It’s all about humility my friends, a fact proven in Jesus choosing to be the firstborn among the dead. He chose to die, picked the cross to get Him there, but only so that He could show us that we know nothing of either life or death as we’ve always gotten them backwards. For anything lived in sin is death, and thus losing a life lived in sin is life finally where it can begin to be what was always His best for us as it’s finally free from all we’ve become at our hands.

Friends, think it differently. Imagine in Him the outermost insanity that your mind can allow. Wonder about just how different we could see things, do things if we had the ability to not rely on our ability to wonder big enough or far enough. What might we see, come to believe were we to believe in what this world has always told us to never imagine?

Like how death is where life finally begins and how He is our head as He went ahead into that last place we’ve ever wanted to go as it’s the last place that this life ends up.

He is sovereign over even the death of which we’ve long feared as the widely assumed finale of life. And that He overcame that darkness of our doubt in order to lead us out of these graves we’ve already been living in into what was always what life was always meant to be, that just shows us that we should only trust in Him as we’ve not managed to find a way to obtain that same sovereignty over the death of which we’re still afraid. And we have tried!

It’s just that He didn’t fail where we always have.

And thus faith is an experience of His understanding, of His perspective, of His purpose. Because it helps us see that if His way can and did overcome the grave, why then do we still agree to be afraid? There is no fear in Him, for the light has over the darkness and thus the darkness has no say.

So why keep listening to what makes sense as seen our way?

No, maybe we should stop thinking we’ve gotten all this figured out, for who’s to say but that in that surrender that seems a true sacrifice of our every assumption and thus our every self-prescribed safety is where life and hope and peace were always waiting.

After all, we’ve still not found them elsewhere.

Must mean we’re supposed to look elsewhere. Maybe in that place He chose to go so as to show us that here we don’t have to stay.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold