Day 3656 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

1 Timothy 4:8 NIV

Monster in the mirror.

Such is what I’ve seen more times than I might ever remember. For there are these ruts into which we’ve run into what’s managed to become but a life left to rust for the sheer sake of something to show for our time as given so freely and fully to what may in the end prove only folly if not entirely fragile. Indeed, that is something I’ve long tried to overcome in regard to our human condition as contained within the temporal and tainted. Because I’ve, like you, never wanted to truly admit what we’ve all become.

Which is but monsters made of misplaced importance.

Indeed, I cannot for the life of me at this moment right here seem to recall all to which I’ve run seeking some way to validate that I am what I’d rather believe myself to be. For this world has managed to so mangle our minds that we’ve learned to mismanage our times to the tune of trying for what helps with the outward whilst thus almost completely ignoring the more that’s always seen only deeper than the surface upon which we live. And simply put, having lived so shallow for so long as I am only now learning I have, I simply have no reason left to continue inside such squander of all wander toward everything better.

Yes, seems I’ve finally started to learn that life isn’t a matter measured by looks or lust but that perhaps there’s rather a life other that is lived only when our eyes aren’t allowed to define that in which we believe, nor thus what all for which we feel we must at least try to find or feel or force ourselves to figure. In truth, I even find that I now wonder as to just how important any figure was ever supposed to be, either mine own or those many others as found within what I own as measured in a continued accounting of all I have and the more I thus still find that I want only to wish for still.

And this discrepancy as defined by a general lack of contentment and gratitude has been something that’s shown up within what is the strangest of places. Because I never knew that the mirror might be the one place that we could go to trusting to show through to the truth of who we’ve become below the surface scene. No, I always thought that mirrors only helped us to focus on fixing the looks that matter so much to most.

Never knew it would show the ghost of all I’ve never been as killed off by what I’ve become instead.

Yes, I’ve mentioned that a time or two in recent days, this realization that I’ve won in regard to the path unchosen and the life unknown. And I do fear perhaps more than logic should allow as to just how I’ve managed to miss the masterpiece I could have seen had I not been so intent upon trying for my own selfish painting of it. For that is the danger of all vanity as it but the viscosity of a life lived virtually only upon the scene shown of the shown and seen.

And simply put, that we’ve a God who exists without sight or sound pretty much ought to drown out every thought we like to think as to what we think matters most. Because He’s managed to create all of creation and continues to hold all it within His hands despite His hands being seen only in the periphery of such things as hope and deliverance from all that tries to steal it away from us. Indeed, there is so much evidence of God in existence, and yet none of it is what’s able to be entirely captured within a portrait.

For even if we get the lighting and timing just right, the sounds are not heard in a photograph. Videos do not include the one tasked with filming them. Songs trail off and leave their end unknown when played on the radio. Movies are made of but a million moments all edited to show only those that most agree add most to the story being told. And even if we manage to get old, we’ll even then not be able to remember enough to tell the story of who we were.

All because “the race is not to the swift or the battle to the strong, nor does food come to the wise or wealth to the brilliant or favor to the learned; but time and chance happen to them all.”

And yet we all set our sights and try our times for what is a life in which we go into what seems a strict training as toiled at for the allure of some advancement or achievement or accomplishment or accolade that we believe is able to offer proof enough of its profit and purpose as to proffer us then a bettered evidence of our own existence as then considered from only what is the substance of those things shown upon the surface that we thus choose selfishly to focus on or fight for in light of their comparative ease of evidence.

Indeed, life is but a strange series of individual memories as made of either mistakes or motivations to overcome their happening again.

Thus meaning that we’re all constantly in training trying for what is a life lived vying for more of what we feel might validate the very fact that we are here with entirely too much time and even more theories through which to trace what we ourselves feel to be the reason for it all. It’s as if we’ve all managed to convince ourselves that life is of a singular purpose, but alas one that we’ve to struggle our way through the substance of what all it isn’t before we can ever stumble upon what it is.

And alas what it is seems something not only different for everyone anymore within this world in which we stroll by stores selling off a million hopes as held by those who imagined something that they invented that was intended to make a difference in the life of whomever they could inspire to buy it, but also it’s something that is thus different almost every day it would seem as our needs continue to change leaving new invention and new intention to do the lifting of a life closer to the purpose for which it’s lived.

But that’s where I’ve found myself beginning to struggle it seems. Because I just can’t help but realize that we must be missing so very much so long as we try to so live our lives upon such a thin line of things that only matter for a moment or two. And in fact this is just what all of us do because no matter how hard we try, there’s just this ongoing problem with our eyes that keeps asking us back to the surface of things seen by reminding us how those are the ones that most around here worry about.

And having myself agreed to join in, I seem to have played along long enough to discover that enough is never enough. Doing my best is but a limitation of sorts. Leaning upon my own understanding only asks me to own my every outcome as they’re all to be thus limited to the lengths my imagination is willing to look. Trusting within my strength or giving my life in that to being stronger is too but an almost confrontation to everything that would still be there waiting beyond the boundary of my potential.

Indeed, that’s to me anymore one of the main issues I cannot seem to stop struggle with. It’s that my potential cannot be something that I’m supposed to prove as it simply wasn’t me who drew that line. Rather it feels to me that that line is for me to find, not define. This life isn’t mine to design. This time isn’t mine to confine to what I consider to matter most at any given moment. And yet that is precisely what we all try for anyway.

Just this existence into which we pour our insistence upon one or two or at the very most three different things, spreading our every effort and opportunity amongst them in whatever their share of our entirety they’re by us deemed worthy of receiving.

And yet, to put it simply, I just cannot seem to comprehend how any of this is supposed to be so reliant upon such a people who still consider the surface.

If any of what still seems to matter is measured by the mile as opposed to the memory, then how can you or I be the ones to know for sure what matters most? Because we’ve never been this way before, especially if this way is the one walked in faith. We’ve not known that way of life! We’re but grown-ups in violent need of learning to be kids again. For they seem the last ones able to not worry so much about what is only vanity.

For such is just about all that we as adults do concern ourselves with. It’s all about how we look or what we wear or what new way in which we might start styling our hair to find a bit more flair within this air that we scantly have time to slow down and breathe anymore. No, we don’t breathe. We don’t believe. We by all accounts don’t even seem to be alive! Simply because our lives are lived for looks alone, and thus we’re left alone to look at life through always this mirror that we seek to satisfy.

And so we cannot possibly know the condition of what lies beneath the surface seen, unless we allow ourselves toward that cautioned consideration of what more might matter more than the mirror makes us believe.

For indeed, this verse here is one that I’ve found coming up behind me as if an enemy set on helping me to live life again. It’s strange how God does that, uses something that speaks so clearly against us to give us a rather mysterious comfort as considered within the potential for peace or calm or growth in hope as held inside all we’ve never known to worry about before. It’s like He knows that sometimes the very best way to get us back on our feet is by sweeping them out from under us!

And I love Him for it!

Because as I talked about a bit yesterday, fitness and exercise and working out and eating right, it’s all because a quite massive priority in my life. But yet somewhere along the way to what I thought would be better, and in fact is in a great many ways, I seem to still have gotten things a bit tangled and torn up and tossed around into which I’ve come out only to feel somedays as if I’ve drown behind a frown shown in that scene seen of a monster in a mirror who’s just not happy.

Don’t seem to know how to be anymore. Life has for so long been about so much of this visual validation that so many are shown to seeking that we just learn to forget the other aspects of life that run deeper and go further and last longer than even our looks or feelings or trophies or achievements ever could. Because no matter how strong we get, it will fade. No matter the records we set, someone else will break them. No matter the changes we make, someone will hate them.

No matter how beautiful or handsome we believe our looks to be, what does it matter if we’re the only ones we’ve aimed to please or impress or improve with them?

What does it profit anyone to love themselves so much that their lives are lived looking through only their eyes trying to find this self-perceived image of perfection that only matters to them?

And what can anything matter at all if all that matters only means something for a moment?

Such is the limit of all things trained for or fought for or believed for in terms or toils of the physical. For if it’s physical, friends, it’s also only impermanent. It’s temporal. If we can taste it or touch it or tout it, then it’s something entirely temporary. And such is simply why all such vanity is so expressly warned against within Scripture. Because God didn’t create us to settle for striving after only that which was never meant to truly last.

Rather He’s called all of us toward eternity, setting such an expanse inside the human mind but making it so massive that none of us can ever come close to imagining it. All because we need something there while we’re here that continues reminding us that both here isn’t forever and that thus we shouldn’t be living as if otherwise. Because one day everything here will be left behind. From the clothes we wear to even the bodies worn by our souls, it will all return to dust one day.

A promise given as if to say that our worries shouldn’t be worldly in any way.

We should not become so consumed with the things we see or want to show because while a picture may be worth a thousand words, a thousand pictures cannot tell the whole story of who we are or why we’re here. Because we’re more than what we look like. Our lives more than some camera can capture. We’re more than the mirror can imagine. We are more than we can imagine! And so why continue to lean on our imagining of some image of perfection as painted of what is to soon be but dust again?

That’s not to say that taking good care of ourselves and doing all we can to better our health and in this honor this gift that is this vessel, that’s not saying that such isn’t important as it is. But the fact remains that we can either live a life trying to win a crown that fades, or we can fight to win the one that lasts forever. But I’m just running out of ways in which to believe that we can somehow do both.

Because either eternal life is worth everything and thus inspires us pour everything we have into it, or it simply isn’t and we’ve thus plenty of us to spread around.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that I’m tired of feeling spread so thin as to have all these priorities that are somehow always allowed to compete with one another. It shouldn’t be this way! In fact, I dare say that I don’t know that it really can be this way. For again, eternal life is either the goal of life and by believing for it we’re unwilling to worry our thoughts or toils upon anything less, or everything less still gets to matter and thus eternal life will just have to, at least at times, wait for later.

But friends, when is later? See, that’s my fear, or one of them as found in regard to my faith as found within the fear of God. It’s that anymore we live as if we’ve all the time in the world to do or try or say or buy or become or believe whatever we still may need whenever our lesser attempts fall short all over again. But by our believing that we’ve all plenty of time, doesn’t this prove that we’ve then less than we could ever imagine? For if we think we have forever left to figure out what matters, doesn’t that grave still hold its sting?

And is that how any of us should live considering what all He did to take that sting away?

No, I think we all need to sit with our priorities for a little while and do some reconsidering with eternity in mind. Because no, God doesn’t call us to live unhealthy lives as He in fact refers to our bodies as temples of the Spirit. And so we should honor that. But since when did He ever put more importance on the temple than what it housed inside?

That’s the point. Physical training is valuable, yes, but it is not worth anywhere near as much as training in what will far outlast the physical. This should be common sense, but alas it seems something so uncommonly considered that all of us have a better than decent chance of getting it a bit too blurred. I know I have, and thankfully, God’s helping me do something about it. My only hope is that all of us do because friends, the simple fact is that forever is a really long time.

And so maybe we shouldn’t be quite so worried about anything that’s destined to stay on this side of the line dividing here from home.

Because nothing will ever change that what we see on this side stays on this side. Godliness though, no, that’s the bridge that Christ used the cross to create so that we could leave behind a life lived for looks alone. For the surface of things is only the start of them.

Please don’t let it become the finish line.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold