Day 3553 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Proverbs 4:18 NIV

It seems as though that throughout my life I’ve found or felt a great many bests that only came to leave me still wondering what more might be just beyond where better has always been.

Unfortunately we’ve this strange affinity for what is the string-theory of best. For all best is begun by a billion beliefs in what we perceive as this pinnacle of what’s possible. Our understanding of best is bought by and built upon this belief in a singular point in which all possible perfection is finally proven. It’s an assumption of something of such magnificence that nothing else can, when added, magnify it any further. It is the very epitome of all that’s better.

But I believe that we’ve maybe gotten the importance, the significance of the two entirely backwards.

See, we seem to think that our perception of what’s best is, well, just that. It’s the best. It’s the cat’s. It’s an experiencing of something so good, so wonderful, so pure and perfect that it lacks nothing and thus has no room whatever to go or grow wherever said growth or going may from there go or grow. It is the end, the ideal, the finale of all that’s feeblish and fumbled along the way to finding what cannot ever be improved upon. Best is, to us, as good as it gets.

But yet, is best truly as good as it gets? Is there something that is so unquestionably amazing as considered or commandeered within this world that is unstainable, untrainable, unable to grow or gain anything any further? Is there such thing as far as we’ve found or fought to feel that is indeed without fail in terms of perfection, of peace, of promise or provision? Is there even anything within our hopes, our horrors, that cannot be held to the light only to find figments and fractures of what is a failure unfounded as of yet?

We seem to so assume, but is even our best estimation truly able to be so exacted as to remain impervious to unforeseen imperfection?

Can our calculation of a best’s estimation prove undeniably unable to be improved? And if we so believe, as it sure seems we do, well then both why have we not found this best as of yet, and too, when do we believe that we’ll be arriving upon this pinnacle of a perspective’s perfection? I mean, if what is best is truly ours to build or buy or believe we might one day still come around somehow to find, when? Where? Why? How? Who?

For if best is truly so subjective as to be left to each of us to define it for only us, well then who’s to say that our best is truly as good as it gets? Shouldn’t such a ubiquity be a bit better than such subjectivity? Do we not live as if what’s best is truly an object from which or for which or toward which we can live and breathe and be so assured that we’ve indeed found the finality of all matters finally found in such fullness that nothing further is feasible?

And is this not a massive issue all its own, this believing of ourselves to be both able to determine what best is and to then agree to believe no further for fear of finding out we were wrong?

Indeed, is not better better than best? For does not best invite the idea of rest? For if something is truly as good as it gets, something thus defined as what’s thus best, for what more might we try for? Can there be something better than best, or is not what’s best considered better than all the rest? Indeed, is this not something all of us have seen? This self-perceived belief in a best which became but a finish? Is best not but in fact a finish line? For again, can what is best be bettered?

Or rather is it not what’s best but the pinnacle, the epitome, the very finality of all other prior itinerary as instituted unto the finding of what is now finished having found what we believed best?

Yes, that’s my frustration with all this nonsense about some best in life, a best life. It’s a frustration which has become an anger most days diluted with a side of a sadness, a sorrow of sorts as it, again, invites only this idea of rest, our best. For what more might we try for if we’ve already found the very best, the very meaning of ‘as-good-as-it-gets’? What can we then improve when we’ve found the perceived pinnacle of all that’s possible? What more could there be in store when we’ve bought for ourselves, of ourselves this idea of best being capable of nothing better?

See, that’s why I so believe that indeed better is in fact better than best. Because while best delights to rest inside this thinking that nothing can be grown or gained by going further, better on the other, no, better is no such settler. Better is about building, breaking, bounding beyond any and all boundary, even that built by what we think best. Yes, better is always believing that there is a better still to come or rather to become.

You see, better is a movement further whereas best a momentum finished. Because, by definition, to be best is to not need any other, to know not of anything any better, any further. But to be better is to believe that even once there, even from there is better still. There is always opportunity believed worth the work within what’s better as better believes in and for and toward what’s still better more. Best can’t believe that as best believes it’s as good as it gets. And so best can get no more, gain no more, know no more, be no more.

Better, though, no, better is all about the more as it wonders toward what might be better still. And this, to me at least, seems a lane of thought more in line with this faith of ours in Christ. For I don’t quite recall the point nor passage in which He asks us to stay put, to stop short, to assume that there is nothing further to find, feel, forge, force, forget, fail, fumble, figure, factor, form or forsake. For is there not always something we can learn, lose, look toward or leave behind?

What then of this finish line of what we believe best?

Sure, Jesus is spoken of that one time bending down to draw in the dirt, maybe a line. But even then, it has nothing to do with any such thing as standing. In fact, even that, it was about calling all to move away from where they were, who they were, if any be without sin, let them throw first. And so even that, it wasn’t a finish line but rather the starting point of a heart given unto a hopeful reconsideration as to the persecution of those equally sinful as the rest of us.

And yet such a vanity as to judge others unduly, such is again something we’ve all felt best to do, believing ourselves good enough to so look down upon those fallen around. Is that our finish line? Thinking ourselves so impressive, so amazing, so flawless and faithful that we’re without fail our own to focus on fixing? Is that not the meaning of the parable separating eyes filled with planks from those only stung by splinters?

Is it not that we can and should focus on us being better rather than thinking ourselves best and thus better than the rest, and too thus able to rest upon our perception of what’s best as believed by us and thus often for us? Do we not indeed seek such rest as from having to try to remove the planks from our eyes? For we don’t like having to succumb to such struggle as a life lived in such strife as to seek to better our lives rather than judging others for how we think they’re living theirs wrong.

And I believe that such is quite why we’re told here that the path of the righteous is as the morning sun. It’s a matter always getting brighter, better, straining for the measure of a belief building into what is a coming crescendo upon the day of Christ Jesus. Indeed, we’re told this bluntly in Philippians 1:6, a consideration most confident we’re told, that, “that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.”

Thus completion is the day of Christ Jesus. And thus what our faith believes to be the very best is the day of Christ Jesus. For us to live is Christ Jesus, to die is gain. To live is to lose, to learn, to thus let go this idea that enough we know to know what’s best before we’re upon the day of Christ Jesus. Where in all this are we finished? Where, or rather maybe when will we have won this accomplishment of a life lived with no room for improvement? How can we even begin to believe that we can be a life lived without room for improvement?

Are we perfect? Are we close? Are we even able to fathom such a founding as the foundation of perfection as poured by He who poured His blood for the unrighteous to help them find the humility which turns a self-righteous stagnancy into a newfound urgency to seek out true righteousness rather than holding tight our estimation of such an opportunity as this that is to grow in Christ, and too Christ in us? No, I don’t believe we can so fathom, factor, figure or find this ideal of a life that all would agree best.

For friends, we’re just dust.

And so why settle for such a selfish finish line as what seems best to us? As dust who’ve lived like dirt, are we of such wise ability as to define what best is, and thus where rest begins? And even if we were, as we so often seem to still so sadly assume, would our rest in our best not then be but a life lived in dust and dirt and rust and rejection of some audacious asking that we believe in something better still than what we’ve settled for? For what can the dead know of what’s best?

Have we found or felt the entirety of a life’s opportunity? Have we held every hope as considered throughout the world? Have we known a moment not mangled by fear or failure? Have we gotten everything right? Can we truly continue on as if we’ve found or can someday find this undeniable best as believed for within this world by those who are here so seeking such a substance?

Or are we rather but vagrants upon what is a journey from selfish victim to salvation’s victor? Indeed, is the finality of salvation’s faith in us not what’s truly best for us? Christ died to help us so believe. And personally, I just don’t think He’d have done so if there were something better, another version of what might be best. No, for the truth holds that there is no other, neither Name nor thus Way for He is the Way, the only Name by which we must be saved.

And so there is no better than Christ, and yet we’ve settled for so many assumed bests that we’re even now hesitant at best to believe in the better He calls us to be. So much so that we see with our own eyes and feel in our own hearts, or at least could, this vast discrepancy between our best and the better for which He died for us to at first believe and then become.

Because that’s just it, the entire point I’ve been failing to get across over the past few posts. Better is about becoming something. It’s a movement. An improvement. Betterment. It’s always growing, always knowing that there’s more to do, to be, to see, sell, sacrifice, and in that find more of life as held inside the opportunity held in what is meant when we hear it said that less is more.

For the less we have, the more we both appreciate what is had and too the less we want of what then we learn doesn’t add more to life. Yes, we’ve discussed that recently, how here there are a great many things only steal life from life, and our idea of best is perhaps the biggest thief of all. For again, best incites rest. But friends, on this journey from everlasting to everlasting, there’s no time for resting as none of us are perfect nor most days even nearing.

No, we’ve all endless opportunity for improvement, which is but a conscious investment in and toward our betterment.

And if you still don’t believe in the beauty of better being better than best, does not Heaven’s holding of our rest define the only finish line we should allow in life? Indeed, our peace is promised later, a promise meant to inspire us to further our faith in He who left to not only lead the way but to in fact be the Way. And He gave us that promise of that peace, of that rest of Heaven so to inspire us to just keep going until we get there. Because we’re not there yet. And we know this because of our room for improvement as proven in those moments in which we hurt or worry or find yet again another fear or failure to be better than we’ve become.

My point friends is that we should not seek our rest until it’s a firmly founded matter. But sadly, that’s exactly what this idea of something being best conspires against. Best cannot believe that there is something better beyond it. But to continually try to get better, to believe bigger, to believe in that which is bigger and better, so much better that it’s promised to be what’s best for all of forever, that is who and what we’re called to be and do.

And so you see, we’ve plenty of work to do, losses to win and wins to lose. After all, we’ll take nothing of here when we go. So let us not live as if our best will be left behind. No, let us rather imagine that our best hasn’t begun quite yet, and that until it does, we’ve a whole journey of better for which to believe. For if we stop now, who knows what we'll never see? Is not life always still alive just ahead around the bend, down the road, along the line?

Indeed it is, because thanks to Christ overcoming our underwhelming, there is now no finish line to life as the grave stands only as a greeting welcoming us home. And so please don't settle for the death of what you think best, but rather always believe for better, for that belief will continue ahead while best will only stay behind.

Friends, just stay bold enough to always believe in something better than what either we or the world around thinks to be best, for that’s the only way to become better, as only the bold can believe in such a blessing as better has always been and yet still believes it can indeed still be.

Ever brighter until the coming full light of day. Don’t stop within this night through which we walk toward the light that is the Christ.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold