Day 3601 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Deuteronomy 20:1 NIV

For while Egypt may have changed faces as we live now in different places, not much has changed in regard to the fact that life’s a fight and too that this faith calls us out of the flight and unto the line.

Because, just as those streams of water which appeared in the desert back then, still there runs quietly an almost silent reminder whispered between the raindrops and rooftops which speaks a promise that can only be but an idea so long as our souls are tasked with the guiding of these vessels into the winds of God’s will for where our lives are meant to go. And because His will as paved toward that promise so purchased that it’s all but said and done leads into those winds and winds through our wants it’s often at war against what’s any given day all but anything.

Somedays we fight against the hardships which steal our hope whilst within others we war against the wishes that we never seem to see might hold the very hardships which delight to steal our hope.

Simply because many things are missed when the battle rages all around. It’s all but impossible to take it all in and figure it all out. In fact, I dare say we, most days, miss more than we notice as there’s just a limitation to our every vantage point as defined in what is in truth a loss of sorts demanded of either perspective or periphery. Indeed, we just aren’t made to see everything as we’ve neither eyes in the back and sides nor the panning potential of an owl.

Rather we are at best able to see what’s straight ahead, and yet even this is a matter or measure otherwise accosted by our inability to see beyond a certain distance or through any danger. No, our eyes can see but so far and even with the modern help of such things as telescopes or binoculars, still even then we’re entirely too limited. And add on top of that the oddly specific blindness as beheld before all boundary and barricade and what we have is but this often fearful if not utterly frantic confusion as to all that’s as of now uncertain.

And granted, there both could be an excitement in that to see and thus too should be one seen, but alas, no, most days we only know to worry, to question, to proceed with utmost caution as we feel our lives and times careening out of our control as contained always within both the seen and too the easily assumed. Yes, we’re a people elated with such comforts as perception and preference, but alas these don’t always end up making all that much a difference when the battle lines are drawn and there’s no time left to run.

Such as in this day.

It’s something of a novel perspective I’ve either purchased for myself or had otherwise gifted me from another above me, which I feel to be far more likely. But either way, it’s this alien entrance to what’s again but another new, this time a year as opposed to the common mundanity of just new days. Yes, years seem bigger as they are in fact longer, 365 times as long to be exact, and too thus too seemingly far more important. After all, we’ve all lived thousands of days but perhaps our years number only into dozens and thus only a few decades at most.

It all becomes quite small when seen from the angle most often taken for granted.

And yet that’s perhaps the best way to explain this new outlook on all this, well, newness. It’s a new year, a new day, a new life if need be. And that’s where we should all find the excitement if not utter elation within this gift we’ve been each given today. It’s that all can be made new, which is even a quite popular verse that’s referenced in many a hopeful Scriptural sharing or study. Yes, He has made all things new, including me and you. But yet, even in our understanding of this is found still that entirely too clear cause for concern.

For we know well that days are still coming in which there will be and we will thus see not too much new under the sun. Simply because often times in life life itself is quite repetitious if not borderline monotonous. In fact you could say the commonalities outnumber the abnormalities which then leave us carrying quite the weight of emotional and mental and perhaps in fact spiritual maladies. And when all combined, the weight we carry still and the weight still to come, it amounts into an army innumerable indeed!

And all of them coming against us and thus challenging the comfort we so prefer.

Alas, preference has never really had much a place within God’s plans. And this isn’t for lack of His love or mercy as poured out upon us daily. No, it’s, more than anything, merely that His plans for our lives were written well before our times and thus the only thing that is bound to change is we who are all but caught in the middle of what often feels a war waged between a rock and a hard case.

The hard case being our hard heads that just want everything our way.

Which is why life often feels a war. It’s because our way is seen through our eyes and craved from our hearts and planned in our minds and given entirely too much thus of our time as if our time is actually ours to so usurp as we’ve so clearly tried. Indeed it could be argued, and quite easily I’d imagine, that nearly all of our struggles in life are borne out of our arrogance remaining adamant upon life unfolding as we see fit.

Leaving then the fits we often throw as if stones meant to send the enemy running in fear. The enemy here being God as waging His perfect will against our semblance of how much more perfect we believe our own version to be. And to that I’d say that perhaps today is a great day to lay our weapons down and reassess the gravity of the situation. Because again, life ain’t changing.

No matter how angry we’ll become when it doesn’t.

And make no mistake, we will. This new year will find us all, at times, angry at God for things not going according to plans we’ve made alongside changes we’ve not. And because of those plans we make and the changes we don’t, we will, at times, find that our will and His are quite impressive enemies. And because of that, we will become, at times, unable to see the true scope of what all’s truly against us and just how much of our focus shouldn’t then be placed upon arguing with God over something so petty as preference and perspective.

Oh, how much simpler all this would be if only we could see that He doth indeed know what’s best for us!

Yes, we might even then be able to put up a better fight against all that’s actually worth fighting against. For truth holds that our fighting or arguing or even complaining against God will get us nowhere. For He’s not a man that He should change His mind, and considering the promise on the line, we shouldn’t want Him to. Alas, we so often get distracted by the things we consider our enemies and adversaries that we just get the whole ordeal confused.

And I know this is true because of how many times I’ve been angry or upset or otherwise afraid, as both are in fact only fear in masquerade, without having any idea as to why. And I think this is something far more common than any of us might imagine. For we see all around us a rather continuous influx of anger and angst as angled from arrogance in order to assuage our assumptions. But, and please do consider, are our preferences truly so important that we should waste our time toward arguing against God as to why He should replace His will with our wants?

Or would not our time and thus attention and thus effort be far better given against the actual battle that is life both at hand and up ahead?

This is my new outlook going into this new year. It’s to fight the fights that need to be fought whilst surrendering those skirmishes that mean next to nothing. Because over these past several years I’ve found that life comes at us in ways and with things that we simply cannot prepare for or therefore overcome, overpower, outwit or outrun. Life as lived here is a fairly constant chaos in which we make our little choices and scream with our little voices trying to obtain the victory we can only assume within.

And that’s just it, God doesn’t have to assume victory as His Son already claimed it for all eternity. Which is precisely why we’re fools for wasting any more of our precious time to fighting against Him as if He’s capable of this crime against humanity as waged in His asking us beyond our mundanity and out of our insanity into His gift of humility and honesty and modesty and morality, and get this, immortality! God, in Christ, has gifted us eternal life!

Why then are we arguing that He might not know what’s best for us as measured in our limited perspective of a battle that we cannot even being to pretend we can in any way understand?

Why not just focus our fight upon the things which come to try and snatch us out of His hand?

Not because they can, for He’s said that He will lose none of those the Father gives Him to shepherd. But we can allow our faith to become so fractured and fragile and frail that we eventually fail to follow His footsteps as they lean toward and lead to, eventually, the fire of a life lived inside a furnace we call faith. For make no mistake, faith is a fight as we live in a world that finds our faith to be foolish. And as the people we’ve become, who fear letting others down or being called names such as ‘fool’, we are at risk of falling away for sake of not falling out of the world’s acceptance.

Indeed, I reason that at some point in the coming days, or maybe even a matter having already arrived within a day already now passed, this war into which we’re walking will be waged within what is a mindset that cares amongst a world filled with far more who don’t. And no, that’s not to say that most folks don’t care about anything for I’m certain that everyone here cares about something or in fact many something’s, but what, well I’ve no idea.

For it seems that within this world there are a whole lot of things that shouldn’t matter at all that somehow matter a lot to many. And what matters most sadly doesn’t seem to even register to those same many. Indeed, narrow is the path to life and it feels as though fewer and fewer seem willing to fight this fight that finds it.

But friends, that is the fight as within this world trouble will be had by all. I for one though choose the trouble that brings an eternal triumph as opposed to tiny triumphs of triviality as chosen by most anymore along the way to what will prove the same death with a vastly different outcome.

Which is the question. What outcome are we living for? Is it merely a sense of safety or security had and held within this time within this life within this world? Or rather are we holding fast to the faith which promises that there is a far greater reward awaiting those who walk by the faith that, as walked best by Jesus, clearly asks nothing of comfort nor preference nor profit or even popularity but only that God alone be glorified?

Either way we answer, this life will be quite similar. For again, we’ll all still have hard days. We’re all still going to go through things that make us angry or encourage us to become upset. We’ll all find fear a friend entirely too close entirely too often, and thus we’ll find comfort at times as far away as we could never want it to be. It all simply boils down to what we’re willing to do in order to stand up for and hold fast to what matters most to us.

Because either way, a good portion of those around us will not understand it and thus will think us fools for choosing it.

And this is where these sides divide. For again, Scripture promises that the path to life is narrow and found by few whereas the highway to destruction is wide-open and well-loved and thus walked by most. And friends, those most who walk that road to eternal punishment, they will do and say whatever they can to help make themselves remain convinced that they’re not the ones in the wrong. And this maybe even means war the likes fought against Jesus.

Because you better believe that, even though we’re all seemingly far more sensitive and loving and kind these days, that same spirit that inspired those back then to crucify Him, it’s still prowling around seeking whomever it may devour. And again, he’s got a wide-open highway just filled with those so blind to hope that they’ll jump at the offerings he gives within this life as they include such things as riches and kingdoms and power and prestige and popularity and profit the lot.

For though times and days and years may change, this is the same very war that the devil waged against Jesus in the wilderness. And while we’d obviously far prefer to skip the hardship of such a hassle, if God wouldn’t let Christ avoid said strife, what makes us think we’re worthy of a life lived easy?

No, that’s all as feeble as most modern fairytales. For there is no such thing as an easy life, a normal life, a simple life. There is just life, let us thus be on with it! For if we never move forward, be it out of fear or disdain, we’ll never be or see anything but all we’ve been and thus all we’ve already failed to be.

It’s just that that cross contends that life’s worth more than that. And sure, it also recounts the story of a breed of suffering not seen in our world anymore, and thus one that we can’t even begin to wrap our minds around. And further, we’re all so adverse to suffering and strife anymore within this life that we’d seemingly rather die than endure disagreement or discomfort or disaster or danger.

But do we not only fear such things so long as we continue to live as if life is a matter meant for us to manage on our own?

Did God stop fighting for those who are His? Are not lives still being changed, being saved? Are not people still healing, finding joy and mercy inside the most inopportune situations? Is not the smile upon the face of a soldier fighting cancer but a reflection of the divine hope of Jesus? Are not children who fall down into tears only to rise up and run right back into their imaginations reaching for the stars from the same tree from which they fell but proof of how resilient He made us to be?

Are not every trial and test but evidence that God’s not done with us? And thus should we despise the fact that He’s leading us into what He knows we’ll be better for having gone through?

Look, while it may not happen today or tomorrow, perhaps not even for a week or two, fact is that life will resume it’s regularly scheduled series of struggles and successes in the days and weeks ahead. All this fun and excitement we feel around these holidays which are now over and behind us, it will be over and behind us at some point too. Indeed, this new year will bring us as much misery and mayhem as the last several have. Because life is still a battle lived in a world still vastly evil due to a great many giving in to this idea that life should be easy and thus God can’t exist because it often just isn’t.

Will we, when the hard days come back and the rain blows back in and the armies of anger or adversity or animosity or tragedy or turmoil or whatever other misery we might imagine return to the horizon, will we run in fear or will we, this year, decide to turn and face them? Yes, will we do this year differently? Will we welcome the winds of change, the wage of war, the cost of consequence, the chance at change, the choice to choose what we win and when we lose?

Because we will all lose something at some point, even life itself. What will we do until then? Will we fight? Will we try? Will we cower? Will we complain? It’s up to us as these matters are the only measure we’re allowed to wager within this gift of what is freewill within a world misusing freedom. Will we allow the world to keep us convinced that we can’t make it as the odds stack higher and higher?

Or will we instead fall back into the fire that guides by night and the cloud that leads by day?

Either way, we’ll still live right here between the fire and flame, between the rain and the rooftops. I’m just saying that maybe we shouldn’t be staying so adamant that it’s all supposed to only go the one way that makes sense to the comfort preferred by our selfish preference.

Nothing will stop the war that life is. Let us not allow the war that life is to keep us from living it!

Indeed, may we never forget in the days ahead such promises as those proven in such places as 1 John 4:4 and Exodus 15:3. For, “you, dear children, are from God and have overcome them, because the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world.” And too, “the LORD is a man of war; the LORD is His name.”

If we are of He then so too are we of war. Let us then live as if we can handle it when it eventually reaches our doorstep once more.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold