Day 3737 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

2 Corinthians 7:10 NIV

Despite the blur.

For despite what we’d all prefer better be, truth is that such is what all that every better is and will always be for the time being what it is already. Because better is never now but rather must be always a matter made better later as such things as the growth into what becomes a matter improved enough to be determined better than whatever already is can only ever come at the exchange of this moment loosed and thus a minute lost, and thus too the same of a frame of mind with it perhaps.

Yes, better is something of a weather blown in within days always still to come, but even then only when we allow it blow out all that better isn't.

Which you would think would make perfect sense, and perhaps it does. But alas such things as pretense and preference have left us almost perfectly misplaced as to the betterment of ways that might bring us unto the bettered days that we clearly cannot truly contend that we’ve as of yet to know the content. After all, why would we ever still believe in better unless because we know we're not there yet?

For none believes in what they have, as that's simply redundant.

Yet it seems that such a redundancy is perfectly within our perusal of possible prospects as purchased by the projects that we all undertake within what is a life under construction in more ways that our constant confusion could every clearly agree we so violently need. And make no mistake, all growth and building and renewal and thus every movement unto the better that all of such things have been all along, it is something needed so viciously that He who perfected our path toward them all perfected chose violence to lead the way.

And while that’s not to say that the only way to anything better is through the beating or bludgeoning that Jesus endured for us, nor that we should therefore insist upon seeing the same inside of those for whom we feel an obligation to seek their half of our mutual edification. No, it’s merely a speaking to the specificity of better’s trajectory as aimed always into the blur of everything unknown, and thus the embracing of a life far more uncertain that our certainty of comfort as counted within all complacency.

Yes, and it’s all this inability to ever know anywhere close to even half of fully the full beauty of all that better will eventually be that will be, along the way to wherever said better is waiting for us to be, something of a quite violently shaken stumbling as taken both to and through whatever challenges and changes God sends us so as to bend us back toward Him at the promised breaking us away from both who we’ve become, and that because of what the world chooses to remain.

And that’s the difference.

It’s the very distance traveled within repentance. For repentance is a turning away from what isn’t better toward the likely blur of whatever better is. And it’s that it will be quite the blur that causes so many to sink so deeply into doubt. For we’re a people who want to know before we find out. We want the facts up front so as to find for sure that we’ll not feel fools for following this fealty toward whatever feast or fatality that it might insist upon.

And yet that defines the doubt. It’s one brought about by the danger of all such dismissal of the overwhelming ease of staying in place. For such is what we’ve come to fear of all change. It’s the challenging of a current as considered considerable because of the possible cost of staying this lost. And while we might not yet be to where we can admit we are, again, that we are now able to believe in better means that we’re not there yet.

So why stay put?

What do we have here, who is it that we are now that is worth the potentially never knowing of who we could be in that place we could see filled with what a life should be as found only at the chance taken that it’s better than what we know isn’t? Isn’t that the whole excitement of all such improvement? That it’s a movement toward the enhancement of what must be of enough enchantment to so inspire us to even consider the obvious necessity of our then losing what already is in exchange for what we can only ever believe better might be?

It’s a chance. And that it’s one that demands change is too why so few seem willing to see where it goes.

Thus we’re in a world of no’s as spoken under the nose of they who knows what better is despite none of us being there. And that’s not to say that none of us have grown or improved or done such at the express embracing of some of life changing. Because we have. All of us have. We’ve all known something of betterment along the path to who we are now. But that’s then both the question and the answer. If what we are now is in fact better than what we used to be, then would not something even further mean us there even better than whatever we are right now?

Because the glaring reality is that better is brought about not by it chasing us down but rather by our willingness to be moved toward it. And I say be moved because we’re not the ones who instigate what it is to investigate the better day that we’ve never known. We can’t be the ones who move ourselves toward anything we’ve never been. It just doesn’t make any sense. It would be like dropping us in the middle of a foreign land filled with food we’ve never eaten, surrounded by a language we’ve never spoken, with not map in tote nor then the faintest of hope as to know how to get back home.

Yet that’s both where we are and too where we’re headed.

Just then a matter of defining the difference between home and the foreign land.

Which is perhaps precisely the problem. Because we’ve confused this calamity as potentially our promised land. And because we’ve come to see this place as home, and thus our lives as lived within it as a life to be lived perhaps as permanent as our hopes held here have come to be, well, we’ve thus come to see that anything that asks that we risk any of what already is is basically akin to the asking us again unto the laying down of a life without then the ability to see any semblance or thus promise of another to take up later.

For within this world we’re all stuck on the wrong side of the cross, and thus with still a life lived lost to be lost someday if we’re to ever be found in the Way that left here to lead us there to where only such a chance is able to go.

But will we take that chance?

We’re given plenty of evidence as to its necessity as met inside such feelings as guilt, regret, remorse. But are such sorrows enough of a reason for us to measure up what is against what we can’t prove might be? For such is the difficulty of every better. It’s ever but a blur at best because we can, for now, only believe in whatever better might be. Because, to answer every child’s favorite question as asked on road trips toward what is a goal that they cannot contain their enthusiasm to reach, no, we’re not there yet.

And thus we, like those impatiently eager youngsters dying to get wherever they’re going so they can just start having the fun that they’ve already conceded as all but impossible along the way, we too have lived a life that seems to say that settling for pulling over and playing at a park is better than holding out hope for the better ideal of a vacation’s dream destination as designed to blow the mind of even the adults that had to pay for the whole ordeal.

But that’s the deal. Better comes always at a cost. It can be something as simple as one more night stayed in one more motel eating one more fast-food meal so as to finally, hopefully tomorrow, reach the big deal that was made by this idea we’d had that followed a map toward where we wanted to be by passing things by that we never knew but could only agree not worth stopping for.

Simply because of the sheer hope of the better that we once set out to find.

And that’s the question. And like it or not, it’s one answered by repentance and either it’s presence or absence in our lives.

Because the fact is that where we are at what is the end of who we were up until yesterday, it’s but one side of life. It’s the part of us that already was and thus cannot be anything more, and thus never anything better. That’s the horror as held inside the gravity of hindsight. It’s the seeing now what we could have done better, how we could have thus been better, but without ever the ability to make those betters possible again. Simply because once a day is gone, so too shall we lose every opportunity that only it had to offer.

And sure, we may be blessed with the opportunity to take those chances again. But then again, we might not. And thus we find that we’re risking something either way. And no matter what way we decide to risk whatever we agree not worth the need of wagering a day’s growth upon, we lose something as well.

But what do we lose? Perhaps that’s the only question we can actually answer in life.

Just that, again, the answer is obviously the loss of something.

Why not then choose to lose what better isn’t? And if we still delight to debate as to whatever better is, such is only done by determining whatever better isn’t. And we already know what all better cannot be because we’ve all felt, both firmly and fully, the weight of such things as guilt and regret. And that we’ve felt such things can only mean that we did things, said things, bought things, believed things that only ended up letting us down, leaving us lost, leaning thus us upon something that wasn’t worth the cost that we did or did not imagine before we set out.

That’s the question of the cross. Can we make it to where we’re better? Not without a life lost. And that both His and then ours as He is the first and the last, leaving us just those lost somewhere in the middle still entirely too often trying to muddle through what is every mundanity of a life given so vastly unto insanity that we live still as if our doing the same things time again will somehow lead us to that bettered end that we all hope to find and yet do so little to feel.

Because again, we just want to see it, but seeing seeing as believing leaves us leaning upon the fear found within our inability to ever see fully whatever better is as made within that place that we’re not.

For better is a blur as seen from where we stand being finally seen as not where we want to anymore.

But to chase that better is thus to chance that whatever it is is worth the losing of whatever is.

And if there’s a greater risk in this life than that, well, I don’t know what it is.

Because every improvement begins by our awareness of what needs to be improved. And yet, as those still as stubborn and stiff-necked as those who led the way lost before us, if not more so, we too seem only to learn what we need to lose via the hardest of all ways possible. Such as hindsight, hardship, hassle. Hatred even. We find within those things and those many like them a sort of clarity as to what better might be that we just can’t see any other way.

That would be too easy. And we prideful know there’s no glory to be gained in what’s easy.

And so we delight to make life hard on ourselves, as done in the doing of things that bring us to the guilt that better wouldn’t have, the regret that better wouldn’t feel, the shame that better saw once but chose to leave behind. And that’s the purpose of repentance. It’s the finally leaving behind of everything that better’s never been as finally felt within the feelings of the guilt that better doesn’t feel.

Thus we must lose an entire life lived doing the things that make us feel ashamed if we’re to ever reach that place where better is able to help us never feel that way again.

For by then the old order of things will have passed away. Will we wait until that day for everything not better to be left behind? Or might we find that strange audacity to set out in search for it today?

You see, God allows us, like dogs, to run right to the end of the length of rope that He’s allotted unto each of us. He lets us peruse the prodigal’s path seeking to thereupon spend our every inheritance. He watches us walk away from Him into every fire our desire can start, knowing that eventually our every desire will fall apart and leave us so very empty, sad and ashamed that we finally start accepting the blame for having been always the only ones who made every choice to avoid any change that could have, should have, would have allowed us to miss out on some of the sorrows that we’ve all seen.

Why keep looking for them? Why keep letting them in? Why continue doing the things that we know will not ever lead us to better? And before we start delving into some foolish debate about what we can know of better, knowing what all it isn’t is more than enough to inspire us to keep looking for both what and where it might be.

But friends, it’s even easier than that. For His mercy removed all such might as maybe. That He died proves perfectly what better is worth, and that He left proved where better is. It’s somewhere else. It’s not here. It’s not now. Better simply isn’t possible so long as we stay where we are. Because better moves. Despite the blur, better keeps going. Not matter the changes, challenges or chances, better embraces them all because better has already found and felt the fall and simply doesn’t find any reason to keep falling short of what must be better still.

Why do we approach it any other way?

I know that we’re all terrified of repentance as it comes at the express loss of all that is. But friends, if all that is is always what and where better isn’t, then what do we have to lose? What could we ever possibly lose if all that’s lost is only the cost to become what better always was?

I want to know that better, and I want the same for everyone else. Forever. We should all want better because we all know what it isn’t. And friends, no one will ever convince me that where we are is better than where that cross says we can be.

Because if that joyous hope was worth all He went through for us to have it, I cannot then ever imagine not giving all we have too unto the finding of it ourselves. If Heaven is worth the losing of life lived amongst those so filled with doubt and dread that they daily awake only to stay in bed as if already dead themselves, then we should be happy to lose whatever needed to find that sort of freedom.

For life is lived in movement. And despite the fact that we can’t always see where we’re going, that we know both where He’s gone and what He paid to get us there too, well friends, that’s worth whatever we’re asked to lose along the way.

After all, we’re all gonna die. Why not then live this life as if better is always still possible? After all, again, would we feel regret if it wasn’t?

Because there are two sorrows in life. One wishes things could improve and one demands they do. We’ve known more than enough of the wishing kind, and that it never really amounts to much. Let us try then for the demanding sort, because perhaps that’s the one willing to do whatever it takes to find the better we’ve never been before.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold