Day 3551 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Psalm 84:10 NIV

If a single day is undeniably better then is it not safe to say that such a better found forever is indeed all but eternally immeasurable?

What’s amazing to me is the almost obnoxious simplicity contained within such a faith that allows for that outlook as considered of the sons of Korah in this verse for today. Obnoxious in that it’s so blatantly obvious and yet is anymore something of such contradiction to our confusion that we’re seemingly happier remaining all but oblivious to it. That we could retire from trying to find, and continuing to fail, this ideal of a best life is such an enormous gift that we should be only quick to receive it.

Alas it seems that all we’ve all set out to seek and receive instead is but a doubt so deep that still we think that our life is somehow on us to define.

And it’s within this ideal that is apparently waiting somewhere within our ideas that we’ve all but lost the plot of what’s always been life’s purpose as purchased by He who designed all this to uphold His vision for everything. And yet everything we do is anymore done against His will, seeking instead our way, and finding only our struggle to find anything worth such a usurpation of His ordination. Indeed, we’ve so denied Him His due that all we do is all of what He asked us not to.

And well, as for when we reached this point whereupon we discovered (or deciphered, determined, designed?) this self-made ability to actually think we could somehow come to know better than He who knows all is roughly the same place in time in which we seem to have lost our minds.

For why do we feel such a glory in this stealing of our story in order to write what we think right so that we never have to again feel wrong? What is it about our dreams or designs for things that scream our glory that continues to convince us that this is our story? Have we not felt the sting of such things as shame? Is the sorrow we’ve seen truly evidence of our not knowing without question what’s best? Looking back and seeing any mistake we’ve made, should such really make us think we can manage to miss them next time?

I think the overall and yet underlying issue is but a problem proven in what is a vastly growing impatience. We live in such a fast-paced world that we think we have to just hurry up and shoot from the hip so to speak. We act as if we’ve to make our every decision as fast as possible so that we’re not left making the next behind others who’ve already made their picks. Yes, we rush through life unwilling to risk being wrong, and yet that lack of caution and care is what’s opened the door for all the mistakes we’ve seen, shown, felt and faced down here.

And so to us, here in this life lost in rush, one day is too much to wait as to us such feels a waste as we’ve things to gain, places to go, sights to see, ideals to be. Indeed, one day to us is but a million opportunities, all of which are compiled and congealed inside this misunderstanding that has us convinced that we know what we’re doing. And we’re so used to this idea that we’ve built every barricade to anything better so that we never have to sit inside the realization that what we are, where we are, who we are and what we don’t yet have is unworthy the wonder.

Yes, we’ve traded wonder for what is a life measured, trying only to keep ourselves convinced that this is as good as it gets.

And to me, knowing what all I’ve seen, what all I’ve known, what all I still wonder about having never tried for, fought for, walked toward, I have left no reason to imagine that this is as good as it gets.

And I think the cross is to blame.

For indeed, what is better worth? See, that seems something that we so often leave an afterthought at best. What is better worth? We don’t wait to worry about such wealth as it’s not considered worth all that much to this world, definitely not enough to slow down in order to consider. No, again, we’re busy running behind and can’t risk falling only further so while dallied by some tally of what is worth the trek and what we should just stop trying.

Don’t think about any of this because we’re here where everything is known, and even more so, it’s all figured out and all but finalized in fact. Yes, our lives are scheduled for us from the moment we turn five and are scurried off to start elementary school. Start driving at 16. Finish high school, 18. First job somewhere in between. Head off to college, next four figured. Bachelor’s somewhere around the end of bachelorhood. Married by late-20, kids on the way by mid-30, settle down before 40, white picket and all. Routine the next 20 until it’s time to retire. Worry for the 3-4 before the end of an impressive resume, only to finally agree that 70 is almost here and thus time won’t be for much longer. Hope to hit 80, 90 is rare.

And just like that a whole life is lived, and all the while life may have never been lived at all.

Because we live here as if we have thousands of days to waste in what is a hurry up and wait for what we will always be able to imagine could have been better.

That’s my fear as felt down here. It’s not what I’m missing by worrying about what the world says is best. No, it’s rather a worry over what I’ve missed, may miss still as I fight against this focus on a world that wants to live my life by telling me what is widely understood as what I too should thus consider best.

What is best? And better yet, when did a world passing away become the place to which we look to tell us how to live it? May just be me, used to that worry as well, but that seems at least fairly counter-intuitive.

For what can world so rife with what’s wicked know of what’s worthy of such a gift as our time given it? What can a place so filled with shame and disgrace define about a best lifetime? What does dust know of what’s best? Can those who didn’t create life truly comprehend what best done with it? Or is rather that sort of design best left up to He who designed it?

Better is one day.

Can you imagine that? A kind of belligerent belief able to believe that a single day elsewhere is better than a thousand lived here? Can you imagine all we could do, see, be within a thousand years down here? Just think of it. If our life’s allotment of days were each a thousand of the same, we’d then be here with a thousand lives to live. And yet here we read of a strange belief that better is one day in the presence of God than a thousand spent outside of it.

Why? How? Who? What? How? It’s mind-blowing for sure. But thankfully, as He’s always proven quite keen to help, He’s breathed a bit of assistance in the rest of this observance.

“Tents of the wicked.”

See, that’s the antithesis of betterment. For we read of His Word where it says, and plenty of times mind you, that wickedness is a lack of godliness. And too that sin wins a wage of what is death. And to make all of this clear to these eyes upon which we so rely, here came the Christ. Cross and all. Death paid for those who’d earned it, all of us. How did we end up deserving that, you know, having become so widely convinced that we were on our way to what was best for us?

Exactly. Seems we’re not as able to define such extremes as what is undeniably best, are we? No, for it seems that at least some of the things that have been accomplished or allotted in our “best” thus far demanded the death that Christ endured, which is not at all what I think any of us could imagine as what’s best for us. And thus we’ve rounded the bend back to where we should have been.

Because that is what’s best for us. How? Well, again, what’s best? Even less arduous, what’s better? Well, to even begin to consider that, we have to at first agree to some measure of what’s lesser. So what’s lesser? And considering we’re talking on the grand scale of a lifetime, what’s a lesser outcome of life? Is it not what we see in Christ? For His outcome as demanded of mankind was about the last thing that any of us would pick to define what we think is best. We’re not all aching for crucifixion now are we? No, we don’t even like it when it rains!

Okay, getting somewhere. All these things we hate, or that make us hesitate, things like having to wait or experiencing pain or indeed getting stuck in the rain and watching it wash away our plans for what we had hoped to be a better day, all these things we hate, are they not what we’d agree to be lesser than what’s otherwise better? And is not the combination of them then the culmination of what we’d perceive as a life lived lesser? Nothing but rainy days and miseries?

Sounds miserable to me. At least the miseries part as I personally love the rain.

Anyway…

Indeed, those things are widely considered the lesser side of life, but what then is a better life? Is it something seen only in sunny days? It is felt only when things don’t make us feel bad or sad or alone or afraid? And considering that just doesn’t happen on a consistent enough basis around here, is a better life then one designed only in dreams and thus measured by the impossibility that so many others have proven themselves to be able to find?

Or have we all lived all our dreams? Have we indeed found the fountain of fortune in terms of a life lived in undeniable perfection? Is our life here perfect? Is your life perfect? Is mine?

I mean, we’ve all tried so hard to make them so, and so what need of dreams for things we’ve not had nor ever seen? Would we be able to dream if our lives were filled with the things that we think would be perfect were we to find them finally? Indeed, but yet, is there any such finality in life, any found as of yet at least? Or are we not all but robots self-programmed to awake into each new day determined to find still more, still better than the stillborn of yesterday?

For is that not the hatred of the past? That it so failed to prove our perfect that still we must now pursue it? And is this not an irony in and of itself in that we then thought we knew what perfect would be and perhaps best thus where to find it, after all if perfect is such a subjective subject, then would we not be the perfect subjects to find it? And yet that our pasts have only proven we haven’t, having camped ourselves in plenty of wicked tents, doesn’t this define us as thus unable to define it, to find it, to force it?

For if we could have, would we not have by now?

And again, if we have, as so often our pride pretends, well then what of all this want? What do we still need if our lives are as perfect as we try to make them seem? Do we not only try such pretend only to convince ourselves most of all that we’ve not missed much at all within this fumbling and falling always back to the beginning of a belief as bound to come about by our always thinking we’re the ones who have to dream it up?

When did life become ours to so define, design, demand?

And if, again, it is ours to design, define, demand, then why haven’t we found it yet? We’ve spent plenty of days looking, many of them amassing now into what is perhaps years spent searching, decades maybe. What does this say of our understanding of time that we’re so willing to waste it on hurrying right along after what we think might work, but yet remaining unwilling to risk any of it on anything that didn’t ask us to think of it? After all, has it not always been our ideas that we’ve lived to follow? Our presence thus felt better than that of any other fellow?

Do we not argue with God when it seems His will contends against our own?

Does not His will fight against our way because He knows that to pursue is more important than to just peruse? For all our lives, at least thus far, we’ve set our sights to things we see, assuming inside such simplicity the validity of our vanity having always assumed we knew what to do and where to go to not go without anymore. And this has left us lost looking only among the crumbs which fall from the tables of those who are too only trying to pretend they’re finding what none of us have found thus far.

Indeed, we wake only to walk back to the want for what we think we need, chasing only such wants as those desires that have defined our otherwise indifference toward the thankfulness for all that we’ve been given and still are called to become.

Because such is the better life, it’s the pursuit of betterment as given us of God’s benevolence as needed to erase our imperfections and idiocies as found and defined by our arrogance thinking that we could do more in this lifetime as defined by the limited number of days in which we live it than He could across the eternity that our blindness just cannot agree to see. And I say agree because, well, just look again at this boldest of belief!

Better is one day. It’s a willingness thus to trade a thousand spent somewhere else doing something else near someone else for the chance at the stance inside the presence of the divine. Who would even imagine such a trade? One for a thousand? Giving up a thousand to get only one in return, and even beyond that, feeling as if we won?

Better is one day, because friends, that one spent so close to the source of life and love is one that would leave us not recognizing anymore all that’s always been lesser. For as it turns out, there’s just a different kind of math when equating days against eternity. For again, here days end, there, not so much.

For you see, God in Christ gave us all we need to live the better life, indeed the best life, so much so that even death doesn’t have a say anymore, at least in eternity’s court. And even though it’s so clearly Him we’re called to pursue, still rather we seem content to only peruse the perishing as purchased inside our thoughts of things we might like as loved by a world of which we seek to be just like. Why? Why do we settle for perusing the perishable as opposed to pursuing the permanent?

Why do we elate to emulate the ending, allowing thus a share of their fear of all this one day ending, when instead we could emulate the unrelenting? For is that not what Christ has proven Himself to be? Left the 99 for you and me? Scorned the shame of the cross’s pain, all because He knew to where the path through the grave would go? And is this not the example that we’re now all called to follow? Crosses carried, costs counted, shames scorned and hopes held beyond the horizon as seen from only our shallow perspectives?

Indeed, the Bible tells us plain to sit and consider the cost before we build this belief. Don’t take my word though, take His. Yes, please read Luke 14:28, the entire passage perhaps. For it speaks to the cost of being a disciple of this Christ. And in fact it even defines the dire degree of this demand as our being as Him in the laying down of our lives. And if we’re to lay down our lives, can we thus still rely on our minds, our eyes, our ears to hear here of what we supposedly need for some subjectivity of what is apparently some life so perfect that all others will be is but simply amazed at our finding of what none have thus far found either upon or within this ground?

That’s the difference between all that’s better and all that’s thus lesser. It’s seen in that Jesus didn’t stop here, wouldn’t even give death the honor of supposing He might. No, we pursued His purpose, knowing again where the path was pointed, and thus the point of it all. And it’s that same promise He calls us to purchase, to prefer, to prioritize, to pursue. And as He knows well, better than all in fact what all we’ll face along this way, He breathed the Word which asks we persevere. Because to persevere is to pursue. And well, we’ve a perfect promise to so prefer that nothing here is allowed to matter much anymore.

So little in fact that we’d readily agree losing a thousand of our days, even a thousand lives as lived in this world is well worth the win of one spent in His presence.

For that’s the better life. It’s found in realizing that no matter what we find, feel, go through, it’s so temporary here that it doesn’t matter as much as we so often tend to make it seem. Because friends, the fact is that here we dwell, if not in, at least among the tents of the wicked. Here we’re surrounded by sorrow and shame, things we’ve all felt ourselves. Here we see people hurting, even hurting one another. We feel the heat, see the hate, know the weight of a world gone cold and growing further that way.

What then do we have to lose that we’re thus afraid to leave?

What if instead we could come to believe that His Way is better, and even better, that His Way is best? Not because of what it asks we go through but simply because of what all it leads to. And sure, we can’t see Heaven, don’t know what God looks like, can’t draw a map to where those gates stand in wait, don’t have any idea as to how we’ll feel should we make it through them some day.

But friends, we can see what’s here, and well, it seems that all this ugliness is a perfect place to begin building our ability to imagine such beauty as what Heaven must be. And I believe it must be so impossibly amazing because of what He went through to unlock those doors.

What are we willing to go through to reach them? What are we willing to lose? What are we willing to trade?

For yes, better is one day.

Because we’ve lived several thousand only to still be searching for something better. So stop searching friends for it’s far simpler.

In fact, He told us where to look.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold