Day 3599 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Galatians 5:13 NIV

What if the only way to ever know freedom is to walk in the shoes of a servant?

See, the satisfaction of a servant mind isn’t won within the wealth of a world spending this life serving only itself but is rather rewarded within the realization that life here is but a roundtrip and thus we’re all headed back to something more than everything here. And this understanding as understood by seemingly scant few these days, it’s one that brings along with it what I find feels like what is a companion consideration that exists inside what seems a counterpart, a cousin, a close kinship of sorts.

And that is that the rarity speaks to the gravity of the volume of what we say being fulfilled not in the volume within which the world relies in terms of loudness but rather the honesty of what may often come across as but a limitation to our offerings.

Which is where I find humility to do its best workings. For somewhere along the way we’ve largely lost sight of this frame of mind in which we find this truth that says it’s never been the loudness with which we speak nor the eloquence in which the often shouted words may come but rather the generosity in which they’re offered and the genuine care in regard to the message they seek to convey. For reality will hold that neither our words nor actions are proven productive in terms of how many see or hear them but in rather why we did or said them.

Meaning then that, once again, God looks not at the things people look for but rather weighs the heart of every man and every matter to determine the reward due for whatever we determine to do or rather leave undone. Right down to the gravity held inside His knowing our reasoning and thus whether or not any of all we say or do comes from the heart, and even in that what’s in our heart and whether or not it’s set upon honoring Him.

And what I find to be a growing gift is the rarity of this mindset. Because, and I suppose that everyone will take this as wrong as their own conscience may insist, but I simply cannot help but take stock of all this world is doing and saying and sharing and shattering and incline myself toward the opposite. Indeed, I’ve reached a place in my life, having spent years doing otherwise, in which I no longer care to endure the commonalities of a world collapsing.

Rather I now use such normalities and formalities of this fractured and failing monstrosity as an ongoing resource of all to do oppositely. Yes, this world is anymore just my antonym, a most perfect imperfection that affords us all an image of everything we shouldn’t want to be or do or say or see or agree is as worth as much as what many here seem to assume.

I’ve reached the end of my interest in assumptions and have found the freedom within which we were always created to walk.

Challenge is that it is truly the antithesis of all this world is and does and wants and wins. And thus, as a people more than profoundly worldly due to an abnormality in regard to the number of years spent upon what will be proven misplaced perspectives, what we’ll all find when we find that faith’s found us is that all we’ve known to do and be and agree we need is now but a pile of misunderstandings that cannot be left standing as it all exists only in our way of doing and being who He created us to be and then further gave His life to lead us back to being once more.

And just something about the overwhelming kindness in that gesture as given freely to someone like me who’s been the very definition of a scumbag more than a time or two thus far, the love it must require to so inspire Him to deny Himself is the same kind that now defines all I care to find moving forward.

Yes, I want to know Christ and understand more of this story of Him crucified, for in it I’ve found the only mercy able to make my life make sense. And if it now means that I must embrace the unraveling of all I’ve known, the letting go of all I’ve had, the craving still all I’ve not, then all I can say with all of my heart is so be it. Because as I sit in what seems the aftermath of my every best intention, I can say with what feels a heartbreaking honesty that I’ve honestly not found anything that’s so worth keeping that I should welcome the risk of missing another moment of the life He created me to live.

For He gave His life for me to be found in that opportunity once more, and thus it must mean more than whatever pitiful and pitiable prizes I’ve won at what I know now was always only a pride’s guidance.

I don’t want to lead anymore.

I retire.

Because simply put, I cannot find any reason, even inside of my very best assumptions, to continue to imagine that my accomplishing anything more of everything I’ve dreamed or desired or designed or demanded or delighted to imagine that I might find to make me mean something, I cannot find anything in all of it that can manage to compare with the hope I feel inside what seems the very outskirts of His mercy as seen still in a life lived entirely too often putting myself first and thus everything and everyone else last.

It doesn’t work this way! Because it was never meant to!

Because the satisfaction of a servant mind isn’t won within the wealth of a world spending this life serving only itself but is rather rewarded within the realization that life here is but a roundtrip and thus we’re all headed back to something more than everything here.

This is the only idea that seems to even touch the surface of this gift called salvation as purchased at a price we can neither afford nor afford to live as if we might someday. It’s the only thing that I’ve found in all these years thinking about all this stuff that makes any of it make any sense whatsoever. It’s the only reason I can find to fit what He did and why He said He did it.

For make no mistake, neither mirrors nor hindsight have any reason to lie or lead us to believing what isn’t there.

Which leaves me standing here wondering as why in the world I’d do as the world and spend this one life living as my life is only able to matter if I give my time, my attention, my intention, my invention to the ensuring that my life ends up being as best as my mind can fathom it might. I am sick to the death of might, of maybe, of why not try and what’s the worst that could happen. Sick of it all.

I want to know that my life means something, and simply put, I cannot prove that it does if it only does to me.

Which leaves me hating me for sometimes still standing here whilst wandering as to the other things I could be doing that could be helping someone else to the tune of the anymore unconsidered accomplishment of maybe doing something, saying something, giving something, losing something that leaves someone else thankful that I was here. Because if I never do anything that helps anyone else, then what could my time have ever been worth considering, in that end, all it went to was just everything that I leave behind or that otherwise fades with time when I’m not here to bask in the glory of it all.

What can I do with glory that is worth asking another to do without?

What can any of us do with glory period? Or is not such vain glory as this kind mankind continues to crave only able to save a soul the feelings of guilt as forgotten behind all that glitters and feels then a gain? And having lived that way for however long each of us have, why today do it that way again? Is there truly so little new under the Son?

See, I fear that we’ve become of an arrogance so complacent and self-protective that we’ve even become able to use Biblical truth as what feels an excuse. For sure, there is nothing new under the sun, and this we see inside our everyday spent still here in a world that, despite technological advancements and social progressives, is so much of the same mindset as it’s always had that we actually boast as if a new phone is something to take pride in, simply because we’ve no other ventures left of consideration in which to perhaps boast about.

For in truth, kindness is worthy of applause. Compassion counts for something. Mercy means something. Generosity is still the only way to win this game. For it will never matter whatever any other might say, tis still far more blessed to give than to receive. Which is precisely why Christ came to this earth and lived and died as He did. It was to show us toward a novel outlook, a new outcome, a different direction spent upon an alien devotion rather than merely upon a slightly dissimilar indifference.

There’s too much of that here. For here we all care about certain things, but often for the exact same reasons. It’s fun. It’s enjoyable. It feels good. It’s common, popular, normal and thus expected. It makes others think highly of us. It affords us a kind of affluence that allows us to live in luxury. It’s impressive, awe-inspiring, able to glean the applause we delight to hear aimed in our ear.

So much of what’s done here is done to win favor with people. Which has nothing at all to do with who we’re called to be or what we’re here to do.

Because the only outcome found along that input is but a billion people all individually drowning in a deluge of indulgence, delighting in the death of defiance as demanded of our desires designing these driftings from wish to want and back again. Yes, life for all of us has often been nothing more than a list of cravings as if our days a menu at some fast food joint in which we join our jaunt to the haunt of hope as lost behind misplaced beliefs as began by the world beside us being allowed to lead us and leave us as lost as many here delight to be.

Indeed, to be lost inside a self is the singular hope of so many in this world that it has in fact become the utmost undertaking shared amongst most undertaking that very understanding that has so many standing still as if that’s what’s best for us.

But when’s the last time you stopped to take a look at the ground beneath your feet? Or do we not all spend far more time only looking down our noses at those who don’t have it as good as we’ve fought to make it seem?

Is life truly about nothing more than our making of it whatever we delight it to be? And if it is, as in fact so many do so live, than again I ask what is it that I can win within serving myself that is worth asking another to do without?

For the truth is that life isn’t just this matter of either money or material, or both as considered basically of equal importance anymore. Because what’s the point in that idea spent chasing only what none can keep? What’s the benefit in my having, to excess, what another has absolutely none of? And again, I’m not talking only of money or material possession even though that is sadly almost exactly where our minds go every time someone mentions anything in regard to giving.

I’m not even talking about time.

I’m talking about things like hope. Or maybe forgiveness. Understanding. An ear willing to actually listen rather than just merely hearing. A heart that not only aches for those enduring struggle but that in fact breaks at the very thought of another hurting in any way whatsoever. It’s not all canned goods and red kettles. It’s something either seen and heard and felt inside our every dealing with one another, or something simply not.

How much longer will we live as if life is nothing more than one big price tag asking us what we’re willing to pay and thus too to worry about what we don’t think we can afford?

For what does it matter the cost when we think of the cross?

What does it hurt to hurt a little if it means another can hope? What would we have to do without in order to ensure those none go without knowing what we know? Or rather, in that, what do we know if we truly think freedom is as flimsy as only our doing as we please and thus living our lives putting our being pleased as our main priority?

I despise that idea of freedom as I’ve found that all it does is afford an affluence to arrogance that insists that I can not only do as I please but that even further I’m somehow always justified in doing so. As if our pleasure or treasure is actually able to justify our actions or words said or done in order to win what we’ve always wanted.

It isn’t, because what we want isn’t even a thing!

Because our desires, our cravings, our lusts and looks and books and being blinded by all the above, all it does it keep us in love with us.

And that kind of selfishness is only seen from the cross, not on it.

So, with that being said, where do you stand and what do you see from there? Is it on the side of the cross, seeing, or at least trying to a little more every day, the hurting and misery and misunderstandings of the world? Or is it from the world’s perspective where all that’s seen is but a price we’re unwilling to pay because we simply know that we can’t afford to give up these lives that we’ve worked so hard to plan just right and fill so tight that we fear only leaving it all behind?

Nothing will ever change that we will do just that someday. Question then is what will we leave behind when that day comes? Money? Nice house? Sports car? Impressive career? Storage locker filled with trophies? Is that all this is for?

Or could we in fact come around to believing in a way of life that finds us leaving behind such things as hope, mercy, healing, forgiveness, compassion, honesty, a few years spent adamantly sharing the truth so that others might know this freedom that didn’t wait for us to find Him?

I don’t want to live thinking that I’m all that matters, because that idea seems the last thing that Christ would have been thinking about on that cross. Rather, no, I believe that He was thinking about us. And so maybe our lives are best spent thinking about what’s best for others as opposed to just trying in vain to make our lives look better.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold