Day 3744 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Philippians 2:7 NIV

Rather

A word which poses the proposed proposition of what’s another option as posed upon a place, path or person that was thus not chosen leaving the win to rather the rather that was. And we now know this because of our having ourselves chosen a great many things we, at the time at least, thought were better than the other we could have chosen rather. And too because of that path paved by the promise of the profit of the punishment met first rather than later.

Promised by He who did what we needed rather than that for which we’ve yet to find reason.

For our paths have been mostly chosen based upon what we wanted as determined by what we thought would work best for us. And thus His way makes no sense as it’s one won within sacrifice. And we’ve never really seen much reason for that.

Other than love. For to lay down one’s life for any other is a path rather rare to take. And indeed, this coming Monday we celebrate the memorial of those memorialized within that making of that choice to embrace the sacrifice so as to ensure another secure from what they themselves chose instead to face, despite the fear, rather than leaving that battle there to still be waged either way.

And thus we all know now what love is, just that so often it seems as if we don’t know quite what to do with it. For the truth is that it looks so rather that it literally feels a weather that blows in blows landed in bouts of doubts designed inside a mind that’s so often chose the path we’ve known as opposed to that other we could have wandered rather. No, such other now defines the life we’ve never known and thus haven’t had the ability to learn from nor lean on.

Such as that of Christ Jesus who came to free us from what we’ve either followed, faced, failed or forsaken. It’s a life we’ve known not and thus have not even the faintest of figurings as to how to follow now. For still it makes so little sense that it’s been deemed quite rightly senseless as compared to the standards of sense and cents that we’ve come to know rather than the knowing of contentment with what we’ve been given.

No, rather we know only to fear losing what we think we’ve gained on our own. Thus proving that we cannot possibly know this life’s on loan from He who gave us more than we’ve given in return.

Rather we’ve given Him nothing aside from refusal, denial, debate. Indeed, daily we wake only to once more wander away after all manner of comfort and play. For such is the life we’ve made, and to be blunt, we just like it this way. We understand it. We can handle it. We can prove ourselves both powerful and important, and thus find for ourselves platforms and profits which produce the provenance of our purpose.

Apparently.

And I say apparently because it’s all but perfectly apparent that we’ve no context upon which to have so based our opinion of what matters most as compared to what we typically agree can’t matter at all. Such as death. After all, what can it matter to the one who’s died? What can it mean to the one no longer here to see what comes of it? Rather death is something we see as simply an ending of something that at once had a beginning that we mostly believe cannot come again.

No, nothing can start over for life is linear. We’re born, we breathe, we grow, we run, we play, we learn, we leave, we look, we lust, we trust, we triumph, we tarry, we worry, we’re weary, worn, wasted, placed in a place in which we didn’t come to go. Because it makes no sense for us all to live only to die as that seems the option that no living thing would choose.

Rather life desires life to go on being lived as there’s just no life to live in dying.

Or is there?

You see, that’s the beauty of every belief as borne within all that we’ve not known nor ever heard. And indeed, what no eye has seen is said to be the very thing which God has planned for those who love Him, and too prepared for the ears that’ve never heard of such things either. No, rather He’s doing still that very same new thing that He came to begin by ending our agreed upon allure for the lure that all sin always was.

Yes, and yet how tragic it is that He who had at first made us in His image had to instead come rather in ours so as to thus save us from what we'd done to His!

Which is what makes me now wonder every single day, even at times within every single breath breathed with them, what all I have done to who I could have become had I not become whatever it is that I still don’t realize I’ve been.

For who am I?

I still work through that one all the time. It’s something that we kind of start wondering when we’re young, spending our teens and twenties trying on different identities seeking the one or ones that seem to fit and make us feel as we think we’re supposed to. But there’s where we perhaps lose the ability to see the simplicity of life being a gift. And that is that most of the time the recipient of a present isn’t then proven the same as they who both picked it and thus did so with a purpose in mind.

Meaning then that this gift of life was never actually ours to try and coerce into becoming a concert sung in songs we’ve written. Rather, this life, as a gift given, was given to us with a purpose in mind from He who made this life and has allowed us the rare opportunity to both live it and even be saved from how we’ve chosen to do so.

But whether or not we ever see it that way is perhaps the only rather we have left to weather.

Which is why I wonder. It’s why we worry. It’s why we work ourselves ragged and weary wanting something of some way by which to say that we know both why we’re here and that we’re so right about it that we can’t be so wrong as His song says we are. Indeed, such is why we’re all so infatuated with such things as success and competition. It’s because the latter makes the former matter more, meaning then that our living to win whatever the world’s come to want is all that can leave us living a life that thus matters too.

Thus again missing the very definition given us in this gift of this life given.

But which one? Which life comes to mind? Ours or His?

For I contend that that will tell us a lot. When we think of the gift of life, which one comes to mind? The one we’re living or the One He lived and lost and left?

Odds are that when speaking about life our minds are considering only our own. At least I know that’s long been the case for me. I’ve spent the vastest majority of my time thinking about my life and what I wanted to do with it, feel in it, find within it, fill it with. Yes, my life has thus far been lived as if my life. And yet at 37 I find myself so tired of me that I loathe all things selfish, all things superficial, all things pleasing even. Indeed, I’ve lived to please myself for so long now that I often feel as if I don’t even know what I want anymore.

For I’ve had enough, both of things having had plenty, and thus too of that way in which I waste away seeking to steal from Heaven the very hope He is and place it instead inside of things destined to die with me.

And I can’t seem to make that make as much sense as it used to.

Rather I find myself, at least at times, wondering in new directions rather than those I know I’ve known. Thinking new thoughts. Asking new questions. Seeking new answers that my old life couldn’t give. Like what if I didn’t exist? And no, I don’t mean in terms of some sort of barely veiled cry for help. No, rather what if me didn’t matter to me? What if my life as was lived as if my life wasn’t my life but rather truly considered a loss? What if my time was seen as something to be spent upon those things that so many refuse to give theirs toward?

What if my hope wasn’t held or housed inside of things stored in houses? What if my home was in Heaven and I truly believed so very deeply that I would one day be there that everything then that was still to happen within the here as heard along the way simply didn’t mean anything?

Indeed, what if all the highs in life were seen as the lowest of hopes and the lowest of lows the places in which our hopeful home with Him in Heaven was only finally seen in a better clarity that it seems ready to be found most days?

Yes, what if most days were just spent lost in thought of the humbled ways in which we might agree to lose what we were never promised the chance to keep? What if, beyond trophies and triumphs, we too lost sight and thus sought not even a way by which to avoid the loss of such trials as tragedy and tear? Might we see better that lonely Way there? And might we, would we could truly come to see the solemn sight of that day turned night, might we finally see that it’s only within the loneliness of the death that is a self’s denial that we discover the very definition for life itself?

After all, how else might we ever come to know what life is nor why we’re still here living it if never we come close to anything even resembling a willingness to lay it down and let it go?

MercyMe has a song in which it’s said that “you never know why you're alive until you know what you would die for.” And indeed, it’s because of this very scene played out all those years ago that we all can now know what Christ lives for, and that the answer is love, and that only because His desire for us to live again too.

But friends, He did what He did the way He did because He knew that we needed to see that we were dead in sin so that we might die to that death and humble ourselves unto being rebirthed into what is meant to be, once again, a stoic reverence of God alone that’s thus willing to go this road alone and welcome whatever wars or worries we may meet along the way toward both what and where we’ve so clearly never been before: Life and thus alive rather than staying dead and just thinking otherwise.

Yes, as if the ultimate table turned, we’ve now to die if we’re to live.

And so what if we did? And again, no, not in terms of what you may be thinking. I’m speaking rather in terms of spiritual renewal, soulful regeneration, the very instigation as to the investigation of the source of inspiration that would both call us to die to self but never ask that we be the first to figure out how to do what none have done before.

For no, He rather came to so lead the way that He became the same. And thus we see that the way to life is the Way that lived to lay one down. And so thus, what if me didn’t matter to me? What if I wasn’t the only thing my eye sought to see? What if my life wasn’t lived to please me alone? What if my time wasn’t wasted upon that path complacent spent serving only myself?

Rather what if my life was counted as if a loss to me so that I might see that the losing part is found here at the start as opposed to the promise of losing life forever when the rest of forever’s rather begins at what is still only the end of the beginning?

We do know that that is all this is, right? This is just the beginning. And yet we all tend to live as if this life is only destined for life ending. And it’s because of this that we anymore fear only losing or elsewise missing out on the winning of the way in which we’re all but convinced our lives should go.

How can we know?

I’ve never been here before. This very day is something so novel and new that I shouldn’t dare to spend it like I did the one now called yesterday. Rather we too should do something new, and yes, that at the obvious expense of something old. And while I suppose that such a choice is ours to choose alone, if we still think we’re living this life on our own then we’re further from home than we could ever imagine. Why? Because He came and died as if He were nothing just to help us see that we’re worth something that nothing in this world can afford.

And thus nor can we afford to continue living our lives as if our lives are ours. Because that way of life only lives afraid of losing it. But that Way that rather laid it down, it has no such fear left to feel. And well, that just seems like a far better way to walk through this world in which things are getting pretty scary. So thus we see that we can continue walking forward afraid of something, most commonly us losing something or missing something.

Or we can turn around and find what we’ve missed so that we don’t risk missing anything else that He has in store.

For He could have stayed in Heaven, safe and sound. But rather He became one of us by taking upon himself the sin of human flesh, dying thus our death, so that we, in He, could find what life was always meant to be.

And that’s lived in humility. For again, how else can we ever see that this life is a gift and that as such it’s neither ours to figure out nor then worry about losing in light of how we haven’t.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold