Day 3598 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Mark 10:45 NIV

As if to be the first to cast a crown into the sea of humanity, so Christ came to show us humility so as to in hopes restore the humanity to humanity, even if through the somehow still often seen hostility of humility.

And somehow, such is still indeed what we so often seem to see. Yes, we live as if humility is a hostility as it speaks in the language of honesty and mortality while still in a world lost in a war of words waged between each of us seeking to prove that it is us alone who knows what means most. And yet, we can’t as it’s only when honesty and mortality are combined that can be told the tale of this trip we call life. Because alongside this ride away from the righteousness of reality as given us in our share of His regality as made manifest at first within us and then again in He who came to save us, we lost sight of the weight of life.

We discounted, devalued the worth of a life, so much so that as seen in the cross of Christ, we even left behind the ‘kind’ in mankind.

Leaving us but man in this place where we’re anymore free to be whatever we’ve either been or never become before.

Apparently.

But within this now normalized formalization of freedom as found in how we feel, what I fear is that we’ll find that we’ve come to place more worth on our perspectives than on our presence, meaning then a present lived in pretense without then an ability to peruse the promise that only humility can afford. For as eternity will tell, only humility can buy the ability to see both what we’ve done and then, in that, the gift of Christ as proven in what He did to overcome it all.

For what is the ransom of a life? And is this ransom not to be considered considerably if not in fact severely more expensive when bought at the price of the life of another? And then is not this expense then expounded, expanded, sent into what is but an extremity as measured in exponential quantity and quality when said other’s life was given to redeem a life lived in both fear and failure in exchange for one promised in freedom forever?

What is a life worth? Or do not a people unwilling to wait have then no willingness to wonder?

You see, that God chose to clothe Himself with the humility needed to walk alongside this humanity He created as achieved in Christ putting on our sinful flesh and thus too our very debt of mortality, He has thus shown us what His purpose is to be as proven now in the gravity of such grace given in place of the first grace gave. It’s to inspire humanity. He put on humanity in order to restore in humanity an awareness of humanity by enduring the most inhumane treatment ever devised by the now clearly proven lack of humanity amongst humanity.

Indeed, our treatment of Christ proves that mankind lost the kind. And so He came to bring it back by bringing us back to it in what is a show not of force but rather one of faith. In fact, we read of this in quite great detail within Paul’s letter to the church in Philippi, Philippians 2:6-8 to be exact.

Christ, “Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death—even death on a cross!”

It’s an entire passage speaking to the audacious humility as displayed for all humanity within the gift of Christ shedding His immortality in order to take upon Him all of us in our mortality so that, in that, we could, in Him, shed all of who we’ve been and replace it with the gift for which He did it. To trade places. To change faces. To exchange forevers, not His with ours but rather ours with His. For He is as He always was, the God of all creation and thus an existence outside of all that He’s created.

He is limitless in regard to time, space, experience. He has no end, no bound, no boundary, no beginning nor ending. He is the first and the last, the Almighty God, the living One, the great and only I Am!

We are none of the above and have then none of the above as at our disposal as He who, in humility, disposed of His immortality so as to overcome with goodness our immorality as proven perfectly in how we responded to His working alongside those ancestors of whom we’re still exactly the same. For still we get all of this as wrong as we’ve absolutely no reason to. Still we allow our assumptions and pre-perceived opinions to cloud our better judgements, leaving us basically only judging one another as if we alone are as perfect as only Christ has ever proven.

We are not. We’re nowhere close.

No, for sadly still we coast along the coast collecting trinkets and triumphs as won in sand castles and discarded plastics seeking to glean from the waves only what we want as won in only what we assume adds somehow to our little kingships won by killing one another in order to make ourselves feel better about being nothing more than what humanity has always desired to remain.

Hence the ask in the verse just prior to the passage in 2 Philippians considered above! “In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus.”

Because thankfully, to remain is not at all what He saw fit to do. Rather, He’s in many ways proven Himself a Savior who leaves. Left Heaven didn’t He? Then too He left earth. Left us behind, right? Left His example to follow, asking us that we do so by faith as opposed to our clear preference for sight. Left His Word for us to study, seeking inside of it the wisdom that both the world claims to have made by itself but also the kind that argues with everything this world makes by itself.

Indeed, Christ leaves. But it’s to leave room to grow. Because to grow is the point. Growth is the purpose. Growth is the meaning. Grow is the gift. Growth is life! And thus our lives are worth only growth.

And so if we’re not growing, then it could be argued that we’re not living a life that’s really worth anything.

How could it be? Can we truly say that we’re living well if we do nothing that brings about improvement? Can we be alive so long as we’re nothing but stagnant? Can we know anything of life if we don’t live it in accord with He who both created it and then saved it? Can we say we are living in step with His will for us if our will isn’t matching up to what His is? Can we claim we know anything of His will if all we want is to look good or feel safe or hear applause or please the crowds or wear the crowns or sit atop the thrones of things we crave, desires so deep that we’ve all drown a million times?

Is a life worth only serving a self? What is my life worth if I’m the only one who wins? What do I win if I’m the only one I worry about? What’s even worth worrying about if nobody else is bettered by it? Is life truly supposed to be nothing but a mind chasing itself only to inevitably cave in upon itself? Is that what He asked from us? Is this what He showed us? Is this the example we’re called still to follow?

Just a soul seeking to serve itself into such satiety that it becomes so satisfied that it seeks nothing else, nothing more, nothing less?

If we had less, wanted less, won less, would we not mean more?

Didn’t Jesus?

For He came as emptiness personified. He emptied Himself of immortality in order to take upon Himself or sinful flesh bound thus by the debt of death. He emptied Himself of worldly comforts, existing upon the outskirts and forsaking all He was so fully due. He emptied Himself of glory by going to the cross. He emptied Himself of life by thereupon dying for us. He emptied the grave so as to prove we’ve been saved by a love no death can hold.

All to help us know that it’s only when we’re emptied of all we’ve known that we can be filled with all He is which is all we’ve never sought to be.

For here, again, we seek such things as luxury. We seek comfort. We seek company. We seek crowns and crowds as if the sound and shine add something to life that make it more worth living. Is it then not worth living without the excess? Can we truly not survive without vain glory or someone else marveling in our story? Again, what is my story worth if I’m the only one who reaches the happily ever after?

I’ll sit right here and confess that I’ve tried just that. I’ve chased after every hope, every dream, every scene and seen everything only to find it’s never enough. That’s the thing about want, it always wants more. And it becomes this pattern in life, this pursuit perhaps, a plan, a path that provides just enough to please a self that said self continues to seek and sell whatever it might need in order to be freed to continue putting the self first.

But to what end?

That’s one of the many things on my mind as we drain out this year and begin to welcome the excitement of the coming new. What needs to end? What needs to begin? Where do I begin? Should not every beginning begin at the end? Doesn’t it have to? Isn’t even this something we see in Jesus? For in Him, doesn’t peace begin only after our life here ends? Did He not live and die in such a way that proves just that promise?

And if in fact He did, as in fact He did, what then of all this continued self-promotion? What of all this self-service? And I don’t mean self-checkouts or food buffets. No, I’m talking about all this seeking of a self’s safety or security or success before anything else. What are we proving by all this so doing? Are we truly making ourselves matter more? Or are we just causing nothing to matter when we live as if everything does?

Does everything matter?

To a degree perhaps, but is that the point? Or again is not the point to lose, to let go, to look ahead and leave behind all of anything that dares trying to keep us from there. Where is ahead, and if we’re the only ones best fit to lead, well then how can we ever get there considering we’ve not been before?

Humility. Humanity. Humane. Human.

It’s all we’ve ever been, and even still we’re not very good at it. Because we keep putting aside the fact that we either are or are rather called to be again all the above. And when such things are considered only as afterthoughts, and that only by very few at most, what then can come of a life? What can life here ever be when all it seems most care to see is themselves satisfied or secure or safe or successful or popular or powerful or prosperous?

Is a life worth only prosperity as measured by the gleam of gold and positions powerful enough to exact said wealth from those below them?

Is this what we see in Jesus? Or rather was He not the first to cast aside a crown into the sea of God’s grace so as to show us that a life is worth more than holding on to what we cannot hold forever?

And does this not even go further than just material? Is it not the same for such things as anger? Do we not in Him learn to leave behind sorrow? Is not Heaven promised a place where there is no more crying or pain? Did He not, in His service to us, prove even a different definition of what pain might be? For He chose the cross as opposed to leaving us lost. And thus are we not worth more than agony? And thus is life not worth more than misery and material?

It’s supposed to be, but alas that’s a belief waiting for each of us buy into it. Can we afford to with what all we’ve won as wanted within this world? Can we afford not to even though it asks that we sacrifice all we’ve won and wanted within this world? Is life lived only here? Or are not those most to be pitied the same who assume “only for this life we have hope in Christ”?

For what would be the point in His dying to pay our ransom if all we could ever hope for was a few more years in a world still broken, and thus us still at risk of breaking down on the side of the road along the way?

Friends, faith doesn’t understand flat-tires. It doesn’t agree to doubt. It will not tolerate improperly placed tolerances. And this is perhaps the biggest ask of us in terms of faith. It asks that we cease tolerating what is to Him intolerable. Such as sin. Selfishness. Vanity. Arrogance. Human anger. Seeking vengeance. Denying justice. Diluting judgement. Dispensing judgmentalism. Destroying humility. Avoiding mortality. Debating morality. Hating modesty. Despising honesty. Choosing hostility. Embracing complacency. Welcoming wickedness. Looking with favor upon foolishness. Forsaking forgiveness. Forgetting salvation. Refusing to accept that salvation without works is dead.

Understanding that life is a gift meant to be lived by giving it away.

What are we giving away, and does this not in fact prove what we believe our life to be worth?

God has now shown us the worth of a life as paid in the ransom for our own. And thus we know that life isn’t even worth what we know of as life but is rather worth so much that the very Father of creation laid down His life in the Son of Heaven in order to redeem a people to call again His own, by offering them a kindness, a mercy, a compassion, an understanding that is so very loving that it inspires in us a willingness to confess only that we are His people as evidenced in our doing as He calls us to do.

Taking up crosses and boasting of the losses in and of a life still lived within a place, that through the cross of Christ, has now been crucified to us and we too to it. This world isn’t our measure anymore, and so all the crowns and crowds mean nothing as we seek only to honor the One who chose to lift us up into a life again lived striving for holiness. An undertaking undeniable within a world vastly not doing the same.

And so may we cast our crowns to this ground as well as we seek in Him only the kind that may be twisted of thorns as opposed to those which shine upon the heads of those who sit upon fake thrones acting as if power is a human’s to prove.

No, power is proven in humility for it is better to be a warrior in a garden than a gardener in a war. For only those who’ve know war can choose peace.

All others must beg for it.

And Christ didn’t come to teach us how to beg but to show us how to surrender to the Father who provides, and in this learn that to live a life is perhaps to walk in war but that it’s better to know the war here in a life that ends as opposed to leaving behind our peace when the rest of eternity begins.

So may we welcome the war of forsaking our wants in order to focus more upon the needs of those around us. For this is what Jesus did, and if we are truly His, then we should glory only in doing the same.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold