Day 3709 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

2 Peter 3:9 NIV

Thus the necessity of our lack of lean upon what we think anything to mean.

For twas never our understanding that was meant to understand neither where we stand, nor why we stand where we do, nor then what this stance upon this branch is meant to be, nor become, nor thus we, nor whatever it is that we’re still to be. Rather our understanding stands often only in the way of the Way that won the way toward both where and thus who we’ve neither been nor thus ever had the ability to believe. Simply because unto those who believe in only what they see thin, things that aren’t seen are neither understood.

And thus could never be believed, even if there were a scene to be seen at some point.

Such as that painted atop a hill pained of both persecution and its purpose mixing so perfectly as to accomplish eternally the hope of eternity as promised by He who took our place and stole our lives back from that grave into which He, as of today, still lay. At least back then. Yes, I think often of this well-defined middle ground of what must have felt rather rife with both dream and doubt, fear and faith, curiosity bedded down with confusion and thus wonder trying mightily to overcome the worry that our eyes still so often see within the waiting.

Yes, we weary of the worry that it is to wait as if it a weight that simply weighs so heavily upon the hope of a heart that it from there wears so wrong as to leave us left to be both lost in love but yet still fighting either for or from this longing for our always to again only gain the ease of all that’s had more quickly.

Indeed, within what’s remained a middle ground in many ways, it seems that we've chosen to grieve for, believe for, buy for, vie for, die for all that is to be had long before better can even begin to be what better always is, let alone what the best is supposed to be. No, seems that we simply cannot care as to what nor where better is, let alone what might be even best, for when at first we desire the rest that's won within the rest that isn't best, well from there we have no need to wonder anymore.

Because when comfort or fear are the air we breathe, as such is the saddened sight we see in all thus this hurry we hope to have of all the things we hope to have in a hurry, well then we will never know better, never be our best. All because we think we've both all the time in the world to do what's needed but ironically still not ever enough for us to wait for what's even better still.

For it seems that better, let alone best, always asks of us this rest in which we rust into a worry won over having to wait. Such as that kind met within this day between holidays.

I know we’ve talked about this before in a post posted upon this Saturday so sandwiched between the beginning of our ending and the thereby beginning of us past the end of us. I know we’ve discussed this day somewhat lost to time in which the Christ has died and thus everyone was left what they’d all asked to be: Alone. Indeed, such is this day in the middle as met between His misery and the mercy to still be revealed by an empty tomb and thus a meeting of the truth as was always there waiting within His Word and thus His Way.

Yes, the truth always remains in what is its own waiting game. Just waiting for us to stop playing around and confess we missed the point along the path to everything lesser, everything faster, everything we let play the master of our life’s meaning as made within the making of our own understandings into the gods we’ve served. And thus the hopes we’ve severed.

For if hope is ever allowed to have anything to do with anything we think we know, then said hope is but a hollow hole in which we can thence find nothing whatever to make us whole.

No, because the only hole that will ever matter is that of the grave that is our heart that stole our soul away from He who came to save the same from the sins we’ve formed into a way of life we’ve loved to live thanks to giving of gifts that, albeit not ever worth much as their worth always manages to muddy, at least they get here fast. And fast is all we care to have. Both to what we want and through what we don’t. We just want the both as quick as possible.

Leaving us at a loss for the love of waiting as won on our behalf by He who is not so caught in the same halves of hope that we’ve so clearly come to know.

No, rather His hope is that Him we might all come to know through what is a process of repentance as both provided and thus to be only proven within patience. On His part, not ours. For no matter the many times in which we’ve had to wait in life, that known in either worry or want, the fact is that He’s been the One waiting, the One patient, the One patient of patience winning the wanting for all to not perish but to rather come unto the repentance that is a turning from a life of penance unto one of promise.

The promise being eternal life.

The problem being still that grave in the middle.

That’s what the people knew back then upon this Saturday morn. Twas to awake only to mourn once more. Or rejoice. A weird blend to be sure. But, sure, such is still the case levied against all of us in one way or the other. For there remain many who are either heart broke or happy in regard to the Gospel and the many levels in which it levels our love of a life spent so lost as to what life was meant to find beyond our settlement of and for anything and everything of all that is so eternally lesser.

Yes, some awake broken once again over the sin that this day seemed to win, even though now we know it didn’t. For to those who believe in what He did for all of us, to understand that it was endured because of all we’ve done, and thus still sometimes slip up and do, it’s a crushing understanding to be sure. But then again, to be sure, some others remain both happy and thus still haughty within their hope of that grave staying sealed in what’s now but a vanity fixed upon a virtual impossibility.

For granted, none of us were there that day, neither the one upon which Jesus died, nor that within which He rose, nor that in the middle when what would happen no one knows. But the story’s remained for a reason, and thus so too the purpose of the season as seasoned with both suffering and success, glory and gore, hope and heartbreak, wonder and worry.

Easy to see we’ve all plenty of options from which to choose both upon this day in what is still a place so often found finding us somewhere in between believing in His better and our worry as to whether we can ever believe enough to find that measure of what is the proof we hope to feel so as to not again have to fear that either He or we might have failed to be what all of us can only hope.

Because there will come many days within this life in which we feel as if that tomb is still sealed. There will be many times when we’re asked to wait, and to likely there do so in worry. There will be many moments in which we’re met with both misery and mercy, both in measures that we cannot possibly imagine. Indeed, there will be seasons in which all we have is to imagine, to believe, to trust that He will leave that tomb that is our sin and help us begin again a new life lived in a new way toward a new place that is worth the loss of everything closer, easier, safer.

But there will always be times in which we daren’t try for that hope because of the patience it asks being that we just don’t have.

Yes, we will worry at times that sin will win because it will win days of our lives, room in our minds, space in our hearts and thus a place in lives. We will fear that our ability to fail, to fall, to flee from the hope of He being the Way He said He was will leave us lost when we can’t seem Him anymore. Or feel Him. Or hear Him. Or even trust that He hears us, sees us, loves us, frees us. Because again, sometimes in life we’ll be left waiting.

Worrying.

Wondering.

Wishing.

Washing away into the ebbing of faith followed faithfully by a flowing away of the same.

Because we’re not good at this waiting stuff. Rather we seem to always function far better when the weather blowing around is able to offer plenty for our minds to consider, to confuse, to look for and look not to lose. Yes, we can always manage when we manage to stay busy. But whenever we meet a season in which we’re parted from our parties of preferences and pride, when we’re left to literally live or die by our attempt to try and be still and trust that He is God, well, we struggle there to learn that we are not.

For that is the life we’ve known. It’s the life we’ve lived, the one we’ve loved. We know this way in which everything always goes according to understanding. Such as people found dying not being thereafter found anything other. Or a grave ensuring the place of the one placed within it, a place seemingly always perfectly permanent. Or a cross killing so completely that nothing could survive, even the hopes of those who may have loved the one tortured upon.

Or how Heaven could be anywhere other than wherever here our every hope is still hopefully waiting for us to find it.

Or how truth doesn’t move to meet our misunderstandings made along that way toward what we’ve made out to be a hope that proves always hollow, just like the hole from which we took it.

Or how hope doesn’t belong to the earth but rather is but always bridge built of belief in something even better still.

Or how mercy can take misery and make it into the meeting place of us and our Messiah.

Or how the Messiah left that place we expected to find Him, finding there for us either fear of realizing how wrong we’ve been, or an odd relief in that we were wrong again.

Because maybe He can come back. Maybe death has lost its sting. Maybe forgiveness is available for each of us. Maybe Heaven is a home toward which we can truly hope. Maybe hope is best stored in those places and people we’ve not yet ever been. Maybe healing is had in the waiting in which it’s won. Because maybe healing and mercy, the hope of a home found only if forgiveness is waiting beyond the death that seems often to be coming far sooner, maybe they’re all only possible in our Savior.

For maybe He did die to lead the way back to the life we were both created to live and yet haven’t ever lived yet.

Guess we’ll find out. Maybe today. Probably tomorrow though.

For such is the winning of waiting. It knows that it will one day what we don’t know now. And there’s just a warm curiosity in that, at least if you look at it with hope in your heart. Like that had by those who themselves were waiting to see what would happen upon the third day that He’d spoken of. It’s just that second day though. For we know what happened yesterday, and bleak it indeed did seem. And we can’t see what tomorrow holds as we’re simply not there yet and neither have the ability to get there faster.

No, seems that for today, here and now, all we can do it wait upon the One who’s long been waiting for us.

And when it seems unfair, unfun, far from enjoyable, this war of waiting He wages in our behalf in which we behold a wearied wonder that inspires us to wander often only into worry, let us remember that normal human desire for fairness. For we’ve long hoped that He’d be either patience with us, or rather just leave us alone. And so let us not despair when He both gives us what we’ve asked, but also there asks in return that we wait in trust for Him to continue to take from us the rust of both doubt and dread.

Because to wait doesn’t leave us dead, but rather, if done just right, it might even lead us to life.

Guess we’ll find out tomorrow.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold