Day 3719 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Matthew 7:13 NIV

Empty

Such is a life filled always with easy. Granted it may never seem that way while vastly lost within the lust of looking for that path of almost no resistance as felt rewarding unto a life in which comfort has become a matter measured better than actually being better. But when we’ve reached the inevitable end of every life’s opportunity we’ll each have to look back upon all we’ve done and there and then measure it against the sum of all we haven’t had the audacity to do. And this is something becoming a rather terrifying thought within my thinking.

So much so that it even inspires me to wonder past easy every now and then.

And then even more once I’ve reached the many then’s I’ve written within my plans beyond which there’s still plenty of life waiting to be lived. It’s almost as if God enjoys seeing us make our plans, either fulfill them or fail them, and then and only then realize with our very own eyes that we’ve still plenty of time for what’s then an entire lifetime still remaining in which to either go on planning or finally begin to wander into the worry as to what all we hadn’t planned and how it might have planned a passel of personal problems we never planned on finding so fully.

Problems such as popularity proving nothing more than a movie in which there are only paid actors pretending to enjoy the performances we’ve put on trying to placate the many plans we’ve had as have had pride in the director’s chair. Or how power is but a pretense in which we ourselves pretend that we’re always something we’ve never once proven to be. Or how platforms are great as they seem to lift us up out of what we know we are behind every such pretend and pretense, but only into what are tents into which we steal away at the end of the day thinking for ways by which to extend our reach that’s become but an overarching life revolving around ourselves and the potential we alone believe we have.

All because life devolves rather rapidly into this happening upon a quite haughty outlook of oneself as sold by all and bought by the same. Many you might call them.

For those are both who and thus too how many which are pleased or impressed with everything from how folks dress to the pressing of a life into the stress for success as seemingly made all but necessary if we’re to ever find our plans fulfilled and thus us alive again. Again, as if we aren’t already! That’s something we talked about for a moment yesterday, this whole oddity in which we seek so constantly to fill our lives so fully that we only end up a living testimony against ourselves as sealed inside the glaring honesty that says we’d honestly not be trying so hard to fill our lives with so much junk if we were already filled with something else.

But alas, easy isn’t filling and nor able to offer us the filling we need having long emptied ourselves of every effort or excitement we could offer unto the options that we just knew would do what none of their cousins proved able to.

Thus rendering us insane for this shared infatuation for only life’s easy way. Because doing the same things time and again whilst expecting differed outcomes all along is pretty much the quickest way to get nowhere any better than everywhere, and everything, we’ve all already been or become.

All because there is no such thing as better to be found within our finding of only everything easy. For as I asked yesterday in what was one of those questions/statements that pop up every now and then within these posts that just seem to speak to the fact that at least some of these words are coming from a place of a grace far smarter than I as it seems to only ride that line between being comprehendible while seemingly mostly just confusing.

Proving that while I don’t always know what I’m doing, thankfully I’m not the only one doing things with and within my life.

Anyway, question was this: How can winning more of the same victories of the emptiness of such things as vanity help us to become victorious over the same emptiness we’ve already found within those very things?”

See what I mean? Right there on the edge of making either so much sense that it actually finds us grown for having gone through the grating of trying to understand it or simply making so little sense that we just give up and once again walk away from what may have a had a bit more worth than our unwillingness was willing to work for.

But the point in the asking is that while our winning of everything comparatively easy seems both a victory, obviously, but alas one only coming in our agreeing unto, again, the settling for the easy as opposed to the more challenging. And sadly I dare say that we know so little about the more challenging because of our tendency to turn toward such things as comfort and complacency. And as often, I’ll be more than happy to use me personally.

I’ve given the vast majority of my time and the many choices made within it over to what’s become seen as basically the giving it away. Yes the choices as having become mostly mistakes, but mainly the time. And this is something we all do all the time. We seem to take our time so lightly that we literally don’t seem to mind doing nothing with it. We’ve even come up with a quite popular hobby that we call “wasting time”. Like we have time to waste!

That we don’t is yet another matter for perhaps another post. But the point for today is that while we’ve given both our time and our choices away, to continue doing the same is what will prove far more problematic than such may have seemed to in the past back when we may have not known as much as we now do. For such is the danger of life! It’s being lived whether we’re living it or not.

And friends, sorry to tell you but there ain’t all that much living being done when all we’re living for is either the comfort of what already was/is or rather only the ease of whatever might be but only if it is so easily that we don’t really have to risk anything to find it. Indeed, such seem the only victories we know to vie for in life anymore. Only those so pre-assured that we’re absolutely sure we cannot possibly fail or fall short.

Which pretty much brings me to the point for today, which is, as you probably guessed it, yet another question!

Who boasts of a victory won over whatever is easy to win a victory in?

Can’t everyone do that? Doesn’t everyone basically already do what’s easy? Granted, not everyone actually does as it seems a sadly increasing reality that most don’t really care to do much at all, at least in terms of the growing of faith or hope or trust. No, rather those things are among a great and growing many that the many spoken of here seem to assume have very little meaning. And simply put, anything that we can convince ourselves is all but meaningless will then eventually become the very same that we’re not willing to then give anything toward the bettering of.

Because why try to improve what doesn’t matter?

Why fight hard for what doesn’t seem to hold any hope? Why struggle and suffer and stumble through strife for something that doesn’t seem worth the effort of life that all of the above ask of this one life we have? Why not rather just do as most live to and seek out only any passing excuse to refuse to risk anything, either in the way of effort or belief, for what most don’t believe worth the work?

Indeed, why not sit back, chill out, take it easy? Yes, why not kick our feet up, grab some grub and spend 14 hours flipping through the TV? Why not settle for a life that’s easy when doing so is so easy that nearly everyone else is doing the same thing? They can’t all be wrong, can they?

Well, I suppose we could continue ahead playing life as if nothing much more than a number’s game such as that. But then again, what’s the point in doing the things that everyone else is proving either capable of accomplishing or simply willing to try there toward? Should my life look like yours? Should our lives look like theirs? Should our focuses be the same as those focused still on a fealty to sin’s folly?

Should those who claim to have died to such sin continue to the same live within?

What’s the point in that? For the point is asked in what is yet again another question that begs we wonder as to where’s there truth in that? No, if we still do as everyone else still does, then sure, we might continue to win the same victories that they do. But, what to? Where to? What for? For what? What is life for if all we do is all that everyone seems willing to? Do we not see the limitation to all human willingness?

Friends, we’re inherently lazy, fearful, greedy, vain, gluttonous and only willing to all the above remain.

Yes, a fallen humanity despises change, a fact proven in that so few seem at all in any way willing to. No, most folks are so stuck inside the same lives they’ve always lived that, rather than seeing things for what they’ve become, they’ve instead become of this common worry as won over the wrestling with who we are in order to perhaps become the better we’re not. And if there’s a better fight to fight than that, I truly don’t know what it is.

For what are we if only ever found as what we are? Are we as good as we can be already? Have we grown as much as we have the potential to grow? Do we know all that we need to know? Have we managed to forget and thus forsake all we once knew but never needed to? Have we grown past the mistakes or our past? And if we’ve not, as both reality and truth clearly prove, well then why so much stopping? Why so much resting?

Why all this pressing to prove ourselves so socially impressing when the pleasing of people is what got us into this mess to begin with?

Do we not know how easy it is to please or impress people? We’re like dogs in that regard, just throw us a bone and we’re content for days! Just do something that seems cool, say something that sounds funny, throw us a party or give us some money and we’ll love you to death. But friends, that’s exactly the problem! We’ve loved one another to death. We love ourselves to death. We love this life in which all we do is buy this lie that says all we’re here to do is live and let one another live in the death that is sin because, again, sin is easy.

It’s easy to do wrong. It’s normal to do wrong. It’s profitable to do what we shouldn’t. But what profit? What point? What purpose? What is the promise to be ever proven of our only ever living a life that proves that all we care to be is either whatever we already are or rather only anything that we can be easily? Who boasts of a victory over what’s easy?

Let me ask it this way:

What’s more inspiring: A person who never grows or one who never stops? Someone who always tries to improve or one who lives as if their best is only what they have to lose? Who’s the underdog in a life lived under the covers on top of a comfy mattress of misunderstandings wrapped in yet a rampant willingness to never address them? What all have we misunderstood as defined inside the mistakes our past lives have designed?

Or are we still making those same mistakes?

And if we are still making the same mistakes, well then are we not but the same lack of better that it takes to make a mistake? Doesn’t better stop making so many of them? Shouldn’t we want to? Why don’t we want to? Because it’s easier to keeping doing what we know how to.

But friends, is that all we’re supposed to be? Just whatever we’ve always been? Where in that is any sign of life? For life breathes. Life flinches. Life inches ahead unwilling to stop because if we stop we just agree we’re dead. Are we dead? And if not then what are we doing that says we’re not? For if all we do is all that’s easily done, then of what point is our life lived under the sun? And if we do all we do as if only under the sun, then yeah, what can a life matter?

If all we do is all that’s normally done, then sure, there really is no point to all of this and thus, sure, no real reason to risk what is easy, what is safe, whatever is common or normal in exchange for the challenge of change, of risk, of harm or hardship. But is that all we want to be? Common? Normal? Lost inside a life lived easy and safe and secured away from the struggle and strife that prove us living a life?

Friends, life isn’t lived within the content or context of what’s easy. That’s why Jesus gave us the whole camel thing. It was to help us see that no, that way of life is merely survived. And I simply believe that He created us for more than just surviving. But the thing is that we have to want more out of ourselves if we’re to ever find that something more for ourselves. And I’m not at all saying that we’re supposed to do alone what we can’t do alone, no, that’s dumb.

I’m simply saying that if we want to ever hope in our being something more than we’ve been, then friends, we have to do something more than whatever we’ve already done.

Because the fact will always remain that repeating the past is easy. Being whatever we already are is easy. Only doing what most are willing to even then barely even try is easy. But reliving the past, wasting the present or following only people is only missing the living Promise who came to die for us to help us see that living life isn’t meant to be easy. And that’s why we have a problem.

A really big one at that!

It’s because we’re still found most days enjoying the wide open and wasting. We love the options in life that ask nothing of us in life. We enjoy the ability to just look to those around us for evidence of what life should look like, feel like, sound like. We truly seem to vastly appreciate just being able to emulate or replicate the existence of someone else who themselves is likely only doing whatever is easiest to do. Hence the scarcity and loneliness of the narrow!

We’re not supposed to just give up and follow the crowd. We’re not supposed to stand in the ways sinners take or sit in the company of mockers. We’re not here to make a mockery of our own ability, opportunity to live a life. Rather we’re here to desire to do just that, to live. But friends, life isn’t lived in the loving of only everything easy. No, life is found within the narrow, the scary, the misery of making ourselves get up and try when we’re surrounded by millions screaming that they don’t see the point.

The blind never will see the point!

And that’s the point. Wide is the way that leads to destruction and many enter unto it through a similarly wide open gate through which everything goes and thus almost everyone goes. Are we everyone else? Did He create us to blend in to this sea of blaspheme and disbelief? Sure, it’s easy. But friends, such is why He calls us unto a narrowing!

It’s simply because we’ve all a lost life to lose, and thankfully the eye of that needle pretty much demands the stripping away of absolutely everything that doesn’t fit inside the One who is the only Way through it! We have to rid our lives of everything that doesn’t match up with the merciful message of the Messiah. And yeah, that means that a lot of who we’ve become is probably going to suffer, to struggle, to stumble and absolutely fail to understand why we have to endure it.

But we do because He did. He entered Heaven through the gate that is the grave. What makes us think we’ll have an easier way? No friends, rather than easier we should always want only what’s eternal. And make no mistake, finding eternity isn’t easy. In fact it’s so hard that we can’t find.

Thankfully we don’t have to. Instead we only have to try and find the One who’s already found us. And if there’s a harder thing to do than letting go and trusting God, well I don’t know what it is. But I also think we’ll end up quite amazed at just how easy it always really was.

Narrow gate my friends. Not because it’s easy but because Jesus clearly doesn’t have much reason to be all that impressed with any path of lesser resistance.

Not when compared to the one He walked for us.

For the only thing found empty there was the grave. And that’s all we should want to find empty in our lives too. No matter how hard such a hope may prove.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold