Day 3600 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

1 Peter 2:11 NIV

For what freedom is there to be found within this forced feeling that we’ve more we’re needing to keep our hearts beating while still bleeding for this bleating of believing that there’s more still in this world that might make our lives more full, filled or fulfilled?

And yet, as we reach again what feels another end, what of this raging commonality will be allowed to venture with us into this coming batch of newness? What of all that’s behind us is welcome to stay alongside us? Who in terms of those many either people or pleasures are to be considered still welcomed treasures that are thus invited with us into the gift of the beginning which awaits just beyond this nearly ended? Seems that something so simple as a calendar change has often been used to inspire such intrigues as these.

Alas we coin them all ‘resolutions’ for sake of feeling as if we’re doing something but yet without the resolve that makes all resolutions revolve.

Indeed, just how involved are we to be in the things we see, the people we’ll be, the beliefs we’ll have and the things we’ll leave? Are any of these thoughts that we ever even think about? Does thinking about them today make them more exciting? Or does the uncertainty of tomorrow still inspire only a worry as to our having by then left this here now into what’s eventually forgotten anyway? Or maybe have we just forgotten ourselves in what’s long been a war already lost?

For such is what sin is, it’s merely a war that has no mere qualities to it. There is nothing mere or minute or mundane or mediocre in regard to sin and the battle it wages within. Because all sin wins, both time and attention, and in this it wins us when we dissolve into a lack of discipline and determination as demanded of and by this faith by which we either live and breathe or simply won’t and can’t. For sin chokes too. It erodes our better judgement, and granted, it does so in a fairly friendly manner as it hides behind this socially adored idea that says all judgement is bad.

Does this mean I’m not to even judge myself?

Because I do, more than anyone around me in fact. And in fact I plan to do so more going forward! Indeed, I sit in judgement upon myself every single day if not holding multiple sentencings throughout the given hours within. Why? Because I find that I’m my own worst enemy because I, like Paul, know that I do things I don’t want to do whilst leaving undone the things I want to do. And having done so as long as I know I have, it’s amounted to my being now someone that I don’t want to be should tomorrow do as expected.

And this idea, however you want to refer to it and whatever anyone may call it, it is the very basis of all year-end reconsiderations as undertaken in the planning for the new-year resolutions that are so flimsy that they’re dead and buried by this time next week.

Will the changes we desire to make be left dead among the many who fall in this battle and thus fail to prove ever really mattered and are thus found to be without any cause, concern, profit or promise?

Personally, I’ve never gotten into the idea of resolutions. Revolutions? Yeah, seems I can get with that! But resolutions, well, not so much. Seem too worldly, too normal, too cliché if I’m being honest. Because they’re basically anymore what amount to nothing but great ideas that have no real tangibility as that part is always left lacking thanks to a corresponding lack of intention to see them through no matter the turmoil or tearing.

Guess I’m just a sucker for the tragedy. What can I say, chicks dig scars.

Which is a sentiment that I can appreciate because honestly, what can ever change if nothing is ever lost? What patterns are we destined to continue repeating so long as our pasts aren’t sent packing at some point? Does not a rut need roughed up if we’re to ever move beyond it? What if, as we’ve been perusing for a few, these cardboard crowns are too heavy in terms of hopelessness to have ever offered us anything in the way of any understanding as to the gravity of grace?

Indeed, what if then this is why Christ asked and asks still today that we surrender ourselves, meaning then that not even the crowns we've worn are all we need to leave if we're to walk free into however many tomorrows we’ve left to live as of today?

Or is the end of a matter as that measured by the number of our remaining tomorrows not merely always the very beginning of the next chapter? And is this not where freedom is always waiting? At the end of something? Is this not why so many so love this final day of a calendar? The hope it holds? The opportunity it offers? The change it allows considered within the apparent rarity of a new number? Is a 5 truly able to so inspire that much more than a 4?

And if it does, and personally I couldn’t care less as to everyone’s perspective upon the subject, why not indeed go big if tomorrow does indeed bring us closer to being free than we agree to be today?

Why not take this time today spent in what is an altogether odd excitement in regard to what is an overall mundane experience and truly sit with some suggestives as to the changes we could make moving forward to indeed be more freed? Why not imagine the biggest alterations we might need to make in life to live as free as Christ die for us to be? Why not consider all the things we despise that we could indeed leave behind? Why not take this cliché and spin it into something of such substance that, were we to have this ending this time next year, we needn’t sit there thinking about all we still need to fix?

What if we just did it? All of it?

What if we, and in this case taking this most hopeful tomorrow as for granted as we take all of them anyway, what if we, when tomorrow does as we expect and shows up on time and without fault, what if we woke up tomorrow with hearts bent on waging war against anything and everything that has long kept us losing this battle as if we’ve the right to so throw this fight? Because the fact is that we don’t, but then too if we don’t start living like it, then we’ll only reach the true end of all calendars with absolutely nothing in the way of growth to show for all the time He gave us to try.

How about we resolve to change that?

To not take time for granted anymore? What if we did indeed seek to number our days, and not just to see when and where we can squeeze another nonsense holiday into the mix? What if we didn’t care about all that anymore, holidays and party favors? What if life wasn’t allowed to seem a game going forward? What if we laced up, strapped in, hunkered down and pressed our shoulder into the wall of every tomorrow we’ve left as if soldiers aching for the breaking of whatever disbelief and indifference that may lay in our way?

An example?

For me, and again, please don’t take this as one of those silly resolutions, personally I’ve every intention of waging war against a life thus far lost in want. Because having spent a bit more time than normal reconsidering my life’s direction, I’ve found something that I always knew was always there, but somehow now without the willingness to let it stick around into if not too through an entire new year.

It’s been with me too many years as it is, and I’m just sick of it being such a part of me as it’s become.

It’s want. Craving. Lust is you will. Indeed, seems that a great many of my years thus far, and I’ve only 36 of them, 37 come next Wednesday, but most of those 30 something has been lived in such a way that’s found me wasting away within a world of want inspiring a life so lived the same today as it was five years ago that even myself I see as being lost within the hope of holding fast the slow decay of the hurried loss of an always fading allure.

Let me unravel that a bit: All that glitters, whether gold or not, may not turn out to be quite as important as our worldly imaginations make it seem.

We all know this for it seems that of all we ever want, that portion of our wish that do manage to get, its fascination fades in importance nearly as soon as it finally arrives. I've indeed wanted so many things so very badly only to retrieve them all from the dreams in which they came only to hold them in reality alongside a wonder as to why they felt so important as they did for as long as they tried.

And having now lived so long seeking so often so much of what’s amounted to so little, I find now only an urgency to, as a foreigner and exile, to no longer live letting my eyes, ears, heart, mind, hands, feet, imagination or understanding drag me into craving something that will only turn out to prove, again, of such little worth that I fall right back into wanting something else. I’m tired of the pattern of wanting and getting and then wanting something else whenever what I’ve finally gotten wasn’t as glorious as I imagined.

Because it sucks.

It’s pointless. And, when considered Scripturally, it seems to fit perfectly this idea of sinful desires which wage war against the soul. Because everything that grabs our attention in what proves a turning fashion, a sudden sense of excitement if you will, everything that so alters our devotion is likely nothing but a cause of commotion caused by an ocean of excess through which we each swim with a grin as we grab and gain all we crave in a world that offers us an ocean more.

It’s never ending. Wanting. Craving. Wishing. Buying. Selling. Having. Holding. Hoping. Chasing. Wasting. Wanting again. It’s all the same, and while the objects change, what’s sad is we never do. And that’s what I intend to fix. And no, not because tomorrow will end in a fancy new number nor because millions all over the world are putting the final polish on their perfect plans for a better day still to come. But simply because life is alive, and thus we’re either growing or dying and I ain’t going out the way I’ve been living.

Resolution or not, the revolution is on!

Because as I sit and consider my patterns, my habits, my hopes, my plans, my dreams, my things and the many more I could still be so easily coaxed into craving, I see that in all that is entirely too much me. And life was never meant to so revolve around me that it became all about what I want and the more I don’t want to deal with, give up, let go or do without. I have to go, so much so that I don’t matter anymore.

He much become greater, and since I’ve not more time in the day nor days left to spend than I did yesterday, the only thing left to shrink is the importance I place on anything I crave of this place.

Because I’m not planning on staying here. Not forever at least.

And so why stay today who I was yesterday? Why be tomorrow who I am now? Why never experience the outer limits of what is possible for us and our lives? Why never try something hard? Why never embrace the misery? Why never accept the lack of sleep in the middle of the night when sleep is always assumed as if it might be God telling us we need to talk? Why not listen more than we speak? Why not let go more than we seek to have? Why not surrender, sacrifice, suffer if need be if it means we end up, eventually, stumbling into the free indeed kind of life we were meant to lead?

Why not let Him take the lead and stop insisting we know all the changes we need to make so as to, let’s just say, shift the battle lines if needed? Because we do. We spend our days outrunning our shames inside of a stagnation that’s sweeping the nation. We ignore our biggest problems, deny our strongest temptations, refuse to admit that we get wrong all of it, and in that find every reason we can imagine to stay the same whilst hiding behind plans we make for changes we won’t.

I’m tired of that kind of normal, because friends, it’s never going to be anything but what it’s already been. And I can’t imagine, in Him, any reason for me to be never anything but what I’ve always shown.

So it’s time for war. Not plans. Not ideas. Not 10-step programs or last-minute resolutions. It’s time for a revolution. It’s time to fight back, because folks, sin’s not going to stop fighting us just because we’re once again on holiday tomorrow. It’s not going to back off so we can sleep off one more night given to a drunken excitement over all we hope to be in a new year. If tomorrow is there, sin will be too. And if we go into it focused on the wrong ideas or holding tight to the wrong plans or expecting some sort of easy victory as already achieved inside an excitement bigger than any possible outcome, then we’re in for nothing more than more of today.

We should want something new, and if we truly do, then we’ve to do something new too.

And you can feel free to call it whatever you want, but all that will matter is just how free we are in the end. And in fact, in regard to that, there is no freedom where there’s no fight.

Because as it sits, sin holds us tight. Will we be saying the same this time tomorrow? This time next year? Or will we reach those ends and look back smiling at the effort we gave to the changes we made that afforded us the freedom we don’t have right now?

For we can all be freer, but to get there means one more enemy standing in our way. And that enemy is all too often ourselves. So please don’t get in your way by holding on to what you think, imagine, assume or intend. Find a resolve in you to fight for what you know you need to do. And then do it.

No matter the cost.

For time’s not only running out in this 2024, it’s running out period. Time to get to doing what we may have been leaving undone.

Yours Truly,

A fellow foreigner.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold