Day 3704 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Ecclesiastes 9:11 NIV

Time and chance.

One we have but so much of, and that itself running thinner all the time. For such is the overall trajectory of what is but a measuring of the mortal’s line. It’s just something that feels an almost vanity, this time measuring. Because we all know we’ve but so much with which to begin what becomes a life we’ll leave before we know it anyway. Leaving us caught always somewhere in between the time of which we have but so much and thus the chances that we then feel we must make so as to not waste too much of what we’ve not much left.

Yes, time and chance each both making the other feel perhaps more significant than they would be without one another but also in some ways seeming to negate each other as well.

For well, if we do have but so much time and it filled with itself and chance, then what does anything we do really matter? And yet how can anything we do fail to matter when it’s all measured by the time we give unto doing it? I mean, our time is worth something, right? But what is chance worth considering the utter lack of input or control we have in regard to the many things we cannot imagine, understand, insist upon or simply avoid?

Seems then that whilst time is worth a life in that our life is measured in time, that our life is too lived in chance leaves time either meaning less or more than ever before. But how can that work? How can the uncertainties all of us face almost daily define our time as meaning less, or more for that matter? Well, it’s pretty easy to see how chance can make time worth more as it implores toward the rewiring of our understandings unto an agreement that all we do is to be done with a firmly sat set of standards set in place so as to try and save us from wasting our little remaining time.

Knowing that we’ve so little control over basically any of a life’s outcomes seems to insist upon our insistence that we strive always for the best plausible substance, you know, just in case.

But then there’s chance as considered what seems a counter productivity in that it ever reminds that chances are our time will run out well before our plans do, or thus too our efforts perhaps already underway in terms of being given unto the things we’re planning to get. Yes, chance, while quite the powerful reminder to take our choices seriously in light of the little control we have, at least theoretically, it’s also something of a draining off of a life’s power in that it seems only to commonly inspire a person to not risk too much as excused by the fact that we can’t really force anything anyway.

So then why try at all?

Why give any time or intent unto the content of something that we cannot ensure or assure or insure? Why allow our lives to so drift through time that we allow chance to remain only what chance can ever be?

You see, there’s this really strange dividing line between what are opposed sides of a singularly falled mankind. For all have sinned and fallen short. It’s just really confusing sometimes because one side lives as if to fall is either something not possible or plausible but yet with plenty of excuse ready and waiting to disprove it a problem. And all along the other side lives as if to fall is so common that our trying to stand on our own is the problem.

Leaving each of us to the work of determining what we believe and what that means in regard to how we spend our time in light of our understanding of the overall aptitude of chance’s attitude.

Indeed, what do we do within our everyday when we both realize that time and chance do happen to all whilst still amongst that most who live as if they either don’t happen to all or even exist at all? See, all of live has devolved into a great deal of self-determination as delighted for the sense of authority such superficiality offers unto all of us who buy that lie that says we can be the exclusion to the inevitable. And we love that idea simply because it invites us into, or rather into us this idea that says we’re not necessarily quite so bound to what seems mostly undeniable as some ‘fools’ may say.

Yes, I don’t think there’s a single person alive who’s not at one time or another fancied that falsity that says we can truly find or force our very own reality as won outside of the Son who came to say that we’re all gonna die, and probably before we’d ever want to. And those who now live as if such Christ did do, they’re those ‘fools’ who say that whilst time is important, the overall undeniability of chance has rendered it something of a triviality.

Which we all should have long agreed upon anyway in light of how wisdom at first sets out to number one’s days, but only along the way finds that both our days cannot be numbered and thus the wisdom is truly won within our understanding of the presence of chance as meant to at first remind us of our weakness and, in this, inspire us unto a faith that walks not by sight as sat sometimes upon a clock face seeking to see how much time we’ve left in either the day of our life or within our life period.

For that we cannot know neither the day nor the hour of Christ, nor that of our own leaving whether met before or after His next coming, such a leveling is truly what I think chance is meant to remind.

To impel us toward the humility that is held inside both time and chance. Time humbles in that it is always there counting down to what will prove a final grain of sand or one last movement of that second hand experienced before whatever comes next. Chance humbles by proving perpetually out of our control, rendering us more aware of how little we’ve ever had anyway. And they both combine into a lifetime lived without any true way to measure much of anything.

Simply because time and chance happen to all.

And now we can take this reality one of two ways in light of it having been written about within one of the wisdom writings of Scripture, that coming from the very same book as that which discusses other such ‘chasing after the wind’ as is our such dabbling with measuring much of anything in life, by either time or intention in regard to today’s post. The first being that we can do as most seem inclined to and simply chalk it up as a matter meant to induce fear in order to then inspire agreement with a particular set of principles.

Christianity for example.

Indeed, that us weirdos speak fondly of such weakness as both time and chance has left us to carry has become unto the rest, those many more lost outside and often not looking in, it seems unto them as a scare tactic kind of in line with threatening to revoke a child’s excitement over going to a pizza party should they not clean their room. And sure, in some way, that seems rude. But, is not such only the case when seen through those eyes that follow those lies taught by those blind who’ve themselves bought the same assumption that we ought to have some say in our own life?

That’s a dangerous rabbit hole my friends, perhaps the slipperiest of all slippery slopes. I mean, we’re now to the point in society in which some parents are elated to allow their children to choose their own gender.

It’s sad that it takes us falling this far to realize the necessity of some sort of oversight as seen often in such things as rules, laws, expectations or simple investigations such as this as undertaken in the search for understanding in regard to why we try so hard to live as if our lives are our own.

For that’s all that really any of this is. Every doubt, every denial, every dance with indifference, it’s all just us trying to prove that we have some sort of say in what we still seem to assume is our life. And sure, if such were truly the case, then yeah, some things such as rules or expectations would be, at least theoretically, unnecessary. If we could truly both have control in life and thus embrace the then undeniable need for all to control themselves too, then we’d need far less rules.

And thus finally not need fear quite so much punishment or consequence.

But still friends, time and chance.

They’re both always there to remind us that these lives aren’t our own after all. We can want them to be. We can even live as if they are. And we can in fact do both for an amount of time long enough that we could, by the end, simply not remember anything different. But this is a fear among a few for a reason. It’s not because we seek some way by which to excuse our inabilities or misunderstandings. It’s not because we’re looking for some way to get ourselves off the hook that is our every hope. It isn’t because we don’t agree that we deserve to be so punished as to exist within an existence in which time and chance happen to all.

No, it’s because we know we should. We should be constantly reminded that our every effort, no matter toward what it may be given, it’s only as meaningful as uncertainty may allow. All because, no matter what we do nor how well we do it or how miserably we may mess it up, the fact remains that our personal power is of such limit that we simply shouldn’t continue to live as if we’re headed for anything but the unknown.

And we need this because we’re anymore of such vanity that we apparently cannot come anywhere close enough to reality to actually realize that every single breath is a mystery in and of itself. I mean, we just assume the next will be there when we need it. Will it? Will we have that time that we expect to have? Or do we not yet realize the existence of that chance that we won’t?

Just how much chance are we willing to keep adding to our lives?

For all of my life I've thought life to be lived but one way, and that as that always won within the lines lain alongside by those every other who themselves seeks to stay within the same. But what if there isn't a lone path to take, or at least not one right way to take the one path there is? What if the things we've so come to worry ourselves about, right up to the very point of all but now our every single one of us all but daily living lost within a way in which we weary ourselves about the same, are either not that important or merely not even existent?

Yes what is our fascination with all these mere human rules or understandings? For we seem to all of us live quite always impressed by all of these laws impressed upon us all in regard to things bound for death, decay or other such lasting destruction. But why? If not for the distraction of something by which we can measure our life, and too, perhaps even avoid some chance?

And yet, to embrace law would be to also agree that some will always exist outside of it. Why else would it exist? Why does anything exist? Why do we? For what do we? What are we doing either for or because of the fact that we do exist? And is whatever we’re doing within our existence done with or without that understanding of our inability to do or prove much of anything?

Or are we all still rather living as if everything we do simply must matter, in only the way for which we seem to insist?

Again, I’ve long lived as if everything I did mattered, but that only in the ways in which I wanted it to. It’s something all of us do. We do everything in just such a way as to all but ensure that every single outcome in life matches up to the plans we make. We work ourselves to death making those very plans whilst apparently never choosing to remember that we may either run out of time, rendering the work incomplete, or that chance will suddenly arise and render the plans moot.

So why do it? Why work so hard for what might not matter? Why do anything as if anything doesn’t matter? Why not take the chance that everything we do does matter, but that still both time and chance will have their way?

I think it all boils down to our unwillingness to embrace our place within all of this. We don’t want to admit that our efforts are more feeble than provisionary. We don’t want to accept that our strength or understanding or intellect have limits. We don’t want to endure having to so humble ourselves unto ever even considering that we either don’t know what we’re doing, or often even have a logical reason for anything we are doing.

We want to think that we are the masters of our own lives and thus able to insist that everything that ever happens will so perfectly align with our frame of mind that nothing could ever then go wrong, and thus leave us never having to know anything of consequence. Yes, our fractured understanding of life has left us standing so stubbornly upon our assumptions that we cannot seem to see the violent simplicity of living life as if we’re just here to tell others about Jesus for however long He sees fit to leave us unto the task.

But friends, in light of time and chance, what else really matters? Does making plans for our retirement years make sense? To some it seems. Does living life as if tomorrow is promised prove it true? Some believe it to. Does doing all we can only unto getting all we want ensure that all we get is all we wished? We still like to think so, but has ever thinking such a way ever really proven much of anything?

Nope.

Because the fact is that death is still going to catch most of us off guard, and we’re going to go through an innumerable number of things we’d never seek for, ask for, inspire toward or even expect along the way to that sudden goodbye. So just how important can anything we do really be when we’re the only ones who seem to be the point or purpose? And if then nothing we do unto any of our selfish ideals will ever prove of any eternal profit, then why put so much into it?

Why not rather live as if there is no one way to live a life that we’ve already not lived right? For sadly so many still seem to assume that only the fastest can win the race or the strongest move the heaviest object or the wisest prove able to know what nobody can then prove they don’t. But friends, who of us can be wise or strong or fast or healthy or wealthy or powerful or humble without God?

He’s the One who decides what happens. We either live our lives as if He doesn’t or we simply stop fighting so hard to find a way to prove He can’t.

Either way, if our will were truly all that important, you’d think we’d have proven it by now. But that none of us have, well, doesn’t that pretty much drive home that final nail in the coffin that is our confusion?

For the truth is that He’s made all of this incredibly easy to both understand and thus adhere to. And so if we’re still struggling to balance out life’s blend of struggle and striving, well, then I think we’re missing something.

And in this case, it might actually have something to do with us for once.

But even then, probably not what we’d like to assume.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold