Day 3565 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

1 Peter 5:7 NIV

Perhaps we’ve become a bit too accustomed to a world in which so many requests are requested without reason, and this has left us feeling as if any suggestion is at best halfhearted perhaps.

Alas, this sort of jaded perspective has purchased for us a perfecting refusal as to the perusal of any potential problem not our own making. For we know we’ve plenty of power to provide our own path its fair of what always feels perfectly precarious. It’s why all this walking so anxious. Indeed, I dare say we know more anxiety and worry than life lived without as to live a life without is simply not something done down here. No, we’ve too much we hear, too much we fear, too much tied in between hearing and fearing that we keep only finding every reason to deny any request as held in an outside suggest as we just cannot take much more uncertainty.

We’re coming apart at the seams as it sits.

And yet, is this splitting of hairs and giving way to cares not only caused by our incessant insistence upon being the ones who are proven of the substance to withstand what maybe isn’t even ours to understand? That’s what’s been on my mind for nigh a week at this point, this idea that all this worry we want or otherwise win anyway, it’s all but a burden we’ve indeed become having become unwilling to be unburdened by both what has been, what still is and the more of which we waste today worried still about tomorrow more than anything.

Why is that? Or maybe better asked, how is that? How can we worry so much about so much and still assume ourselves in the land of the living? How can we be alive when we’re living a lie as told inside both one-sided memories and too these one-minute victories? Is that not all we know to do and pursue? Just excuses as won from past failures alongside reasons to act as if we’ll not repeat them anyway along the way to what is, if won, but a moment stood within the sun, and even then still likely outside the Son?

Is this what we want? To live here somewhere lost between what’s behind and what may never even be? Why so much worry?

We’ve talked a lot about a worry’s weight of late. It’s this effort given unto understanding what we’re doing and why it’s not helping. For anymore we, everywhere, seem and see so many, ourselves mostly and only then within those few moments of a humbled honesty, just this great casualty in life. We’re all anymore so crushed and crumbling under the weight of worry and want. That was the specifics of yesterday’s lesson in Godly civics. For all study of civics is the leaning in to the learning of what is deemed both rights and duties as given unto the citizens of a civility.

And we are indeed all citizens of God’s creation, and even further for some, citizens of Heaven merely awaiting our ticket. Right? And if we are, as He said we could, why then want for this thicket of worry and want which has us wasted and wasting within the walk home? Again, is this what we want? And actually, in consideration of how none of this has anything at all to do with what we want, is this what God wants? Does He want to see us so bound and broken by doubt and desire?

Tackled that one yesterday too, the truth in that worry is won within both what we want to avoid and what simply we want not to. We’ve managed to find a way to worry about everything from the getting of what we want to the missing of what we don’t. And here within this constant middle ground mayhem as found in between them, here we sit so silly and sad that we cannot see that it shouldn’t seem this bad. For life was never meant to be lived according to what we get nor what we pray we miss.

Life is instead a gift, and as it wasn’t ours to give, nor then is it ours to get.

We don’t need to be so adamant upon our understanding of everything under the sun. We needn’t be always so worried about winning our wants or outrunning our worries. Life isn’t supposed to be so filled with such anxiety. And yet it is, and even then filling still. For our every single day is one fought through worry toward want, and within the fight we’ve lost our sight of things above as all that lies below has become all we see and thus all we know.

What then of what more we don’t?

I asked yesterday what it is that we gain within all this worry over pain, rain, change and choice. What do we benefit by even the getting of all for which we’ve become all but adamant? Does any of it ever prove any betterment? Are we bettered in any way by the battlement of doubt and disbelief? Rather, on the other, are we indeed bettered by the becoming or coming of all we’ve wanted and won? Does anything bad make our lives worse? Does anything we consider good make them lighter?

Can any of the any of the above truly prove to matter when none last more than a minute or month? Or does not life still find always a way to turn the tide and twist our lives either under the waves or back again to brighter days?

See, that’s what I don’t understand about all we’re trying so hard to understand, so hard in fact that we’re fraught with fright and finding there this needing to fight but in that continuing to fail to find what we want without any of all we don’t. It’s that life ebbs and tides, it twists and shoves and comes and goes as if the tide that ebbs and flows. It’s an ever-going confusion as each day brings troubles both new and old, plenty of each all their own.

That’s what we’re told in Scripture, Matthew 6:34. “Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.” And in fact, just before we read that we’re requested to seek first His kingdom. And yet there we have it, yet again another requesting of some new and novel suggesting that we might not know what we’re doing nor then what we’re losing as we’re just kind of spinning our wheels and wasting our time with all this worrying.

For what? Well, Jesus gave us a couple examples to consider in that same passage of Matthew 6. “’What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’” And indeed, are not these still things over which still we worry and for which still we want? Food, drink, clothes, comforts, contentment, the content of comfort and contentment continuing without abatement or our own abandonment? Do we not worry about that as well? Everything and everyone leaving, us then as lonely as we so often feel here inside a life all but lost to worry?

And again, is this what He wants?

Doesn’t seem so as His Word asks numerous times that we number not our worries but rather ask Him to help us learn to number our days as, “Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes?” And yet as those things and the more just like them have become both worry and want within our eyes and minds and thus too lives, what can any of us say in regard to what life really is? For He’s told us that life is more than what we wear, so much so that He knows the very number of our hair and that we are of more value to Him than the birds of the air for which He also takes care.

Why then are we so cared, considerate, concerned about all this other nonsense?

Can any of us add an hour?

That’s what kind of started this here string of these here posts. It was the proverbial final nail in our naivety as known in all manner of want and worry. It’s the realizing that we cannot force anything by worrying about it, neither the good to come nor the bad to tarry, nor the length of which either stay or how long they take when neither seem inclined to do it our way. And that’s the point in all this for today. It’s that our way, friends, it isn’t a way. It doesn’t exist. It’s but a fragment of our foolish selfishness still assuming both we know what we’re doing and thus what we can’t deal with right now as we’re busy trying to make the best of what’s become a burden.

Why is life so heavy? When did we agree to so let it be? What do we gain by welcoming the weight of worry or the depth of desire? Do not both merely keep us frustrated, angry, upset? Both because we don’t have yet what we want more than what we have already and too because we’re tired of having to try through things that we don’t enjoy? Maybe that’s it? Just that we’ve gotten the entirely wrong idea about the enjoyment of life?

Is life only meaningful when it’s filled with what we like? Is not life still life when it sucks and we can’t seem to find our smiles anymore?

That’s the point in all this pointlessness of what worry really is. It’s stealing our lives, and as He’s the One who both gave them to us and then came to save them from us, yeah, I’d imagine He’s not too pleased or impressed with our giving them every day over to all this stress. Because when we’re so broken and beaten, we’ll struggle even more to be thankful. And when we’re not thankful, we’ll find no reason to turn our face to He who we think is the One making us miserable for again not giving us our way.

Trust me friends, we don’t really want our way. For sure, it seems nice up here upon this surface of the superficial and selfish, but just beneath the lies and a little beyond the tides, it turns into what is a monster we cannot allow ourselves to imagine from up here. And I know this, and I know we all know this, because you and I know well what guilt is. We know what regret is. We’ve felt the sting of shame and sin, and if you say I’m wrong, why then do we still worry about the past?

Is it not over? Same of the future, is it basically nothing as of now? For just as the past cannot be rewritten so as to avoid our shame over past mistakes, nor can the future be proven to be void of the same. For truth is that we’re still the same so long as we still waste away in between both want and worry. For so long as our priorities are placed upon the things we want and the more over which we stress, we’ll be without time left to focus on what actually makes us better.

Which is what He wants. He wants us to do better, to live better, to be better, and that both here and forever.

That’s why He came in Christ. It was to take off of us all our wants, all our worries, all our fears, our every failure and foolishness and forced forsaking of all that He is and all He’s still doing. He came to clear the way for us to see that neither what we want nor over what we worry, they neither have the power to overcome His purpose nor to alter the path along which said promise is proven. So what are we doing?

I ask that all the time in these attempts to get through and help bring us back to sense. What are we doing? I ask it often as the truth is that we’re losing, but I feel the need to point this out as in this life we’ve bought this lie that all loss is a loss of life. But friends, if we lose something hard or heavy or hopeless, isn’t this a benefit? Are we not actually made better, is not life lived better, do we not feel better when we lose something loathsome?

And is this not what Jesus started and finished upon the cross, our loss of everything hard and hopeless, lovely and loathsome? And did He not do all this to take from us our every distraction as defined by what sin is? For all sin is is missing God in the moment as we’re instead focused on something else. And is this not what worry is? Is it not too all that our every want has seemed to be? Just us focused on something else other than trust, other than faith, other than walking by such and thus not caring what we see, how we feel, that we’ll fail?

Can we fail what He chose?

No, for He accomplished that for which He came. But make no mistake, we can give the rest of our lives away to unrest, to disquiet, to disappointment and doubt as we decide to carry what He came to take away. And thus we find that He asks still that we still lay down our worries, still unshoulder our sorrow, still offload our outlooks and ask Him to teach us to see that He’s enough. He’s all we need. He is our only worry, as only He should we fear letting down, doing without, not having enough, our not measuring up.

Because life isn’t held inside what we want as most of it we can in fact do without, something we can see here and now as we don’t have some of the things we desire and we’re doing just fine anyway. And nor is life contained within what we so often worry about as most of our fears are in fact never found. No, life is a gift meant to be lived in freedom from all such worldly burden as worry and want, anxiety and restlessness.

“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened and I will give you rest.”

That’s why He makes such a big deal about the Sabbath. It’s a day of rest. A day of not worrying. A day lived without the otherwise normality of work and want, both of which over which we worry. Here we’ve always got things we feel we have to get done so that we can then get to the fun that we insist waits always beyond the lists of other burdens which keep our enjoyment abated. And He asks us to shift our focus from that for just a minute, a day, a lifetime in fact. For Christ is the Lord of the Sabbath, and thus our rest is in Him, found both finally and fully when we set our sights to follow Him only.

How can we do that when we worry? How can we devote everything to Him when still we want anything else?

Can’t we see it?

It’s that last little half of this here verse. “Because He cares for you.” Shows us where His heart is. Where is ours? He cares for us, but can we say we care about Him? Can we say that we care about His way when we want still our own? Can we say we care about His will when we’re tired of it being harder than we’d like? Can we say we care about peace when we refuse to let loose the things that keep it from coming? Can we say we care about salvation when we continue making the same mistakes for the same reasons? Can we say we’re free, as free as He died to help us be, when our lives are still lost between want and worry?

He wants it all my friends, our every anxiety. Why? Because that’s not how life is lived. He created us to trust in Him, and our every worry, our every fear, our every desire and all we want for ourselves down here, they’re all only distractions from the undivided trust that our faith is supposed to be. For we simply cannot walk by faith if still we’re focused on what we either want to see or the storms we hope we never do.

We have to stop making all this harder than it needs to be. He cares for us, and His care, as seen here, is the kind that wants us not to be all stressed out and anxious.

So why are we? If it’s not from Him, then where’s it coming from? And if ain’t coming from Him, well then, where is it leading us?

That’s the hidden danger in our every distraction. We don’t know where it’s leading. We do know where He led though. And so why continue giving into our worries, our fears, our cravings and lusts when He’s proven that all things here will be left to dust?

Is that what we want? It may be what we have and most days how we feel. But hey, if we’re crushed under the weight of all our worries and wants, we’re in a perfect place to start praying. And that little shift from the ground to our knees just might truly prove enough to help us to finally feel free.

I’d say it’s worth the chance. After all, can’t imagine we’ve anything to lose when He’s asked for all we have but has given us all He is in return.

And that to the tune of forever. What else then can or should possibly matter?

#LeaveNoSoulUntold