Day 3568 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Philippians 4:7 NIV

It's as if, all at once, all of life's storms are stopped, a calming of every wave of worry and wander, finding us finally free of what it is to feel afraid as we find ourselves not the basis of our beliefs anymore.

No, it’s as if we've washed finally upon the shoals of eternity's shore. And it’s here, within this place, placed at peace within His grace that we find we've nothing to fear, know nothing of fright, just of rather a life all but now completely lost within the light that is His love that is indeed a gift given unto us from high above. And it’s this very gift that very much does surpass all understanding, even our often still feebly trying.

And that His grace leads to this place where our understanding isn’t needed anymore, such it what this freedom is for.

It’s to absolve us of us and all we’ve done, been, become and seek still to be. It’s a letting go of you and me, a finally kind of free, one felt for all of eternity. A journey into the justice of our just being just His again, nothing else, nothing less, nothing more needed anymore. Just us. Just Him. Just here. Just there. Just Heaven and somehow us heathen invited to this place our pasts have proven we’re only too afraid to be found. All because we know by us it cannot be.

And this is quite perfectly the entire point of His promise having come to us packaged in a Shepherd who laid down His life for us sheep so often lost within this clothing of wolves, wrapped within wrath as if our own will is still the only way in which a life might be won. But there is all over again, for what have we won? What have we done? Of all that we’ve done to get what we’ve won, what of any of it can say with any eternal validity that we’re otherwise validated by such vanity?

Or are not our wins as won within worry and want but a weight we’ve left cast upon this ground and thus one not carried by we who claim to be those that He came to save by teaching us the weight of our worries and why they’re just not worth the weary they win. This is the call of crosses, a burden borne by those who believe that there still doth be life to be lived beyond what crosses do. Indeed, it’s a belief so extreme that it conceives peace inside that place where crosses lead.

A peace that surpasses all understanding.

To surpass is exceed, to outdo, outshine, outstrip, outclass, overshadow, outperform and eclipse. It’s what some translations call a transcendence, a rising above or going beyond the outermost limits of something or someone’s abilities to be something, see something, know something, understand. And thus this peace which is here promised to surpass all understanding is indeed a journey beyond understanding both alongside and still to a peace that manages to always outpace both the past and the present.

All by inviting us unto a promise so perfect that eternity is proven the only place it proven period.

For here, as we’ve talked at length of late, here we’ve known only this way of peace in pieces as found placed in places that seem so often so few and so far between that we seem most days too broken to believe anymore. For to believe is to become willing to be undone by what is, what isn’t, what might be and what never will. It’s a humility that trusts in the unseen, is certain about the unsearchable, adamant upon that considered unfindable or undefinable. And it’s all this curiosity that both kills cats but also in that revives the soul somehow.

And this somehow is simply because that’s how He designed this ride to go. For this journey from everlasting to everlasting, it’s one ever-laden with every wonder imaginable, and alongside them every inability to come even close. That, to me, is one of the greatest kinds of beauty, all this uncertainty. For here we’ve become entirely too reliant upon our own understanding. In fact, it’s as if most days are found finding us finding us the only way to stand, determining for us that for which we stand or rather, and more common, what we simply cannot stand.

Yes, we live our each and every as if they’re all but only the sum of what we can assume, surmise, some sort of ongoing lack of surprise as we seek only in life the evidence of both our existence as found in a reason we feel worthy of such a burden but also of everything else that we otherwise know now only to doubt. For to doubt is a close cousin to the courage counted in chasing the uncertain. Alas, it seems vast the closest of the two as to believe is commonly seen as only a building upon the burden of life itself.

For to believe asks that we let go of we who know only to be what we’ve become, which is but an indifference stuck somewhere in between what it is to doubt and why we thus struggle to believe.

Indeed, we’ve anymore more reasons to worry than to wait. And this seems a right confusion in all reality as reality says that we have to wait if we’re to worry as worrying takes time. We have to spend minutes, hours, days, moments no matter the measure, trying to imagine the worst so that we feel ready to face what we’d rather not. And it’s all this worry that’s become what we want for sake of the waiting that it offers as it’s not the sort that’s not reliant upon us.

Yes, we rely so heavily on ourselves that we seem willing to chase worry as it solves our fear of having to wait for what we still couldn’t see, but alas would feel wasn’t out of our control.

That’s why we lean so much upon our own understanding. It’s a mindset that allows us this sense of control, even though we still have all but none at all. Our trying to wrap our minds around everything gives us this perception of our having a say or a hand in everything. It’s our trying to insist that we’re a part of this, as if our vote has ever counted. It hasn’t, just that our pride cannot seem to abide by such a freedom as that found in our needing Him.

No, we’d rather lean upon what we know, which is only what we assume we do, for such grants us this giving of ourselves both glory and leniency. Glory when it goes right, leniency when it doesn’t. For we’ve no mind absorbing all the applause from the crowds not gathered around within these mirrors that we look to as the ones we seek to speak to, speak for, live for and want more. And nor have we any qualms in regards to letting ourselves go unchained by our staying so unchanged.

For to us, that’s just all that makes any sense. Cheering ourselves on for things we didn’t accomplish on our own and ignoring the mistakes we make whenever we do try this all alone.

And this is the chain which binds us to our hatred of rain, our fear of pain, our unwillingness to train ourselves in Godliness, stuck instead inside our lack of contentment. It’s a choice chosen to lean on us who are all but frozen in this middle ground of a life going tepid in a place long cold. Yes, we’re losing our ability to live every single time that we insist that we be the ones who consist or suggest the way this should go, our understanding trying so hard to lead the way we want. And when those wants either fail to be found or are found but only faulty, we need a fault. We need a blame. We need a name to say that says it wasn’t us who did it this way, wanted it this way.

But alas it was as it’s always been us who live as if we know what we’re doing, and thus it’s only us who keeps us so bound to a life lived fleeing in fear rather than walking free.

Because we know what such a freedom demands. It asks that we be unbound to even us, especially us as it’s again always been only us who have determined upon every disaster our pasts say we’ve designed. It’s always been us who’ve agreed to waste our time dabbling in both delights and denials. It’s always been us who have chosen the choices we’ve chased as if we couldn’t live without them. And too, it’s always been us who have caught what we’ve wanted only to find in it nothing we imagined.

In fact, many of the things we’ve found or forced, well, they’ve become for us a fear of faith as we know that faith asks us to enter the presence of the Father we’ve forsaken, forgotten, failed and flogged. Yes, this freedom found in Jesus asks that we agree that it was us who beat Him, betrayed Him, treated Him as if lower than vermin. And this is something we cannot understand as, at least in our understanding, we’ve not done anything so bad as to either receive what He felt nor what He did it for.

But that’s just it, it’s the what He did it for. For His Word reads that He came that we might have life and that to the full. A free indeed kind of life in fact. But to achieve that asked the deliverance of death as this is all that’s able to overcome a life not lived quite right, or in our case anywhere near. Overcome. Outclass, outshine, outdo. Outdone. Undone. Freedom won, forever found, our understanding now only left standing in the way.

Maybe it’s time we move aside.

Because you see, in our understanding we’ve come to misunderstand such things as struggle. We see the storms we face in life as these hindrances to our hopes and happiness. We see strife as an enemy of life as it accosts our arrogance which we lean on to lead us. We see all pain, all problem, all punishment and persecution as these stumbling blocks placed in hate along this path we’re trying to pave to a life in which we feel safe. Yes, to us, in our understanding alone, the ultimate goal in life is to feel safe. And thus we avoid, deny, despise anything that dares hinder or prevent that outcome.

But we need that which decimates it.

We need the misery. We need the mundanity. We need the calm, yes, but we need more than calamity. Why? Because we can’t handle it. We can’t overcome it. Can’t outrun it. Can’t understand it. And yet, that’s just where we need to be, that place in which we cannot rely us anymore. Because it’s only in that place that we’ll finally seek the One who can, who did, who is. And that’s why He sends the storms, the struggles, the strife of life.

For it all keeps us reliant upon God, and when we’re reliant upon God, well then we’re focused on God. And when we’re focused on God, then we’ll likely struggle to take His goodness for granted. Which is something we do all the time in our understanding. See, when life is easy, when we’re well fed and everything’s simple and all makes sense, well then we’ll find it easier to forsake Him, to forget Him. All because we’ll have found ourselves able to forge ahead all on our own.

And this is proven within Scripture itself where it reads that despite God’s presence, provision, protection, despite all that, once they had peace and were well fed, the Israelites turned away from Him and fell back into the pride of thinking they were able. And thus, as has always been true, pride is unable to be thankful for pride assumes either ability to ensure a specific outcome or simply that we’re due what we receive and thus have no need to be grateful nor then to glorify anyone else.

But gratitude doesn’t work like that.

It can’t work like that. For how can one be thankful for what one accomplished on their own? Am I thankful for me? Are you thankful for you? Are we overcome with joy and gratitude for how we’ve lived our lives, thus far so lost and losing? I’m not. In truth, I’m in no way my biggest fan. I’m my worst enemy as I, like Paul, often do not understand what I do for so many times I do what I don’t want whilst not doing the good I know should.

And so how am I to be thankful for me or how I live, let alone enough to believe that I’m owed any good I have in my life, or to avoid the suffering I assume to be bad for my life?

If I’m the one who has created all my problems and designed myself all of my mistakes and their followed regrets, well then who am I to consider that I deserve anything good? And yet if I have good in life, as we all do, well then we’ve nothing left but to be grateful for the giver of said good. And who is such giver of good? God. And thus we’ve to be thankful for what God sends. And if we’re to be thankful for what God sends, should we not be as thankful for the struggle as we are for the succor?

And yet, are we? Sadly, most often no. We’re a people who loathe the struggle as we see only the surface from up here upon our understanding’s superficiality. And yet this is in itself a matter for which we should be thankful. For He sees not the risk but rather the reason. And if He indeed has a reason for all things which come, then yet again, why should we be anything but thankful for all that comes in life? For if He has a reason to send the good we can agree now that we don’t deserve, why would we be less thankful that He sends the trials that He has a reason for sending too?

Are not His reasons for our good? Jeremiah 29:11 says so.

And yet, such is the epitome of the necessity of studying Scripture in context as that promise was given unto a people facing a massive struggle. But still, He called them to be thankful. In fact, He so asked so that when they were cast into other countries and there felt again as foreigners and strangers and exiles, then even there within that struggle, if there they could humble themselves and pray and seek Him again then He would bring them back home to the fulfill of His promise.

But here we see that a thankful focus upon Him is crucial to this. But again, how can we gain this focus if all of life is always easy and thus us enough to handle it without any awareness of our need for Him? For again, as I said above, we have to be able to focus on Him, however that needs achieved. And if this means the rain, the pain, the strain and struggle and suffering we so often loathe, well then fair enough. For again, He knows the plans and thus He holds the reasons. And if His reason for all His plans is for our good, then we have no reason to be anything but thankful.

Even if this means learning to lean in despite the misery. For truth is that if we can learn to be grateful for the grinding, then we’re finally on the way to realizing not merely what faith is but more importantly what faith is meant to do. Because it’s meant to keep us focused on God. And we can’t do that when life is nothing but easy as we’ll then always revert back to pride which says we deserve it and thus shouldn’t be thankful. And we’ve done just that for too long already.

Let us do differently now.

For the fact is that life will continue to be lived beyond our understanding. But friends, that’s where we’re told here that His peace is found waiting. For us to let go. For us to move on. For us to stop looking at the waters rising and instead keep our eyes and hearts and minds and lives focused on He who can either part seas so as to walk through or hold them so tightly that they can be walked on. For in both we see that there is nothing He can’t do.

Why then keep living limited by what our understanding can’t imagine? He gave His life for more than that. What are we giving ours for, to, toward? Is it faith or merely fear as found inside our understanding always proving unable?

May we rather chase after that which surpasses, not stopping ever at that which is only self-pleasing.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold