Day 3717 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Hebrews 12:2 NIV

The race set out.

For such is the income of those of the same outlook as He who came to leave in what was such a last place that none even loved Him enough to claim Him in what were His final breaths as breathed in betrayal by a world so still the same that our then staying as such is just as much the betraying beating as those He endured on the behalf of who we’ve been but now, in Him, have neither cause nor then pause to pretend we might delight to remain. Because in a race there is no staying in place.

As was said in one of those hollyweird movies I now hate, you’re either first or you’re last.

And alas, we still think it somehow better to be here first amongst the rest who too live as if to win is to come in ahead of the curve that’s been graded in our favor by a Father who is of such moral fiber as to ignite the fire that came to at first consume our sin and then take over from there and burn within what are hearts that have long known nothing of life having lived it all along as if it were meant for our to win all we want and the rest then left to those others who lose out on what we’ve come to love.

But friends, are the loves in our lives leaving us looking toward life or merely the fractured and faulty filling of such with such a rust that dust is all we’ll have upon which to hope when the seas start to boil and the soil slips out? Because it will. Indeed, I believe that there are coming times of intense torment the likes of which no mind has fathomed. Why? Because we still fight to leave unfocused the final lack of failure found for us who’ve found always only the opposite.

Yes, we know best how to fail because our best is that in which we hope and trust and believe. And thus we believe in only that which can rust, fade, fall and fail. Simply because our every faith has been forced into this place in which every race is run to win what many others have won only to end up losing it all anyway when they too do as we all will and leave what is a life we’ve loved for both all the wrong wins and thus all the wrong reasons.

And I can say this with a fair amount of certainty in light of our shared absurdity when it comes to the necessity of shame.

We hate it. And granted, there are some arguably decent reasons why. I mean, after all, we shouldn’t enjoy it, this feeling of misery as met within our meeting of the seeing of our many mistakes the weight of which was carried by nobody but Him who took them all so that we’d not continue to fall under the wait of who we’ve become. And I say “wait of who we’ve become” because that’s all we seem willing to wait for anymore.

Each of us awake more days than not with the pre-planned express purpose of passing upon any possible problem or persecution as, to us, we see no use for them.

Because they’re not enjoyable, and to a people who’ve for this long believed life’s main goal to be the constant enjoyment thereof, well, we’ve then no understanding as to why He who was above would come below in order to walk with misery in tow along what remains a road so hard to hold even before we talk of the toll imposed. No, the road through this world in which we live this life is one so often wide that we scorn the narrows through which we face the shallows of who we are and why it’s so.

For we don’t want to know. We don’t want to understand. We don’t want to admit that we both can and can’t comprehend how things got this bad and why we never saw it leaving us so lost as to think that we have something good coming. For what? What in our pasts has proven a proof of this prideful promise of a life’s purpose being proven only that which brings us power or pomp or platform or prestige or profit or popularity or whatever other of this passel of public prizes we’re proud to prefer pick from?

What does any of it accomplish?

What can it when compared to what He did?

Friends, the simple answer is nothing. Period. Nothing. All of these petty and pitiable prizes prized by pride can prove nothing when pride has died and we then too. And that is why we all will! It’s because pride was never painted within His design for either what life is nor then how best it lived. And how do we know this?

Crucifixion.

For as we talk about from time to time, it was the most humiliating culmination of a life’s outcome a won within what is the form of the most brutal cultural condemnation ever conceived by a fallen man’s inability to retain any sense of human decency within this descent away from the decent into the decay that’s designed yet again a whole new day spent just the same as that heart that said He should be dead even having done nothing wrong. We didn’t care. And so we killed Him in the most humiliating way ever won within the failures of those so lost as to think themselves, ourselves, able to find what we aren’t.

Indeed, how is it that we who are bad think still then ourselves able to find something good? Or is not our shared understanding of good now just a shined up version of the bad we’ve become?

Because all we do in life is done with our lives in mind. And thus it’s always then our own mind that designs our lives and how best we think them lived. Leaving then our best to be the best that we can ever become. Meaning then that last place in this life race would be a remarkable improvement compared to the place we’re in already.

For something will always be better than nothing, right?

Alas, nothing is what we are so long as we’re afraid of that which feels shameful without a shared worry as won in regard to that which brings the shame.

Which is why we’re insane!

It’s because we hate feeling ashamed, and yet we have no issues whatever within the doing of the things that we know will bring us shame. Indeed, we seek to avoid that which feels bad, but yet don’t mind enjoying the doing of what feels good but always ends bad. Simply because we’re so in love with this lie of living for the minute that we’ve left no idea as to just how few of such we have left in which to turn and return to the senses our successes have singed ever since we first sinned and loved it more than life itself.

Which is why He died. To show us what we were living for within this way in which we love what isn’t life but instead the very enmity within it as lived against it is what remains the wage none should so desire to earn that daily they burn to begin again the betraying of He who is benevolent and blessed, proven in the many blessings with which we’ve been blessed within what are still lives lived with a fair deal of an enmity all our own.

And why are we still so angry at God?

Because He did what we needed.

Which was also what we couldn’t.

Yes, God in Christ came to save us from what we’ve made of us in a life lived for us as if life is for us who’ve lived a life for what isn’t life but rather the now demanded death thereof. It’s as concise a confusion as ever any human delusion might delight to design. For we’ve indeed come to design a life lost in delight in which we deny the light and live long in plight back to our pits of self-condemnation. Simply because they feel far more cozy than that cross must have.

No, that’s why we deny God so much as we do. It’s not because He’s not good. Not because He’s not kind. It’s not because of some true lack of compassion or mercy or the grace that says He took our place. No, we can get with all that easily enough. The issue is the shame of suffering as it’s simply something so contrary to our life’s outlook that we see no chance of it bringing us any income.

And above all, we are all still far more in love with money than mercy most days.

Because we see no shame in it. We see only profit in it, the kind which produces a pride within our new found ability to apparently believe we can then buy our way out of the trouble we got in for free. Indeed, we love the freedom to make mistakes, just hate the idea that maybe looks, and more importantly, feelings, are far from what matter most.

No, maybe we never really needed to feel so good about ourselves as we so daily try. Maybe the point of life was never to enjoy so much pride. Perhaps pride is the enemy of life.

What if He made that so clear so long ago that we should be now ashamed within those many days and more ways that we still don’t seem to get it?

Because friends, what are we getting? Both out of life and thus into along the way to it? We have so many varied interests and priorities, and yet it seems the lot of them have nothing to do with anything other than our own glories. But that’s the question isn’t it? What even are our glories? What can we do with glory? What can any such vain glory as all those we’ve raced to place within our story offer us when it’s eventually proven that this isn’t our story and thus we should be, and will be, only ashamed of every breath taken thinking it was?

Did we not get the message or do we still simply find all these ways to live as if we didn’t simply because we don’t care for the message He brought, simply because of the way in which it was bought?

No, such is why those perishing still see the Gospel as foolishness. Because it is. It’s absolute insanity to seek such a last place in life that you end up being brutally tortured having done nothing wrong at all, all while watching everyone either laugh at you or even your own friends walk away. Nobody wants to experience that. And yet, friends, that’s why Jesus did! He did so that we’d not have to. Granted, maybe not the friends walking away part, but the sheer brutality of it all at least.

Which isn’t least at all!

The suffering, the agony, the antagonism from the crowd loving this sight of a day turned to night in what was then a still standing proof that we don’t really know what to do with life, in life, thus neither for life as our path leads not toward life but through death. Where does it end though?

Does life end at shame? Does humiliation mean the end of us? Has our being embarrassed ever once proven as fatal as pride insists it might? Or does not every such moment in which we’ve met shame bring with it this odd sense of a need to then overcome it? But how?

Well, we can’t.

Why? Because we who create the problems cannot then prove the ones with the solutions. For logic would tell you that if you had both the ability to do the right thing, and thus the intellect to know the right thing to do, but instead chose to do the wrong you knew better than to do, well, simply put, you’re an idiot. And sorry to tell you folks, but that’s pretty much all of us!

Which is why He died for all of us!

Not because it was fun. Not because it was enjoyable. This wasn’t some 30+ year vacation spent away from a place He just had to take a break from being in. Who would leave Heaven to walk amongst heathen with the understanding that they would beat them, betray them, hate them, harm them, insist upon the very end of them? It’s madness! Right?

No, no friends, it’s mercy. It’s compassion. It’s kindness in action. It’s the very God of Heaven delighting to endure undue suffering so that we who deserve to lose our lives might instead find our minds again affixed upon Jesus, “the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.”

Why? Because who in their right mind would continue to deny the gift of what He did being then all we don’t have to while instead we get what we don’t deserve to and, along with it, the ability to see even being ashamed in a whole new light as lit by He who is the Light of life itself?

No, as it will turn out shame is nothing but an evidencing of our needing to set out to set things right as have been gotten wrong to the very song sung of a life swung so completely around that we daren’t even pretend we did it on our own.

Rather we can even learn to delight in coming in last as that’s the place that best shows His grace. I’m here reminded of Paul’s pride in his chains. What a different version of being proud that must be! If only it were the kind that we too sought more in life. Not because it’s enjoyable. Not because it’s fun. But simply because Jesus showed us that life isn’t about having fun but rather about running with perseverance the race set out before us.

Because contrary to common consensus, we’re not meant to enjoy all of this. We will face hardship. We will feel pain. We will be persecuted as He readies to come again. But friends, suffering for the Name, even if the suffering if met within our own shame as found within our continuing to do the things we know we shouldn’t, such only shows us that we’re learning. And while such growth will always prove painful, is it not far better to always get the painful parts out of the way?

Maybe then we should too get out of our way and let Him lead the way we’re supposed to go. Not only because we don’t know where to go, what to do, who we are even. No, simply because what we do know doesn’t always go the way we think it should. And we just can’t afford to keep waging our lives upon the outcomes coming out just right as deemed right by minds that still do wrong.

We need help, and even if we’re ashamed to ask, or more likely, ashamed of how said help comes, who cares? Jesus has proven that it’s not what we go through that matters.

What matters is where we get to go having gone through all we will anyway.

For life will never be the fun we all but demand it to be. But friends, fun shouldn’t be our goal anyway.

Heaven should.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold