Day 3614 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

James 4:14 NIV

“What is your life?”

As you’ve likely noticed there are a whole lot of questions asked within these posts. And sure, many of them are quite rhetorical in nature as they’re asked in what’s anything from irony, in regard to our penchant toward idiocy, all the way to what are warnings considered within the continuation of our doing what we know we shouldn’t be, refer back to the idiocy. And there too, there are many questions asked in these devotions that are geared toward making us all hopefully a bit more aware as to what we are doing as discovered perhaps only best through the considerings of why.

But then there are questions that even Scripture asks, such as that found in this verse for today.

And as with all Biblical study and Scriptural exposition as expanded through detailed, and at times even delayed, expository writing, I know that there are always the contextual considerations to, well, consider, and we will certainly do so within the up ahead in regard to this post. But you must admit that the question just hits! And it in fact hits so hard, or at least has me, that I find that it’s perhaps one that blows well far past either worry over irony or the warring through warning.

Indeed, I find that this is perhaps a collection of what are four entirely simple words that, when grouped together as they’ve so been here, might prove a quite conducive contemplation in regard to something not at all so entirely simple as the simplicity of the words might suggest. For after all, how can we consider something such as eternity through a lens of simplicity? How can forever be so measured as to leave us the ones to determine how much it matters? How can we know what we don’t know?

No, perhaps that’s the point, purpose, pursuit and prize of this here question brought benevolently before our eyes.

What is your life?

Sadly our life is often not much but whatever the rest have made trying to make sense of their own. It’s so often a matter measured by the weather of whether or not as even itself most times a question not really considered all that concerning. No, it seems that we’ve leaned so lonely into a worldly so homely seeking to be advised as to the apparently only best way to live a life that our lives are but the mirror of everyone else’s too failed attempts to make any of this make any sense. And in fact, in this, we’ve leaned in so close to a world fallen so far that we’ve come to this way in which we’ve learned only to fall away ourselves.

From what and to where?

That’s the question that I asked at the very start of yesterday’s post, just backwards and yet not without the same point still proven. And I think that’s sometimes the gravity of a life questioned simply. It’s that it doesn’t matter the eloquence or magnificence within which we ask the questions but is rather a point proven within the courage to consider the questions that this world seems either entirely too busy to be burdened by or rather simply not willing to wander through.

No, seems anymore that all this world is ready to wander through is the wonder as to what life might be like, have been like had we been like something we’ve not found reason to like let alone try to love. What is your life? Is it not anymore answered within such things as accomplishment or adversity? Do we not seek to assimilate ourselves into such a staled society only by agreeing with their lack of meaning as made within the inability to answer such a question alternatively?

Is not the first question offered just beyond learning the name of a stranger posed as to what they do for a living? Indeed, down here our lives are defined, at least in part enough to be found amongst the matters of highest priority considered when upon meeting a potential new acquaintance, by the jobs we have. Or the hobbies we enjoy. The houses in which we live. The hope we hope that another might hope in themselves. The having of something that another doesn’t and thus might find amazing.

It’s anymore all titles and trophies, tiny trinkets of our trying to find a life’s meaning through things without such things as breath or belief.

Is that what our life is? And does that question being answered so obviously demand that the answer then never change? For the answer is yes as there’s simply no room nor way for argument when it’s so clearly evident that we use such ideals and idols to try and help another understand who we are. And yet, just because that’s who we’ve been as here defined by what we’ve done, does this mean that we’re to be nothing new under the Son?

That seems to be an irony all its own that’s stuck with me in regard to that verse from Ecclesiastes. It’s again something seen so easily and yet it seems so simple when seen that it seems to be entirely too easily left unseen. I mean, it’s a single letter and a potential consideration of the necessity of capitalization. It’s merely a letter change and the first made bigger. And yet the difference it makes couldn’t be clearer, and it just makes me wonder as to whether I’m reading something into that shouldn’t be there or if it’s in fact so obvious that it’s almost worthy of offense for us to remain to it so oblivious.

For yes, under the sun there is nothing new ever done. But under the Son?

Perhaps it’s something that’s become somewhat lost in time as measured between that contemplation as to the lack of progression from Ecclesiastes having come from before what changed everything. Yes, maybe it’s a matter made murky within the transition of Testaments. Old to new finding the switch between nothing new and then suddenly everything otherwise. Yes, Revelation 21:5! “He who was seated on the throne said, “‘I am making everything new!’” Then he said, “’Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.’”

What words? Verse 6: “It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. To the thirsty I will give water without cost from the spring of the water of life.”

What’s done? Well, what’s life? And is our life in fact anything of evidentiary substance as to the providence in His having made everything new to the tune of all old now shed? Yes, are our lives able to offer anything in the way of testifying to the validity that yes, everything in us and of us is new as made by He who came to that just do. To make all things new. To wipe away the old way so completely that the only way is now the Way which is the Truth who is the Life.

What is your life though? What is life? What is new in life? What is old and still hanging around? What is perhaps a door unto an untold betterment that’s now been opened unto we who’ve now no need of anything under the sun? Or are we under the Son?

Is there even as much a difference as that letter shift and the s upgraded to denote a name, the Name in this case, is there even that enough of a difference in our lives to show that our life is new?

What is your life?

You know, I’ve just recently celebrated a birthday, not even quite yet a week ago at this point. And what’s weird is that I’ve celebrated a bunch of them, 37 now to be exact. And as I spoke about in the days leading up to this adding up of what seemed just another year into what is here reflected in but a number as measured since our arrival on this scene so unsound, I spoke about how they’d begun to lose their significance as there aren’t now quite so many presents and nor either the presence of all those friends I used to invite to ring in the first night of my being a year older.

And yet it’s now the older that’s managed to make me see things so differently so suddenly that I feel as if I almost need apologize for the inability to see the significance that no number can define. I never knew that I’d be sitting here doing as I’ve done for years within what feels a mindset so mutant that I can’t help but be amazed by it. It is true that the Lord works in mysterious ways! And yet even this truth is something itself all too often lost in the transition of time.

Because all of the sudden, as if out of nowhere, this entirely antiquated question has found for me an excited reason to question everything about me. As in what am I doing? How am I doing? What am I doing that I don’t want to do anymore? What might I be able to do better were I not doing so many thing that weren’t making me better? What don’t I know of better as measured within the life I’ve not lived inside this one I have in which I’ve too worried as to what my answer might be when someone asked me what I do?

Indeed, among this gift of what feels a mystery given me by He who made me to celebrate that birthday that I had nothing at all to do with, among this gift of this novel mindset is found the realization that I don’t want to care as to what my answer might be as I find that I meet anymore so few people that it doesn’t matter anyway. Nobody asks me what I do, because nobody around doesn’t already know. And even if some of them don’t, the worry over how to describe myself and my life, it just doesn’t register anymore.

Because my life isn’t for me to define.

What I do isn’t for me to defend. Who I am isn’t mine to describe. This time I’ve been allotted is merely mine because He said I could use it for at first doing whatever I pleased as such is just what life is here in this sullen place from which we at first seek to see what our life might should mean. But then, after having done just that to have found so little, all of the sudden what we do at first, having itself all but defined who we’ve become, it’s granted a reprieve, a respite, a second to reconsider our response to this request as asked us in a question here as to what our life is.

God lets us do something new. He grants us not only the opportunity to do as we please as offered us in freewill, but He also then ups the ante, so to speak, in what is a Savior came to save from that wasted way in which our life has been so little of what is anything alive that we are, most days, unsure if we even are anymore. And I’m tired of that. I’m tired of the trying at this in vain. I sick of standing in the rain angry at the pain as proven in His asking me what I am doing.

“What are you doing here, Elijah?”

That’s another question that I find I consider constantly. And as I mentioned a while back when we considered that passage, I’m not even named Elijah. My name doesn’t even rhyme with Elijah. But again, it’s the question as asked in what is a clarity that only God can offer unto us rhetorically. For He knows what we’re doing right down to the why that we often only try to keep from Him hidden. But because of that, or perhaps beside it, He also knows that we often don’t know what we’re doing as, since He knows the why, He also knows that we don’t know why we do what we do.

Paul. Think of that passage quite often as well. For I too do things I don’t want to whilst not doing the better things I know I ought to. What are we to make of that? What kind of life is that? What’s the meaning or purpose or promise in a problem like that? How can we even consider a question like that as posed in what is a blanket awareness of our confusion? Is it not asked or mentioned in order for our to benefit from it? Paul’s problem and Elijah’s hiding and James’ asking us what our life is?

Is it not all the same? What is your life? Why, within some of it, do we hide? Why, with some of it, do we buy into these lies that lead us to doing what we shouldn’t, which only then leaves us not doing what we know we should? Why, with most of it, do we worry about the worries worldly? Why, with all of it, why do we live it as if we have no desire to risk it as proven in our penchant to fear change and prefer comfort? Is our life truly to be never anything better than comfort and us there complacent?

What is your life?

Is it, as this passage is considering, only plan and pretense? Is it a matter made of what we make, or intend to have made by the time we tomorrow call today yesterday? Are we here to live always only within the up ahead? Is our best life still to come by our looking only back and comparing then where we’re at with who we’ve been before as considered against who we may then never be as risked inside the changes we know we need but don’t know if we can make?

What have we done to life? And is what we’re doing with it, within it, is it truly what we want to do as defined by maybe not worrying about what we want anymore? How’s that for a weird question? Are we doing what we want to do if we could truly consider as to whether what we’re doing is even what we want to continue?

I think we need to consider questions like this because often times they’re the ones that seem either so simple that they’re not worth our time or so difficult that we don’t want to waste the time even trying. Is that what life is supposed to be, just you and me lost inside this misery of what is some make believe middle ground found in between what we perceive too easy and perhaps too challenging? What can that life be if all life is is but you and me making it up as we go so that we never have to go anywhere we don’t want to be?

Is there life outside the fire? Is wisdom won outside the war it feels to learn? Can growth happen without movement? Can we truly so plot our movements as to abide so wonderfully within plans made perfectly that never end up going perfectly to plan? What is your life? For we don’t know what tomorrow will hold or even if our lives hold another tomorrow!

And so why then worry about anything except for today and what we’re doing and whether or not it’s found us a life worth living?

It’s that “mist” part that just levels you. For it’s such a beautiful portrait of our brevity. Just reminds you as to the overall temporality of everything, even us. And when considered from that point of view, don’t know about you, but it makes me want to really reconsider what I’m doing as maybe it does play some part in defining who I am. Only in always a potentially mostly detractive sense in that so often life lived here is entirely too worried about what we do and worried then not nearly enough as to why any of it is done.

I don’t know, but it seems that so much of what we so arrogantly call “life” here is about as far from the meaning of such as we can get. Because it’s not plans. It’s not opinions. It’s not preferences or the pride which picks them nor the price we pay to keep them. It isn’t the prizes we chase nor even the time we waste to win what we’ve never needed. No, life is both simpler than all that and too entirely more complex and complicated.

For life here isn’t all there is to life. It’s, if anything, just the time we’ve been given in order to alone determine what matters most to us as then defined by, yes, what we do. And so, what are we doing and is it doing anything to better our lives in such a way that will help us to someday understand why we’re here as defined by what we leave and where we go?

Or are we just living for what we’ll be leaving as if we’ve never anywhere else to be?

That’s been me for a long time now. But, having now seen the connection between so many Biblical questions, it’s all got me reconsidering some things. Almost everything in fact. Yeah, everything but my faith because that, as I so often tell God, that faith is about as close as I feel to being alive anymore. Because faith is life, and thus without it we’ve neither. And so, my friends, please do take some time to truly consider for yourselves what God in Christ, both on the tree and too the throne, is asking of all of us.

And that is, what is your life?

#LeaveNoSoulUntold