Day 3574 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Luke 14:10 NIV

For it's better to lifted up by another than to be brought low by false impressions in regard to our own importance.

This is why we’re here told to take always the lowest, the lowly, the look of the lost and lonely as such is as great a place to welcome honor as any other for there is always improvement from the lowest of all situation or circumstance. Alas, well, this is where pride knows only to underwhelm, to undermine, to take hold another frame of mind in which we hear constantly this lack of courage which has considering always that we need be the ones who insist upon our importance, simply so that none may then remain otherwise unaware of it.

Indeed, pride, as opposed to the topping, is merely a toppling as it cannot for the life of itself fathom anything other than or outside of its own importance.

For that’s what pride is, it’s but a self’s estimation of its own value, its worth, its weight as wanted won within gold and glory as opposed to the misery we see inside of humility. It’s a person’s personal pursuit of perfecting their pomp and parade in order to evade the day in which they’re all but forgotten or ignored or left outside the door to a party not their own but one they intended to own for the sake of the prize of a few sets of eyes lost in marvel at their magnificence and majesty. Yes, we all live as if we’re royalty, God’s very gift to the rest of humanity.

And within our insanity we so arrogantly love this brand of recognition which regales us with remembrance of our importance as proven within the praise and applause and generalized awe of all who might find themselves so lucky to be found within our vicinity. As if we’ve something of gravity to give to any simply for their future ability to say then they had this rarified opportunity to have met one of God’s greatest creations as considered of us by us.

Because it’s always only us who come up with this most convoluted nonsense.

But why, yes, another question indeed. Why? What is it that we’re seeking so sternly, so selfishly, so strictly and severely that we cannot nearly imagine a moment in which we’re failed the honor we so insist we’ve come to deserve? What in fact have we done, won, found or fixed that’s won for us this appeasement as placed within our agreement to be everywhere applauded as if we’re some sort of dignitary or devotee to a way of life not the insanity we cannot see?

See, that’s what we discussed of pride in yesterday’s post. It’s this almost instant blinding of a soul to any and all, every in fact, other possible outcome than that for which we’ve so come to crave that we’d stave any hesitation as to the ensuring of our every insinuation and too starve any and all suggestion that perhaps we’re headed for problems. All because our pride becomes so blind that we cannot compute said problems or challenges or missteps or mistakes or any possible misunderstanding.

No, we get it cooked up in our minds, in our hearts that we deserve one certain outcome, always to our benefit and amusement, and from there we’ve only left a fall of what’s an as of then unforeseen, undetermined and thus too unrealized fall back to grace in which is the reality that we never should have failed or so forsaken in the first place.

We only did because it’s what we know to do. We’ve become a people of such pride perfected that we can see neither reason as to why we’d fail to be anything but the most important person and/or persona within every room and at every party nor then why we might not go ahead and save everyone the trouble and just stroll into every situation with crowns of our considerations placed firmly upon our heads letting everyone else know that we are the star of this show and thus they needn’t wait for the celebration to begin.

Because as soon as we arrive, this night is finally as good as it can get!

Yes, we think we are it. Only problem is that it is only what we’re full of anymore. We’re full of it, it being ourselves and some other different and differing adjectives which all feel largely out of place within a post in regard to Biblical truth and Scriptural solidity. And so we’ll just stay within the limits of saying we’re full of it.

And, to be honest, I, for the life of me, have found myself to be all of the sudden all but unable to offer any logical reason as for how we got here nor further then why we’ve such a staunch ability to stay. And I say this having been one who’s been there plenty of times myself in the past. I’ve been just like everyone in that regard to how we feel our presence is what makes the difference. I’ve known that life of that mind which tells us that we are the hit, we are the star, we’re the headlining act of whatever moment we’re in, just beacons of what everyone else should seek to become.

But it seems that somewhere along the way to this day I’ve misplaced every single reason as to why I once stood in such season as to the ongoing suggestion that everyone else praise my presence.

Perhaps it’s merely that I’ve not been invited to much of late, and by ‘of late’ I mean in well more than a decade. I’ve indeed found that this road I’m on has now diverged dangerously apart from who I was, who all I knew, what all I had and hoped to remain holding. Indeed, I find that this faith has found for me a quite impressive finality to life as I once lived it. No more parties. No more ballgames. No more weddings to attend for friends I don’t have anymore.

Yes, it turns out that perhaps this faith, for some at least, leads along a line in which our life comes to look quite the contrary to what it once seemed.

And it’s within this humbling of watching our lives changing so drastically that many find reason to recuse themselves and refuse themselves this alteration to their insinuation as to the meanings of life and too how best them both won and displayed once bestowed. All because it seems a fatal blow to be welcomed to so forgo the roar of crowds and the shine of crowns having become so accustomed to the both keeping our pride billowing that we needn’t have ever looked deeper to seek out the foundation of our soul.

For where we sit ourselves upon such selfish thrones of honor as the many we’ve come to seek and assume we deserve, we’ve no reason to imagine that we might not be as impressive or important as we’ve become to believe.

Because we had everyone else keeping us aloft, never in that realizing that we were so lost as to have always been alone inside what was and perhaps remains a life lived only for us, and thus one we’re all but too greedy and thus unwilling to share with anyone else.

Outside of their awe and applause that is.

For we’ve come to believe that such social praise and adoration is what proves our every performance and assumption to be worth the work and waste in which they’re all won. Because we cannot anymore comprehend how we might not actually contain the very epitome of life’s popularity and potential. For to us, we’re about as perfect as you can get, and thus we see neither room to grow nor in that anywhere that we couldn’t go and be instantly recognized as the kings and queens we think ourselves to be.

Yes, we’ve won our way as written within our minds so very deranged that we’ve designed a decree in which we all but insist that everyone else can themselves too see that we are the very definition of amazing, of awesomeness, of what is worthy of praise and worth our weight in the welcomes and wins that we’ve come to want, come to need in order to be as we’ve always thought ourselves to be. We are but God’s gift to the earth, a most trivial trophy so tarnished and trashy that we can anymore legitimately look in the mirror and not see anything of planks or problems for the help of pride keeping us so blind as to who we really are.

An identity as defined not by what we’ve done but rather what Jesus had to in order to save us from what we’ve become.

You know, this little daily journey has, thanks to my disdain for social media and thus my failure in regard to figuring out how to branch this out and reach more accounts, felt long as if just a strange daily conversation with my mom as she’s made a point to always read and support this daily effort. And the other day she mentioned in response to a recent post that humility wins. And this left me thinking that, indeed, humility is all that can win in the end. It is in fact the only win in life itself.

Why?

Well, it’s because of what we read about here in Jesus’ teaching those listening to take the lowest seat, to truly embrace His telling them about how the last would be first, to leave first those who can only then fall from it. Because the amazing thing about humility is that humility starts low and minds not staying if needed. Humility doesn’t know to hate hardship as it sees not itself as above it. Humility cannot distrust danger or denial as it’s not yet designed a frame of mind in which everything must go according to and in accord with our design.

Humility doesn’t seek what isn’t needed as it’s simply overwhelmed by the generosity of everything it’s given as it sees every gift as one given without need or reason. Indeed, humility finds only reason and reality in the modesty of such things as morality and even mundanity as humility wastes no time in so trying to design a lifetime as to insist upon the finery or pageantry that our pride so prefers. No, humility doesn’t see the need to such insistence upon a life’s specific substance.

It just appreciates having one.

Humility appreciates life for the gift it is whereas pride demands the gifts it wants to receive within this life then not seen as a gift itself. And even worse, there comes a point in which this pride becomes so blind that we indeed, as we discussed yesterday, we do as Haman did in the story of Esther, or at least as it seems we so often tend to. Yes, we welcome no exceptions to our expectations, always falling upon this royalist resolve to push our insistences as far and as hard as we need in order to prove our self-perceived ability to believe in this best that we demand only for ourselves and never from ourselves.

But, that's the thing with all that excess of expectation as met in pride by what’s an utter lack of effort. It’s that we can only force things so far or for so long before one of the immovable objects in life begins to break. The two in this regard being our will as one assumed we’re owed being done against God’s which never had such a need to negotiate. And well, when it's our will, perhaps personally perceived as being unbreakable, against God's, already eternally proven as unmovable, it's not going to end up mattering all that much just how incessant our insistence may be upon our having it our way.

No, His will will win, leaving it then mattering not how important or powerful or popular or special we may have long thought ourselves to be.

Which is why He calls us here to nip said bud before it blossoms into what becomes then a betrayal so personal that we’re blinded yet again, only this time by the seeing that we’ve only set ourselves up for such a fall from our vanity that the way of life we’ve come to live so lost in love with a mindset set upon how awesome we are simply cannot survive it.

But maybe that’s just it, that we’ve become so impressed with ourselves that we feel as if life isn’t a matter of surviving anymore. Why should it be? After all, up here upon these pedestals of pride and parade we’ve become unable to believe in anything but our thriving thanks to such things as the thoughts we think about how important we are. No, we follow pride in the one direction it knows to go never knowing that it cannot actually point the way to anything but a fall back to reality.

Only a matter of time and thus too distance as determined by how much time we give to that frame of mind in which we find that we’re so important that we believe we actually deserve such things as honor and praise and applause and thus a place at the head of every hour, of every party, of every opportunity.

Thinking always and within all that it’s all about us and thus we’re owed what we crave.

But no, for the truth is that we want nothing of such justice. We want nothing of what we truly deserve. For to be honest, the lowly and sometimes lonely life of one lived in humility is even lightyears better than what we’ve actually earned within all these years given away in arrogance and ego. For the reality is that life’s neither the party we’ve lived as if it should be, and nor then are we the ones for whom said party is thrown as we’ve done none but throw away our every opportunity to choose humility as opposed to that which is haughty.

And having so lifted ourselves up so very high, we’ve now the only name to blame for the coming fall from what was never our story nor then a matter of or for our glory.

This is God’s idea, His design, His plan, His purpose, His path for His praise and His appreciation. Where then is there any room for any of ours as asked within the understanding that we can do nothing with any of it. Our lives are not to be improved eternally with any measure of public praise or personal pride inspiring us to the thinking that we deserve to have it from those around us. We don’t. And so rather than seeking our own honor as thus far done via demands designed in arrogance, let us want instead the way of life that allows for us to be lifted rather than leveled.

Yes, for this seems a far safer and thus entirely more survivable path to pursue than the pride which Scripture tells us always precedes a fall. For the Word also reads that God opposes the proud, and in light of this let us seek then the humility that leaves us at least alive as opposed to those otherwise quite forcibly moved, broken, and left there shattered inside of what is a pride’s utter disbelief in our design being so betrayed as to not turn out as we’ve so clearly come to believe we’re due.

No, rather than insisting upon pride’s opinions of oneself, seek instead humility as humility measures not the outcome nor then its meaning or merit. Humility only cares to the kindnesses shown, not the assumptions expected. For again, our expectations don’t actually have much say or sway in life as they’re largely only written within our minds that are often all but mangled inside what is an appreciation of ourselves that is in no way helpful as it’s in no way reasonable.

And so again, take the low spot, the lesser beginning, the meek and measured approach to life and everything in it. Because the humble can always be lifted higher while those already entirely too high due to pride can only be brought lower. So take the path that leads you higher at the impel of another rather than the one which propels you way past reason into a humbling return trip to reality.

For it’s better to be honored by another than to honor yourself and have another point out your mistake.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold