Day 3708 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

John 19:30 NIV

A new thing.

For such is what has to come when all others have been now finished by He who came to accomplish just such a thing as our all things made new. And behold indeed, He has done a new thing the likes of streams winding through this wasteland of wanton want and wish in which such a living water wasn’t found before and even thus a way through this wilderness in which we’ve ourselves wasted ourselves upon watering ourselves with the selfish and sinful service of servants of self seeking only the success of the same.

A new thing.

And that at the obvious start then of the end of all old things as to which we were already called even well before He came in what is a verse found just prior to that in which the promise is met of ways through wastelands and streams in deserts being made for those who’d made such desolations their destinations as demanded of every deed done in depraved desire. Isaiah 43:18. “Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past.” Because it’s passed.

Making the way for a new thing that came to make all things new.

For, “It is finished” speaks so clearly of such a finalizing that life is from there, in Him, to finally then begin again what is yet still something so new that it even continues to catch both believers and those yet to be realized as such by almost complete surprise, and that no matter how many times in life we’ve thought about it. Because of what can we think, how can we think that we can think in full of this fullness of mercy met with misery? How are we to contemplate the collision of His crushing of sin with the crushing of the One who hadn’t?

How are we to make sense of what seems so entirely too good to be true that it’s too eternally too good not to?

After all, what’s more new than someone embracing such sufferings as mocking and beating and being so ridiculed and hated that a crowd would gather to cheer on their very demise? What’s more novel than knowing what would come, as is why He came, only to strain into the thing knowing what it would mean before it meant what it was meant to mean? Who would do what needed done when dying was needed in light of what was already done?

And that by only everyone else.

For to pay the cost of a life’s consequence is something both entirely inevitable, and yet still something we’ve come to live as if it might be, at least theoretically, preferably avoidable. As if our preferences still remain what only pride insists they are. Which they aren’t as seen inside that scene shown of the Son sinking into such suffering that some who had agreed to it being needed left that hill only to walk away in a newly minted wonder as to whether or not it was. Even among the ones tasked with overseeing this trial’s outcome were found some who were left thinking new ways about these new things.

“When the centurion and those with him who were guarding Jesus saw the earthquake and all that had happened, they were terrified, and exclaimed, ‘Surely he was the Son of God!’”

Just didn’t see it before when basked within the suddenly now behind. For such is what happens when new things are done at the express expense of the old allowed to remain. No, there is nothing much that might so remain in light of a love that chose to lay down a life so that those unworthy of such kindness could see again this new way to begin again. And what a sight to at first behold! But alas, I suppose that something rather drastic is demanded if to open the eyes of the blind and the minds of those mostly melted by mistake and misunderstanding.

A new thing.

Yes, within those three words won within this Word we read of such a violent change of direction, of decision, of devotion and destination that violence was needed to design it. For to do away with is something we’ve all tasted and tried. But that only in times of feeble curiosity that leaves always that door slightly ajar just in case this new place into which we’ve placed our hope turns out just as cold as those many in which we’ve lost it before.

Indeed, we mind not the return trip to the filths in which we’ve wallowed. No, for such is what swine do, the go back. They retrace. They run right back to the wasted place in which wanton wish for the wicked and worn is wanted for no reason other than it’s still left warm from the many times before in which we’ve warmed our wants and wishes with our very words and ways. Yes, we’ve brought to life many a death as demanded of every single sin we’ve so desired within that even life was thought not worth living without the having of this rusted lust we’ve loved.

And yet such is what needed to die if we were ever then to live again. Because to be so dead in sin as to not see the necessity of something changing is what needed changing. And what thing can be more new so as to inspire us doing the same than a limitless God embracing the same limits as His very Creation in order to come alongside them and there pay the debt that would free them? And that by the most beautifully brutal misery ever imagined by them?

Indeed, not something anyone is looking to do for a weekend. No, rather we seek to pretty much most strictly always only avoid such miseries. In fact we deny them every single day. Yes, we go out of our way, out of our minds trying to find a way in which to find a way to avoid anything and everyone that may speak to the sneak of a danger into our dander. For we want not the pain of it all, the loss of it all, the love of losing it all inside of pain or persecution or other such seemingly undue punishments.

Because we do think them undue. Because they seek to undo what we’ve done to so become of the mind that was left so very blind as to see faith face-to-face and simply not recognize the hope in the eyes staring back. How did it get like that? How did we get like that? And saddest of all, why do we stay?

If not because staying is simply safe? Because staying is simply easy. Because staying means the very doing of nothing new, thus us needing to learn nothing else. No, staying the same is the refrain of a hymn sung without hope, simply because to refrain from hoping in something hopeful is the most hollow hope anyone can know.

And we’ve all known it far more than the horror of the unhollow.

Because it’s not comfortable. It’s not enjoyable. It’s not something we seek to experience. Unless we watch it. Unless we hear of it on the news at night. Unless we’re simply sat inside some seat straining to not fall back asleep upon some frigid morn with eyes and minds just barely torn from dreams for things we like, met with words we don’t as told by those few who are tasked now with trying to remind of a veil torn and thus life waiting.

And thus it’s new, both then and still now too. For rather than His turning away from such wastelands as being whipped and ripped, no, our Christ walked willingly into them. Instead of seeking to avoid the deserts of such disasters as the denigrating denial demanded for us to hate someone so dearly that we sought only His death, instead He agreed.

New indeed!

It’s truly amazing to me how much can be accomplished in so few words.

For I sit out every single day to try and find some way to hopefully convey all the life I’m learning to finally now live within the learning of daily more of the love that would lay down a life for what little I know I’ve done with mine. And would I write a million posts with each a few thousand words it would still become only as dry as the wasteland that is this life wasted upon such things as wanting other things, wishing for easy things, craving comfortable things, denying their all contraries.

Yes, I often marvel at the impossibility of what I feel He’s called me to do. Because it’s nothing new. Folks have been writing about Jesus since before He came to meet us. There are more books and devotionals and debates in regard to His Name than there are drops of water. And so it’s a wonder as to why we do in faith the things that faith inspires us to do. Because often times they’re nothing new but rather only a still measured response to the response He gave unto our lives from which He came to save.

And He did it despite so clearly not having to.

A thing indeed very new!

So much so that it demands we desire to define the purpose. For why would any do what He did? Why would any endure what He did? Why did He choose to endure what He endured if it was truly only done in light of what we did in the past, in the present, perhaps even still today with plans already made to do it again in the days we still like to assume more than well on the way?

Because that way of living a life isn’t able to leave us alive. For no matter what any may say, nor how great the company or commotion they attract unto they all saying the same, the wage of sin is still death. And yet, despite our glaring lack of ignorance in regard to what sin is, still He came to open the eyes of we willfully blind as chosen in that way of life meant now to be left behind.

For since He has now died, then we should do as such a gift was meant to give, us a reason at everything new at the express expense of everything old as won within everything we’ve already known, done, been and become. Because such is what is finished, both His work as needed to overcome our own wicked versions as proven in just our fealty to the death of sin as won within a past spent wanting those wages.

Yes, we’ve each of us come to want death just because it’s fun or feels good. We want enjoyment and entertainment even if these days the movies and shows we see, the songs we sing are so filled with such filth that to look away should have remained the only obvious choice to make. We want to be served with such satisfaction as our retraction away from a life’s responsibility to live into the den of doing the things that demanded the death of He who owed no such price.

We want to be comfortable, complacent, confused and left adjacent to a culture so crumbled that the devil is celebrated at music festivals and in parades in which the rainbow has been stolen.

Because it’s fun. It feels good. It brings about a bounty of this belief that our lives are to be lived for only what we see, how we feel, what we want and why we think that such is all that could ever matter most.

Thankfully Christ endured what wasn’t fun and felt as far from good as inhumanly possible as if in order to show us that life’s not about having fun or always feeling good but rather learning to do good so as finally find the fortune toward which only faith leads. A wealth of health held for us few in Heaven, and that not because of a lack of room there but rather because of that lack of space inside that place that we call a heart even though it beats often still only for what beat Him.

Friends, this Good Friday has found me in much a different life than even just three weeks ago. It’s become so busy around this new house He’s found for us that I’ve scarcely had the time to marvel at all the newness. And yet still those moments come as if out of nowhere to breathe air into this belief in His doing still something so new that even today I cannot help but elate at what more He has for me to learn, say, do, be in whatever days He’s to still send my way.

Because it is finished.

And that things continue to close out their particular chapters in my life, in my mind, before my very eyes even, such says to me that I’ve still left plenty to both learn and thus lose. Because all things new come at only the end of all things already. For our mortal limitations beg of us an inability to add more without room being made. Thus we have to rid of something if we’re to find something else. And thankfully the debt He paid in what I know was my place has come again today as if to say that things cannot stay the same.

For still I fall. Still I stumble. Still I struggle to be anything other than the comfortable that I, like all, so long to remain.

But to remain was never part of the picture. It was never the point or purpose. His promise is not for us to never know anything new! No, rather His promise is to make all things new, including every single day me and you. For friends, whether we can see it or not, whether we like it or not, the truth remains that we need to change because we’re neither home nor thus perfected.

Rather still we stand within the story of salvation being unfolded in new ways all the time. And knowing the price that was paid for us to have that pace by which to follow His path through the wasteland, the wilderness, the deserts of our many misplaced desires, such a cost should light a fire that does indeed consume us so deep that it leaves nothing left of what we’ve left unlearn, unfound, unfixed.

Instead we should crave every ounce of that grave in which He bought us a place so as to save us from ending up there ourselves. Rather His work was to finish such a death as that demanded of all of us. Not only so that we’d not have to fear such a fatal finality, but more so so that we could learn the distance between life and death in order to inspire us toward those things which bring life. Obviously then only done when we turn away from those many ways we’ve walked that only win death.

Friends, it’s Good Friday, and it’s good not because of what He went through but rather why He chose to. Because it was for us, for life, for us to live life again at the finishing of the death we demanded, deserved. And we don’t deserve it, never did. But still it is finished.

Let us then finish with it this day and in every other way toward which He will still show us both what needs to go and how to get it gone. For He is the very best at overcoming the every death that we’ve lived to love. Let us learn to love Him more every day so that we can, in every way, find more of the life that He came to begin at the end of the one we’ve lived in lust for all that’s left us lost.

For it’s said here that He “gave up His spirit”. Let us not then walk away from this day, nor any other, as empty as we may have come into it. For He has given us of His Spirit. And there’s just nothing that I know of that we need more of.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold