Day 3743 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Philippians 2:6 NIV

Advantageous

Such is what all assume our every life is, merely some sort of subway token meant to be spent upon whatever it may take to prove our advantage within the moment for which we live. Indeed, we daily drive as if barely alive unto these dime-store desires inside of which we’ve hired ourselves out to be slaves to every manner of mammon and the mankind that makes it all seem always so much more valuable than our very lives are considered anymore. And it’s a strange paradox of a problem to be sure because we don’t see our lives as being as worthless as we live as if they’ve become.

Rather we still seem to see and assume ourselves kings of castles made of both conflict and concrete.

Mostly leaving us just a conflicted concretion concreted within the conflict as to what matters most to the flesh within a life still lived seeking it best as if always known within only the moment in which most things matter.

Yes, by now you know just how much I truly loathe that lie of some best life as lived within a land in which the best thing to be, apparently, is simply lost in lust and looking to dust to fill the gaps given us by either those around us or those within us. Both likely being mostly the same. For the saddening fact is that we’ve let so much of this world in that we now too just awake to ourselves wander once more into whatever this new day might make best seem to mean for the moment.

And again, we arrive upon this trope of a moment in which all of life is supposedly able to be considered in its limitless endlessness. For that is what life is, in one of two ways. Because all will live and all will die, but it’s the from there that divides into what becomes two very separate lives, both lived forever, just one not really lived at all.

All because dying in what is a person drowning in misery forever isn’t much of a life worth living. And the forewarned promise of such activities as weeping and gnashing of teeth pretty much hammers that home!

Alas, still we seem content to live as if this our home, and thus entirely unworried as to where our other is being readied. But friends, that’s one of the major points made by Christ within His journey through our jaded jealousy as joined by all because of all that we’ve all always seen all the others having. Indeed, daily we read the headlines of the highlights of our fellow half-lives seeking within their stories some hint of some glory for our own. And that simply because we’ve each bought a lifetime supply of that lie of a best life as being one lived within our basking within a story packed with so much glory that it’s almost embarrassing to talk about how amazing we are.

That and, well, having each bought that lie in lifetime supply, it’s kind of hard to sell it off when it lets us down, you know, since everyone else has a stockpile their own to figure out what to do with.

But maybe that’s not really our biggest problem. I mean, it is a problem and a really big one at that. But I contend, for the purpose of this post today at least, that, while a massive issue, there’s one that’s both bigger and yet could even perhaps manage to solve pretty much all the others were we to track down the simplicity left for us to see.

So let’s do that, shall we?

Advantageous.

For so long we’ve lived this life as if seeking only what would advance us that we’ve come to believe that life is all about our having the advantage. And it doesn’t even have to be that commonly seen inside such things as competitions or arguments. No, we just want this life to go according to our plans which are always planned for our advancement, and thus toward our advantage. For an advantage is a benefit, an enjoyment, a comfort, a profit so promised that its provenance is proven perfectly permanent, and thus too the profit itself.

Indeed, an advantage is “a condition or circumstance that puts one in a favorable or superior position:” with the express purpose of the all but then promised “opportunity to gain something; benefit or profit:” that is likewise, as life is just circular in nature that way, something that is itself quite perfectly conducive to the condition(s) and/or circumstance(s) mentioned above which are always sought because they hold “a favorable or desirable circumstance or feature; a benefit.”

And thus we see that seeking our advantage is always done because it’s only done to our benefit.

And thus we see that seeking our advantage has nothing to do with our being followers of Christ and thus must have come from somewhere other than both where He came from and where He’s long since returned to both make ready a place for those few of the faith willing to stop looking for what cannot be found upon a ground still torn by trials and tears, and to also, from there, soon return to gather those who are His to the sudden horror of the many others finding that they’re not.

Not that they couldn’t have been, no, but rather simply because if we’ll not take up what He did and follow Him embracing the opportunity to do what He did, then we’re simply not worthy of Him.

And that’s the bigger problem.

By far.

And yet it’s also the bigger problem that, should it be solved, would potentially, perhaps, all but alleviate all but most if not all of our others. How? Because sharing in His dying to a selfish and sinful way of life is now what’s referred to as the Way to the Life. The capitalization makes all the difference! Why? Because we now have a faith to put to the Name, and that, at least in part, because we haven’t a face to put with it. Leaving then the whole opportunity, and quite a necessary one to embrace the learning of, of our walking by faith and not by sight.

Because we can no more see our way to Heaven than we apparently can see a way to stop doing the things that keep us from belonging there.

Things such as seeking always only our own advantage. And why is this something that keeps us from belonging in Heaven? Because the Savior who led the way there did nothing of the sort. And that pretty much perfectly sorts out our ever single issue in this life as lived thinking that our best is something that it’s on us to both imagine and then actually accomplish.

Thus missing the entirety of the message of the cross aimed unto eternity!

Jesus came to free us from a life lived so advantageous that we can’t bear to believe that there’s a better profit or purpose within the promise of suffering. Indeed, anymore we see no point in a life of such misery. After all, why welcome what hurts when comfort is so readily found? Why do or say things that the world won’t understand, and thus will hate us for, when pleasing people has been our longest running pastime? Why speak the truth that offends when lies leave people still our friends?

Why walk away from a friendship with all the world, of which we’ve long sought to gain only the whole of the same, when we’ve pretty much got a fairly good start at the gaining thereof thanks to the “friends” therein who daily show us how to live what many consider to be the best version of life itself?

Because Jesus didn’t come seeking His own advantage but rather that of everyone else. And He literally died to prove that our betterment was worth His losing it.

Yes, Christ, with that cross, showed us that life isn't consisted of what happens to us nor how simply brutal a fallen humanity can treat one another. Rather He showed us the epitomal example of a servant's heart by setting aside all He could have rightly insisted upon, all He could have readily retained, all that He had absolutely no reason to forgo or so forsake as to welcome that grave at the hands of those so lost that they didn’t know what they were doing. For they, like we, just saw a man who the world wouldn’t miss being offended or confused by.

And thus they missed the message of the very Messiah that they had themselves been apparently seeking and thus waiting to arrive!

And that’s why it’s so very dangerous to have become our own share of their blind as blinded by the belief in the lie of a best life as lived sat at the places on honor at banquets and greeted as if royalty whilst walking the city streets.

And that’s why Jesus walked this world so very differently.

Indeed, rather than demanding the glory He already had, instead He denied Himself the glory He's due, the honor He should have received, the praise for His coming to this place at all, let alone doing so in order to die for sinners. He set aside everything He deserves and chose instead to endure what we deserved so as to assuage the justified wrath of God on our behalf so that we might have the hope of Heaven as our home forever.

And while that hope doesn't always make life in a fallen world any easier to face, it's the faith that insists that we embrace what it is to walk not by sight, a learning process to be sure, that will thus lead us through things that might look horrible and may in fact prove to feel much the same. But friends, that’s the point. It’s that call unto us all becoming of the same mindset as He clearly had, a mindset into which we're all now called in Christ if we’re to be found in Christ.

It's one of humility and a patient endurance for what is a race we so rightly and yet still lightly call life. And make no mistake, this is a race. But friends, unlike every other race we've ever known within this place, this is a race to last place.

In fact, the only thing we're called to compete with one another in regard to is the showing of mercy and kindness. Outdo one another in the showing of brotherly love, a challenge only ever truly undertaken when we, like He, honor others above ourselves, a love shown us in Christ and now by Christ expected of us if we're to be truly His.

And what does this love do into which we're called to one another outdo? It sacrifices our own personal wants and wishes unto our rather living unto the ensuring that the needs of another are met. And friends, the greatest need all of us have in common is that need of salvation. And thus the call to go into all the world preaching the Gospel and worrying not once about what anyone may think nor what they may well be inspired to do to us because of this world's tendency to vastly hate said truth.

Yes, we're called to be cities on hills, and friends, in a world of atomic bombs and the anger and hatred that uses them as threats so often still, it’s the hills that get hit first.

But that’s the point that, if learned, accepted, embraced, would all but solve all of our other problems as had in this place. For our taking hold of that understanding that the greatest love any could ever have is that of a life lain down for another is the same mindset that Christ so clearly had as He came only to lay down His life for all of us. And it’s also that very mindset that would help us learn to never again let that chance to love others as He loves us be quelled by a world so hateful that it’s often only caused us to douse our lamps instead.

No, rather we’re here to only burn ever brighter than we ever could have tried before when faced with either the danger or indifference that we’re all but guaranteed to face on the narrow way home. For the truth is that proven by the cross and thus the mindset of the Christ who came to carry it. And that is that no matter the depth of the darkness, the dark has still proven always unable to convince His light to stop shining. Which is what we’re called to do with our reflection thereof as well. For none put a lamp under a basket.

And nor then can we hide our hope in Him under the layers of hatred and hardship that this world all but insists upon those who don’t play along.

So shine on my friends, for the fact is that the road home is already hard enough for all of us. The least then that we can do, both for ourselves and for one another, is to live a life that seeks to help lead the way by our humbly following the only Way there. Because even if nothing has changed about the way of life He lived and the outcome toward which it led, we know where it led.

And that’s all that should matter.

After all, we do agree that to live is Christ, right? And to die thus the greatest of all gain as it's only when we shed this skin that we can be finally home again? He clearly thought so, and thinks so still. For that clearly was His desire, that all would come to repentance and find within it the lone path home.

Because, well, what’s more advantageous than the promise of Heaven’s everlasting peace?

And so let us focus on that promise of that hope, not the pain which precedes it. For perhaps the pain only comes to make the promise all the more hope-filled and thus us hopeful of something better than what we’ll probably experience on the way behind the Way.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold