Day 3668 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Hebrews 11:3 NIV

By faith.

For that in which we believe through faith is the same as that which most cannot because they cannot see this belief we believe. Because to most belief is but a burden as borne within the betrayal of the present, the scorning of the perceived, the accosting of complacency as considered commendable by those stagnant and bereaved of their belief in all things better as promised only unto all in that perpetual further as found just beyond the fog of now in what is a life lived as if life’s lived only here.

And it isn’t, at least not according to what some believe.

By faith.

You’ll notice it doesn’t say by intellect or intelligence. Not a mattered measured by imagination or understanding. Not found by either insight or instruction. It’s not even considered by the courage at a considering a strange consideration as constructed outside the breadth of our vision and our equally limited ability to believe. No, but rather by faith do we believe in this belief that is not bereaved or imagined or understood from where we’re standing.

For where we’re standing is but a moment more before the many more moments come flooding onto our fear a fearless faith that fights to find what we cannot but more than feel. Yes, rather than a life lived among the blind leading the same in which all just grasp along the wall of this world wanting for something to win their hand upon as if to hold hope so close is the depth of all such audacity to imagine something more, instead faith is a reaching into the blinding as made necessity of our inability to even attempt at such an imagining of all that He has done and is indeed doing still.

No, there is no such way to know what all we don’t as defined by all He’s done that still we’ve left to learn as we look to leave a life we’ve lived in love with a world that knows only to deny all they cannot see, have not tried. And this is where most debark this embarking toward the embanking of a faith that is and had promised to find us all forever further as we move forward within the feeling that there must be more than this as planted in us by He who is more than us.

For He is the stainless, spotless, sinless Son of Heaven. We are but blinded heathen bound to a ground so ground and grinding that we’ve lost a life lived fighting for the finding of something to coincide with our tendency toward imagining everything at the often expense of what it always was to just simply believe without that selfish inclination to make our every belief believe at least in part in our ability to paint it inside minds stained afraid by past attempts to do what we were never asked to.

Indeed, I cannot recall a Scripture at all in which God asks that we draw maps to He nor the Heaven in which He waits to return to gather those few who are His from this place that’s the same but lives so staunchly otherwise. For this world’s been won by the apparent power of the eyes as preferred for the evidence of sight seen inside the scene of all that’s only shown for a day or two more. He simply has more for us to know than what we can within this life of limits.

And thus so too does He feel neglected should we agree with the world that negates His existence inside this tendency toward leaning upon our own imaginations to lead the investigations for those magical places in which we’re the ones crowned kings and queens of things on thrones that steal our attention and courage away from continuing on into the unknown where He’s always waited for us to believe beyond the seen.

How could He not?

I mean, here we have this Creator who has since become the Father of His very creation at the express cost of His firstborn, the first known amongst all created. And so to see this world so abated, adjusted, a jaded fading of a people failing at the finding and feeling of the faith that says there must be more than all that is only now, it must be utterly heart shattering. Because He made us out of the same nothingness from which the earth and every other cosmos came.

And yet rather than believing for more than nothing, no, many in this world contend that such is truly all that waits the end of this ending ride.

Thus we fade into flame for everything that is rather than considering the courage to count this all rather the cost and consequence needed to come before we can go toward wherever He went when He left to make ready a place in that place promised unlike this. Which is what I don’t understand. That we’ve been given the very hope of Heaven and yet live our lives to trade it away for merely more of the same of that which we’ve all already seen and heard and held and in fact left behind.

Yes, we are a people even leaving ourselves behind in what is an ongoing betrayal of the better that we could be if only we could see that seeing is something that confronts our faith, and thus insist it go away from the way in which we come to walk along the Way that is not like anything we’ve seen or known as His way goes where none of us ever have.

Why trade that for the already?

Why live as if all that can be is all that already was? Why believe only what has been? Why continue repeating what we’ve heard? Why the lack of novelty and newness and progress and pain? Why is faith seen something unworthy the rain in which it pours from Heaven’s shores into this desolate waste unto we who are often wasted upon the known and knowable? Should all of life be something so finite as to fit within our ability to understand it?

Indeed, why confront belief with our selfish attempts to try to imagine it?

You see, I perceive that there’s an unseen danger to imagination. Because to imagine is merely to merge a bunch of parts and parcels of our presumptions or opinions of what we perceive as perhaps at least plausibly possible into what is a portrait then painted by us and our understandings. It’s to combine all we’ve already seen, known, held or hoped to have into what is the outermost expectation of what we alone assume so exacting as to fit within our presumptions of it.

In other words, to imagine is to rely upon what little we know to form not just the beginning but in fact the finish line of what can then only fit within our mind as defined by the fact that our imagination relies upon our intuition as designed inside a mind that keeps track of information to reuse in the peruse of a possible destination as defined as either something better or at least hopefully something different.

But either way, our imagination tends to only get in the way as it leans, at least somewhat, upon what our understanding of our experiences with reality in the past have since proven feasible.

Which is the beauty of belief in that to believe is to welcome whatever may come without such selfish understanding or expectation getting in the way. Yes, to believe is won in regard to that for which we’ve chosen to believe as opposed to trying to imagine. See, imagining something is somewhat akin to painting this picture of what we perceive the outcome to be. It’s us acting as artisans articulating the assumptions we assume as if they’re the actuality of every measure of possibility.

But to believe is to not so agree to stop at what we perceive as it instead shifts the designing to the dream of His design as designed of whatever may be that thus doesn’t have to be bound down by our past experiencing of reality. That’s why so many love dreams, because they’re often for things so new, so exciting, so fully and finally freeing that they find us leaving that life we’ve known in exchange for the more we’ve not.

Imagining is rather our using what we have known to try and piece together what we can then deduce as at least logical as considered from it having been mixed of all things that have already been.

But believing isn’t so bound to seeing into the past looking for ways to make the present or preferred seem more logical. No, rather believing just invites something impossible to prove itself otherwise through what is a process called faith. And thus faith is believing, whereas imagining is our feeble attempt at an outcome that we can continue perceiving. And personally, I don’t want such a hindered hope as I instead contend that the content of every belief is meant to be found only beyond the breaking point in which we finally, if not feebly or even fatally, leave behind what has been for what we have only a blind courage that considers can possibly be.

Indeed, though we all seem to have long since forgotten our audacious youth spent inside such boundless courage to consider the impossible rather than trying to fine-tune the details of our dreams, truth is that there are some hopes so certain in life, in faith that to see them would seem almost offensive to the audacity it takes to hope in them at all. For to hope is itself an undertaking that bluntly scorns sight right from the start knowing that seeing is the very best enemy to believing as none need believe whatever they seem to see.

Because it’s too easy, and simply put, a hope that’s easy is too a hope that is altogether weak, shallow, superficial and thus suspect. After all, why hope within what you know is possible? Why hope in that which is basically already proven? Why hope in but a repeat of the past? Why not hope past what’s already passed? Why not insist hope hang upon the distance? Why not hold out hope so very far that should you reach it you’d there feel only ashamed of having so betrayed it into being something that's then known with still time and trial left to go?

Yes, why hope against ourselves in what are hopes and dreams so shallow it seems that we can see their evidence before we ever even begin to believe in their possibility? Should hope be held inside only the undeniably possible? Where’s the excitement in that? Should belief be something so easy to prove that everyone else can either believe it too or deny it without debate at all from any? Where’s the uniqueness in that?

Should the courage to chase into the disarray our every dream be a thing that everyone has within a world that most days has only the courage to waste away in denial? Where’s the meaning in that? Should faith be something that hinges upon our ability to believe, an ability bound to mostly what we’re able to perceive? Where’s the humility in that? Should we be able to see everything that will be when found still amongst all that one day won’t be anymore?

No, I am convinced that to imagine is different than to believe.

For I simply cannot compute a faith that relies upon me to imagine it, understand it, figure it out or even to find the best way to follow it. Because I know my reliance upon my abilities. I know that I’m a person who trusts in myself whenever so allowed. I know that I will look for ways in which to never be proven wrong, or foolish, or faulty or failsome. Yes, I know that my life has been lived by sight seeking to see scenes unseen as shown inside eternity’s uncertainties.

I’ve even asked God to show Himself inside my assumptions that my sight is best able to lead wherever I’m going.

But do we really believe that life ends beyond where our sight can see? Is this journey truly nothing but a bridge that ends halfway to nowhere? Is life nothing more than some incomplete contemplation as counted against the created who are destined for nothing more than a dead end? Shall we allow our inability to overcome our unbelief to inspire us to pull of this road aimed into the unknown as we sit in search of some way to make the unseen make sense?

Or rather is the life of faith one spent into the curiosity of the uncertain, and thus one lived so excited to see what more might prove in store that we rather scorn any roadside distraction asking for our attention turned away from where we've the courage to go unalone but without anyone seen walking alongside?

That’s the boldness that it is to believe by faith. It’s to ask our every preconception and personal opinion to step aside so that God in Christ can lead us right on by the very end of where our sight and understanding can go. It’s the audacity to seek something beyond our assumptions of possibility’s probability as proven already in the many things already known from the pasts now passed. Yes, faith is trusting that God can take nothing and turn it into something.

After all, all of this had to come from somewhere, but somewhere can’t have come from somewhere else.

No, life isn’t nearly as circular as our assumptions seek to suggest. It’s rather quite linear in that it aligns either with God’s will or is wasted in waging wars against the same. Either way it’s lived in a version of faith, only difference is where said trust is placed. It’s either in Him or us, and considering how we’ve never proven ourselves able to take dust and breathe it to life, I’m taking His side rather than continuing to ask that He see life from mine.

Because it makes no sense at all for the created to consider the Creator unneeded or unable or insufficient or even imaginable. God cannot fit within what we see or hear or think. Because He must exist outside of what is as where else could all that is have come from than the One who’s of the ability to speak and see it done?

See my friends, we have a big God who is not only capable of doing big things but has in fact already done everything we could ever need to believe that He’s so able to actually provide. And just considering the fact that we are alive and in this life able to believe in things that seem so often so impossible only to eventually see them proven, I don’t know, that just seems to show that there’s more going on behind the scenes than we could ever imagine.

So why not believe? Why continue living so lost inside a way of life in which we take from what is and try to make what isn’t yet? Why not rather get ourselves completely out of the picture and allow Him then full reign of our brain in which He can reset things in such a way that helps us see the unseeable? Not through the physicality that we’re so reliant upon, no, but rather through such intrinsics as trust and courage?

I understand that it may be deemed foolish to believe in something nobody can prove to a world that refuses to believe in anything they haven’t already seen. And I understand that such judgements as that will make us feel as if we don’t fit all that well anymore where it seems we once did. But friends, maybe fitting isn’t the point. Maybe our fitting in amongst those who live with no room left for God is the worst choice we could continue to make.

Because this world will throttle ahead assuming that seeing is believing and thus never believing beyond what their eyes tell them is there. I just can’t do that to belief anymore, because I can’t afford a faith that’s confronted with my confusions anymore either. For faith is founded upon the fact that in the beginning God spoke creation into creation. And so faith tells us that life was never meant to be a matter measured by sight at all.

But rather better by sound.

He spoke all of this existence into existence. From the stars to the sand on the shores of both here and Heaven, He spoke it all into being what it is, where it is, and too for however long it’s meant to stay that way. And thus faith does indeed come by hearing and hearing through the Word that was spoken for the benefit of our believing it.

Let us then stop looking for faith as if any of it is supposed to be seen. It isn’t. Rather faith is something heard in the heart and hope of a growing few that have the audacity to lay down their senses and seek to then see beyond the limitation they’ve always been. He didn’t create us to be so limited by ourselves.

Rather He created us out of nothing almost as if to say that since we came from nothing, so too then have we nothing left to lose should we believe bigger than we ever have before. In both the invisible and thus impossible from which we, by faith, believe that all of this and thus too all of us both came and too will then return. For that is the only circle in a life lived atop an otherwise straight line. And since that doesn’t make any sense, well, I guess that just goes to show that it’s not supposed to.

And so we walk by faith.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold