Day 3692 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Mark 8:35 NIV

A life lost.

Seems as though that such is what’s promised unto all no matter how we get there. And too it’s a promise that’s to be proven in perhaps perfectly unique ways within the days we’ve each been allotted to live a life lost. Which, granted, isn’t at all what God at first hand in mind as He held us inside the same. No, for once we were imagined into creation, a creation created by a Creator creating a cherished children whom each shared in His image and imagine the identity He imagined us having. It’s just that we willfully lost what He fought for us to simply have and stay.

We rather wanted another way as won within our wondering into wandering both away from who He is and thus who we were made to be.

For the fact is that the two, whilst obviously different in regard to such things as authority and thus too authorship, weren’t at first designed to become quite so different as we’ve delighted to be. No, in truth God didn’t create us to so delight in our own demise as done within the sin that still wins those worrisome wages of what are death itself. Indeed, it seems that our way of life, one won so sinfully and such, it’s done a great many things for us, or so it feels.

Alas our literally bringing death to life is both chief among them and too the one we’re not so thrilled about.

Rather we still tither this toll of what is both a hope of growing old but somehow too the fearful outcome of getting there. Indeed, every human alive wishes to keep living this life we’ve been loving since the time began in which our time began to end as demanded of God because of what we’ve done without Him being revered as such. Saw that the thoughts and tryings of mankind in all our lyings were only evil all the time and determined not to endure us for as long as He might have at first intended.

After all, why continue to contend with those so comfortably caught in continuous contention against the very Creator who created them? For as much as He had no reason other than love in which to make this man, so too then has He no reason to see to our continuing should we continue to prove only the retinue of rebellion and its refusal to love Him in return?

Indeed, I think we’d all agree that there simply comes a time in which you finally understand that you cannot continue to love those who will never love you back. Not that you won’t, because you will. It’s just that you stop holding out that hope and just agree to watch them walk away.

And for us, well, that time was back in Genesis chapter 6 as mentioned in passing above in which God determined that He “will not contend with humans forever, for they are mortal; their days will be a hundred and twenty years.” And indeed, within these days, as sadly considered still ours by only us, for any to reach 120 would be such an impressive feat that it would garner a feature upon front pages of newspapers that we don’t print anymore.

What a great many things we don’t do anymore.

A life lost already perhaps?

Yeah, such is what we somehow seem to still never see within this ongoing ebbing and flowing of a life lived flooded with fear and the foolishness to fight for it to stay where it needn’t be. Indeed, we were never meant to be afraid of death as is the grandest loss of life as lived within this land so lost that all us think ourselves either found or well-capable of finding whatever it is for which we’re somehow all still so clearly looking. All because we weren’t created to die but rather chose to by our choosing not to honor He who is the Life.

And thus we spend our lives now running from death via whatever paths and promises, powers or purchases that might prove of enough popularity to leave us feeling alive, only quite vicariously through the outlooks and opinions of those billions of others who’ve themselves scarcely cared as to the reason(s) we’re here. For I think we all know said reasons, and too then their comparative ease and excitement. But alas we’re lost within a world the same and so seek to stay the same we so choose to do too.

Thus the shared hope of a long life lived unto old age, only to then find that the number begins to become a bit scary as that rarely-reached 120 starts to loom.

A loss of life coming.

But who of us reaches 120?

I just saw this morning that Val Kilmer has passed away at 65, just a few over only half way. And many others have too passed recently, famous or not. In fact, these days it seems that none of us really know just how old we’ll be when we leave. Just that we will. For, despite our attempts to try, there remains none alive who knows their time. A few might seek to number their days in the hunt for wisdom, but even they only fail in the end as death catches up no matter what.

No matter where. No matter when.

So to be honest then, maybe the wisdom won within our numbering of days is designed inside that realization that it shouldn’t matter at all. After all, is death not just a dealing with the flesh that we all know isn’t forever? What then of the soul? The hope? The excitement and elation at some sort of splendid vacation as vacated from within what is a life lived both lost and loving it despite all that it means to be so lost as we all so often seem?

That’s one of my final standing hopes upon which I lean when life leans long through days and ways harder than I can hold onto any semblance of hope at all. It’s that wonder as to where Heaven is and what it’s really like and if I’ll be found enough like Jesus to be welcomed where I know my past has proven I’ve no reason to hope to go. Yes, will I leave this life to life?

Or do we truly just lose this life to death?

Well, what’s the difference between leave and loss, and thus leaving and losing? What's the biggest difference between loss and surrender? What's the difference between being lost and being found? Do you not at first need to know the first before feeling the joyful hope of the second? Does not the second always follow the first? Can you find what wasn't lost? Can you lose what wasn’t had? Can you really have what you’re promised to lose? Can you leave something and find nothing? Leave nothing and find something?

Can He save those who aren't in such need of such salvation? Did He come, as if a doctor, to heal those already well enough to go it alone? Does not such a healer help only those sick, injured, unsure or otherwise infirm? And does not our mortality as demanded of its common immorality leave us to live within the infirmity of impermanency?

Indeed, what’s the difference then between loss and surrender?

Perhaps humility I suppose. Indeed, what's the difference between losing and surrendering? Well, to lose is to have taken away whereas to surrender is to simply let go. And while the latter seems a matter more miserable somehow, do not both entail the same loss in the end? Why then is the loss known in having something taken considered better than that which is lost because we gave it up? Is it not at least something, in part at least, of humility?

And our common confusion in regard to it?

For to lose is to have at least tried, right? And yet to surrender is to have only given up, right? And this, in a life filled with and thus fueled by pride, to give up is seen as worse than the first. For we should always at least try to win. Right?

But friends, how can we win what regret says we’ve already lost?

And does not the difference between stubbornness and weakness remain so indifferent that we cannot truly tell them apart? I mean, we’re all weak in one way or another and yet we’ll none of us readily admit them for fear of looking, or mostly feeling, as if fools who’ve fought only to lose what’s apparently a life in which we’re to live to win what all we’ll still lose in the end. So again then, what’s the difference? More winning in this life? But does not having more in this life only leave us with more left to lose when we leave this life we’ve lived?

Or are we really even living this life at all when we lose it every single day to prioritizing the many things that we can’t take with us when we go? Ashes to ashes, dust to dust? What then of us?

Is this not what hope is meant to help us with?

In truth, yes. In practice? Indeed, it seems that hope is something of a confusion as it resides alongside these delusions we’ve delighted so much to design that we daren’t demand they die. Because we don’t want anything to die, ourselves principally. Because again we’ve come to see any such loss in life as merely a loss of living a life that we live as if isn’t ours to lose. But isn’t it? After all, what exists upon this earth that lives forever? And don’t we know that we don’t know because ain’t none of us been alive forever quite yet?

And considering the overwhelming inability of this fallen humanity to reach beyond 120, why then do we continue to live as if we’ve all the time in the world to do as we please and give then no thought to when we’ll leave nor thus where we might go?

See, sadly it seems as though life's become something of an overgrowth thickened closed by both good things and their often clearer contrary. For make no mistake, while there are a lot of really good things in this world, we all sadly know far more about those far from it. And yet this has seemed to only inspire us to live this life as if a hunt for the elusive good as found somewhere around us, within us, by us, for us, of us. Yes, we live our lives assuming that everything good is waiting only here within what is a life we’re absolutely terrified of losing.

But friends, while we may be afraid of losing what we think is good, what have we to lose in letting go of all we know simply isn't?

See, that’s the irony to our idiocy. It’s proven in that delusion that is our decision to live this life as if to lose this life isn’t necessarily promised. People all over the world have learned to take life for granted as if it’s just some endless conveyor belt meant to bring about all we want for however long we want it. And then when our desires do eventually change, as they always do, we just put in a new order and wait patiently while the postman brings it to our doorstep.

And we ourselves then just continue ahead living as if life’s about loving what we’re leaving as soon as we lose the ability to love it anymore.

But should either life or love be matters so moveable? Should they ebb and flow like the tides that go as fast as they came, and to places we’ve never been? Where does the wind blow said waves as they wave goodbye and leave the sands of the beach to dry? Where do the clouds go when they take a day off for a clear blue sky? Where do snowflakes go then the sun shines bright? Where does the sun go at night? Where will we go when we die?

Or does anything happen at all?

That’s perhaps one of the longest running curiosities amongst humanity. What happens next? Don’t think about it so much when we’re kids as, well, kids are clearly the last to live looking beyond such numbering and the worries always won within it. Rather kids are busy believing they can do what time’s not yet taught them they shouldn’t even try. Definitely not worried then about their having to die. And yet some of them do, and this really feels the stick to a bicycle wheel!

Why do bad things happen to what we consider those best and most innocent among us? Why do bad things happen at all? What are bad things? Who are good people? Is life here really so good that we should always think death only bad? Is there not some hope held inside the thought that there might really be a place that has none of the heaviness of heartbreak that this one is so known for due to such things as hatred and hostility?

Do we want it this way? Can we do anything about it? Can we afford to continue loving what so often doesn’t seem to love us back?

Again, that’s why God determined that He’d not contend with we fallen men forever.

Rather He sent Christ to reach this fallen man so fully that He embraced the death we’re due in order that we might share too in the laying down of a life in exchange for one raised from the ashes of the graves we’ve craved. Yes, Jesus came to beat us to the tomb in order to get it ready for the welcoming party that’s thrown just that next breath further.

It’s just that we struggle to imagine another then taken after what we’ve long been told is our last. That’s one of the signs, isn’t it?

Sign of what though? A life lost? Sure. A loss of life?

Who of us can say for certain what happens in those places we’ve never been? And too then, who’s to say that there’s nothing waiting beyond this life we’re losing? Who’s to say then that there’s really no sense in letting go our hold on what time says we can’t have forever? Who’s to say that there aren’t some things in this life that we can have forever? And who’s to say that those things in this life that we can have or hold onto for all of forever are the ones that we have to feel or find?

How can we find what wasn’t lost?

Friends, that’s just it! He left the 99 because we were! Once. Maybe still are in fact, for many still are in fact. And yet we’re told plain within His promise that He knows those who are His. This life then is just for our either finding out the same or rather fighting against it until we can’t anymore. Leaving then the very same outcome, a life lost, but with an entirely different outlook.

A life found.

As in with Christ in Heaven for all of forever.

And while we clearly may not be there to that hope quite yet, as proven inside such things as weeping and pain, doesn’t the fact that we can have that hope mean that there just might be something to it? I guess the question is just how much that hope means and whether its worth is worth enough to inspire us to lose a live we’re leaving, or if we do as most have and will and simply settle for leaving a life we’ve already lost without such a hope of our then being found where He came to lead us by finding us when we were lost.

Friends, I get that it’s scary, and more than likely pretty confusing because of it. After all, even verses like this one seem at times to kind of get us all twisted around and thus unsure of what to do as we struggle with what it means. It means that whoever tries to hang on to their life as lived their way for only their wants as won within only their will as served by their living their life their way will lose it. If we live this life as if this life is ours then we will lose it.

But if we let go, which is just another version of losing, of this life lived our way in exchange for the chance to embrace the change that leads us to living a life in accordance with His will as shown in the Way, then we will find it.

Because we can only find what’s been lost, but nobody really cares to find what’s been left.

For to leave something is a choice whereas to lose something often isn’t. Nobody wants to lose this life because being alive is all that makes sense to the living. But friends, what are we losing in laying down a life lived so lost as to have denied the hope of Heaven? And before we get into debating that foolishness, our every single past proves we all truly have. We’ve all done things that we shouldn’t have done, and the very presence of such a thing as guilt or regret only proves that in our way of life we have nothing to lose!

Why not then lay it down, leave it behind, let it go? For we have been lost, and we’ve lost a lot because of it. We can either continue to focus on such fears as our losing more of what we have here, and the death that most assume marks the end of everything period, or we can embrace the chase into that audacious hope that considers a life lived so lost to be something worth losing if it just might mean the finding of what we all know we’ve never found here.

Like peace.

This life doesn’t know peace what with all the wars we fight and the worries we know. Why worry about losing it then, especially since we’re promised to anyway? Why not rather take such an inevitability as an excuse to imagine the possibility of something better? For that is what He promised, and in fact died in order to prove worth it.

Question again is whether or not it’s worth it to us.

And the way we live our lives is how we answer that question. Are we then living for what we’re losing, or rather simply leaving behind what’s already left us lost?

#LeaveNoSoulUntold