Day 3738 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Romans 2:4 NIV

Thus sorrow a kindness of sorts.

For if godly sorrow is the same as what brings salvation as offered only unto the repentant, then the very sadness which begets repentance as here defined a kindness as meant unto the inspiring of all to the very seeing of a life not lived as lived only outside where both the rain and strain fall in greater measure in what’s there a misery that can help us to see that life is more than what we’ve made it out to be. And this should have always remained a clarity, simply because a sorrowful misery is by no means the joyousness meant for this journey.

Because if God is as good, loving and kind as so many still define despite a life lived with the very pains and problems that every pride would prefer we miss, then we’ve missed something amazing along the way to the many sorrows we carry this day.

And those won within every other too.

Indeed, at times this life seems to be an overworking conveyor consistently proving the purveyor of both problem and pride, both in quantities that seem to all but steal the quality of life itself. For none wish to be so weighed upon such things as the wants and woes they win in ways that leave us spending our days spinning our wheels seeking for warmth outside of the only consuming fire into which we’ve been invited. And it’s this constant considering of anything of every other meaning that’s meant for us a life spent in the forest of fear and folly.

Finding only our fair share of failure and fury out here.

And it’s a sad fact to face, this growing waste of a life disgraced by the idea that we’ve each become, at times, so angry at God that we still seem to resort to what’s since been allowed to become our factory frivolity as found and felt within our lack of courage to face the costs of a life lived so wonderfully and willfully lost. For we know there’s blame to name, but alas we still seem to insist that it mustn’t be ours that catch the wrath.

No, there’s no life in that.

And whether we forecast that weather upon the cost of the cross or rather the life we know only to live so lost, it’s either way still always a walking away that finds us within most days carrying a still hardened heart hoping that hope will just reach out and find us.

That He did just that through that cross is still entirely too often too great a confusion for us to care consider.

There’s no life in that.

Thus we’ve come to consider that there’s perhaps no life within the considering either. Because, after all, what might we see if we sat and saw all the failures, all the flaws? What might we feel if we faced our fears of finding we’re here in a place where none should want to stay? What could we say when we discover that we’ve sought to stay within this place in which none ever have?

Might the tears tell a deeper tale? Could the sorrows seem of a more meaningful reason? Perhaps the pains would feel more a plane aimed into that better that we like to think about but always only struggle to find. Maybe we might find our way to that better as hidden behind the hindsight that holds the horrors of a life lived without either borders or other barricade.

Yes, we might even become able to see that we’ve been the only boundary within our belief, and thus too that the way to better has so little to do with us that it’s then the trust of another we must seek.

And well, who better to trust than He who understands the worth of a friend’s wounding as compared to the overarching preference for the lies of a wolf?

Alas, it’s those lies and those wolves that we’ve sought to follow for longer than a loner might care confess. And having been so long within the consist of their contention against reason, we now find none of the same within the Word that came to say that sorrow is good for the heart as it’s finally something that steels the soul upon something that makes a difference by inspiring us to find a different. Different life. Different path. Different hope.

Just something different.

Because that’s what better is.

That’s what we talked about yesterday. How better is always somewhere else as it simply cannot be wherever we are because we somehow still know it’s out there somewhere, meaning then that it isn’t where we are. For while we are better, we can always be better still as there is no such thing a still life. Peaceful maybe. Calm, controlled, comforted within the both. But no, there is no life to live within a stillness, for even the lungs move as the heart beats despite our feet finding anymore little reason to do either.

Which is the problem. For if we don’t move, we die. It’s like being in a gunfight. Again, I watch too many westerns. But you gotta work with what you’ve got, right? Our refusal as to the perusal of our personally purchased pains as promised, if not promoted, within our penchant toward pride keeping us blind unto the believing that we’re as bad off as His patience continues to prove, it’s something that also keeps us from wanting to move.

After all, if we see no problems and feel no pain, well then there mustn’t be anything wrong. And we all know perfectly well what to do with what ain’t broken.

Problem is that we all are. And in ways that a lack of pain and suffering could never possibly help us see. And thus in steps God’s patience as provided as purveyor of the potential we haven’t seen as seen inside the days we’ve died as opposed to living for the more we’re still not. Because again, we can always be more. But to be there demands we get to walking. And that is only done at the inspiration of a worry won within the weight of staying put.

And we can only ever muster that if and when we’re so very miserable that anywhere else is everything better.

Making again thus sorrow a kindness of sorts. For it helps us unto the start of what is a seeing unclearly through a window clouded by every step not taken due to doubt and our settling instead for staying in dirt that seems to scream that even still, after all of whatever we've so sadly become at the very hands of ours that have chosen to not do all we’ve never done, that even then there is still a better to be, a hope to have, a life to live outside of our darkened days spent inside the rain of pain as plain as day.

And why such a forlorn forecast? Because a broken mast left unattended will only leave us broken down in the middle of a sea of stupidity that we ourselves have poured out and then allowed in again.

Yes, such is what our every staying put really is. It is but us living as sinking ships finding a strange solace within the assumption of our sailing again, but never once addressing the holes in our hopes that now hold no water because of wherever we’ve allowed ourselves to delight to stay.

And thus we sink in sorrow as we watch everything better continue to blow by as we wave at the waves, but only to welcome them in rather than to win the strange audacity to see if we could maybe swim through our share of the fall’s flood.

Alas, that would mean doing something wouldn’t it? And that would only ever be an idea should we realize the necessity of it. Because the truth is that we’ll do absolutely nothing without a reason so wonderful as to leave us without question as to the point, purpose or profit. But friends, that’s just it. What’s more profitable than the purpose of path pointed unto the promise, one apparently so spectacular that even death didn’t get to ask any questions in regard to where we think we’re going.

No, we know where we’re going. Thankfully there’s still a sorrow that can help us come to see that we could instead wind up to be only somewhere immeasurably better. And a God who both wants that better for all, and is also willing to do whatever it takes to get us there.

Even making us feel sorrow. Even inviting us unto shame. Even allowing us to do the things that bring both the same. Even sending His Son to bear the weight of our sorrow and shame, knowing within every step that all would only walk away, deny the Name, embrace the chance to pass the blame and continue within the belief that we’ve done nothing so bad as to deserve what He didn’t.

But we do, and because we’ve never cared to agree, He sends us days in which we face sorrow, feel pain, experience the misery of our making still the same mistakes we’ve known to make for so long now that we’re perhaps truly known by the mistakes we’ve made. Liar. Thief. Drunkard. Addict. Fornicator. Glutton.

Sinner.

All things we know ourselves to be because still He seems to see the reason won within His waiting for us to finally find that we are the problem within this painting.

Thus His patience as met with our pains, our problems, our pride continuing to try to live a life only to deny that we’ve done anything wrong. But friends, that our lives are not anywhere close to perfect proves that something gone array. And that we can’t seem to find where, nor thus how to fix the issue that caused it, nor then can we be the ones who somehow still demand that life be easy and we then safe.

We don’t deserve safety. Don’t deserve salvation. And thus we should see His patience as meant to help us meet the reasons behind all our sorrows as a kindness we could have never known we needed.

Because again, if it ain’t broken.

Thankfully He knows we are. And thankfully He literally helps us feel it as faced within fears of punishment and days spent trying everything we can think of to ignore it. Lying. Stealing. Drinking. Doing drugs. Looking at filth on the internet. Engorging ourselves until we’ve so enlarged ourselves that even walking is a misery. Doing every wrong we can possibly delight to do so as to never once have to sit with the understanding that where we’re standing is both all our fault, and thus too that faith is meant to move us forward unto the better we’ve never once been.

Again, that’s not to say that we’re not better in some way. But friends, better is such a beautiful gift that we should never stop chasing it.

Because I for one believe that our lives do truly depend on it.

And that not even of our finding it. No, but rather that every such effort given unto such growth is literally the only way I know to show that we care about what He did so very deeply that we welcome Him to help us do, finally, what we should have been doing all along: Acting justly, loving mercy, walking humbly with the God who loves us so very deeply that He sent Christ to die for us in order to issue forth the Spirit who then helps us die to us.

All because we’ve never found much of a life worth living within living for ourselves. Rather such has become the very background for a life of misery, misunderstanding, mischief and malcontent. And again, that we know anything of any of the above, or any other sorrow like them, such just means that we’ve misplaced something amazing along the way.

For we were made in the image of a loving Father who is so filled with kindness and compassion that He is patient with us so as to inspire in us a desire for the repentance that leads to life evermore. And it’s through such things as sorrow, sadness and shame that He helps us find and feel the pain that feels so plainly horrid that we finally find all the reason we need to sin nevermore.

Because none of us enjoy feeling sad, sorry or ashamed. And that sin makes us feel all of them in depths so damning that we demand we do anything to avoid feeling them, such will, hopefully, eventually, inspire us to just stop saying, doing, thinking, believing whatever it is that causes them felt.

Thus His patience is kind, this much is clear. But that His patience is poised upon the promise of the purpose of all the pain we feel, that’s something that takes time for us to understand. Thus the patience comes back in again. And it’s the loving mix that inspires the fix of a life, both of the problems we’ve made and too of then a focus unto the Way He did.

There is a life to be lived, and while it may mean misery along the way, the promise only worries about where we’re going.

Not how we get there.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold