Day 3749 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Romans 7:17 NIV

Am I me?

And if so, who am I? And if who I am isn’t who I know I ought to be then why agree to for another day stay the me that I don’t want to be? And if I don’t want to be who I’ve become then I must agree that who I’ve been isn’t who I was made to be. Because for us to agree that we’re not who we could be, the better that we thus should be, is to also agree that there remains that better that we haven’t ever been before. And if there is a better me than what I’ve become then there must have been another One who had a better idea, a more worthy ideal than those idols I’ve both bought and become.

For surely we wouldn’t be able to see, feel, hear or hold any recollection of anything we didn’t want to have to admit we’ve come to be if not there was He who at first, and from there, never quite so agreed to have let us come this far from who He created us to remain.

This is regret.

It’s this feeling as met within hindsight helping us to finally see the many things we’ve come to become as compared then against that perhaps less mistaken reflection that we don’t see in the mirror but feel we could have within the hearts that we don’t see either. And it’s this mix of the better we still never see and the hearts which hold the hopes of those betters that we can perhaps still become that have became what feels a weight both worthy of war and yet won in worry more often.

Why? Because the looking back brings with it the understanding that going back we can’t. And so all such hindsight can only ever help us see is the better we now could have so clearly been back then so as to hopefully help us to become the better that, while too still unrealized, is at least a better still built ahead in what can hopefully become something indeed better for our having stood and seen only all the lesser that we’ve been and become.

This is hope.

And yet that regret seems to be at least one of the many seeds of hope itself as always sown inside the however many days and decisions we’ve left to hopefully make better within them, so as to hopefully ensure that we ourselves are better within them, seems to sell that idea that our lives are not to be lived for our ideals nor the idols that the past so clearly posits that they’ve so often been allowed to become. After all, if our past ideals were the worthy idols that we’ve lived as if they were, well then they’d have surely managed to have helped us to have by now become that something better that we’re sadly still looking to be. Wouldn’t they?

Wouldn’t we?

And yet that we aren’t yet what we’re still hoping to be seems to mean that those ideals we served as if idols were not in fact the seeds of hope we may have hoped they could have been.

Thus leaving us quite perfectly proven quite profoundly incapable of proving ourselves those upon whom we should lean in the shared looking for the better that none of us are.

After all, if any of us were in fact that best that we’ve long insisted we could have by ourselves become, then, as I ask all the time, why aren’t we as proven within the fact that we’re still seeking what we’ve clearly never been? For nobody continues looking for what they’ve already found as there exists within that a ridiculous redundancy that is simply unnecessary in and thus quite unconducive to life being lived.

We truly have no need to continue doing whatever we’ve done that hasn’t proven capable of helping us become the better that our worry and workings seem to say that we agree that we’re not.

But why aren’t we? Why aren’t we the better we all want to be? Is better but a fantasy, some childhood mystery as made inside the mundanity of what life has been allowed to become anyway? Is better mundane? Growth somewhat not worth what it asks we give? Have we given anything to any of the things that we now know could have made us better had we been better able to perceive the growth into better back when we now agree we only managed to miss it?

Indeed, are we doing anything now about anything we now don’t like about who we are? Or are we rather just weathering the storm as if our doubts and disappointments of nothing more than a passing concern that will hopefully have passed by this time tomorrow?

Sadly it does seem as if we often delight to deny the denial of self today in hopes that better will just show up anyway whenever it was apparently always supposed to. Yes, we’ve all lived as if our growth and improvement, our maturity in such things as hope and peace and the godliness which gains for us the both in their very best measurement were matters meant to manifest whenever fate meant for them to do so. So where are they? And since we’re not where they are, as proven inside such feelings as shame or remorse, where then are we?

For if we are not living that better life free from sleepless night that we’ve long so wished to receive, then shouldn’t we, at some point, begin the questioning of our choices as if potentially not the harmless victims we’ve long sought to make them seem?

Because the simple fact is that all of life is what seems but us as if ships out to sea, battered about and blown around by still every wind and buffeting wave of want and wish, still leaving us thus prone to the fish that had to swallow Jonah for what became his dying to something better than the past he’d lived in which he loved better this idea of being thrown into the sea than having to see what he could only perceive as a worthless pursuit.

Such as our growth into better so often seems to seem to us. And granted, there’s likely no way we’ve ever seen such things as personal growth or a more humbled humility as if things worthless to pursue. But is not letting ourselves by with any of those things about us that we don’t like basically just another way of seeming to say that we’re okay where we are as who we don’t want to be?

And if we are saying this in any way then there isn’t any way for us to ever become what we’ve never been. For if better is allowed to remain a matter that both matters and yet doesn’t, then we’ll never find in that any dire necessity to do the things that would make us better, all because so too do they ask us to work through the lesser that we still are. And this is indeed something we do not want to see. Why? Because we’ve given years to pretending otherwise!

And simply put, it seems quite foolish to light that match next to what we know is a life doused in gasoline.

But friends, we’re promised fired one way or another. Now, thankfully, we’ve still as of today a choice to make as to which of the two we seek to experience. But make no mistake, the fire comes for us all. It’s either consuming or eternal. And the things we do, and whether or not there’s any sign of life to be found within them, they are what are determining our directioning as aimed into that same flame, just from opposing sides.

Which is the point.

It’s that the fact that we can feel such things as guilt and regret clearly show that we’re still doing things that we don’t want to do, even if we only come to learn of this after having done them. Indeed, such hindsight is, what I contend, one of God’s greatest gifts. For while it doesn’t help us in those many moments in which it later comes to help us see mistakes being made, it does drastically inspire us to perspire toward the never then making of the same mistakes again.

And while, yes, that doesn’t do much for our past regret, that we’re still alive seem to surmise that we have a chance to change what the past will become.

For today itself will be part of the past come tomorrow, and that whether we’re here with what is then yet another chance or not. Indeed, every single day is a brand new opportunity to do something so differently that our past is found to be an image of our struggling to continue growing, even if that’s only done in mostly the inability to have done so. For I am becoming of the mind that it’s not always the outcome that matters most but that perhaps the effort given can matter just as much.

Because the truth is that we will rarely know how a choice will go. But our giving everything we have to our doing our very best unto the ensuring that they turn out as best as they can, well, that’s gotta count for something!

After all, our pasts are all filled with things we only chose because we only cared to see them turning out for the benefit we wanted but only ended up not finding. And thus we see that there has long been something else living in us causing us to live in trust of what only ended up proving so utterly untrustworthy that anymore we scarcely trust in ourselves either.

And that’s part of the point as well. Because the fact is that we were never meant to trust in ourselves, which is why the worldly idea of “self-help” is such a farce. We do not know how to be what we can clearly see we’ve never been. And thus, as sinners who’ve lived so lost in sin that we came to love the same, even more than life it seems, all we then know is the path that sinners take as sat in the company of mockers who walk in step with the wicked that we ourselves have so clearly been.

And we can know that we have been so bad because, as we talked yesterday, we can admit that the Law is good. Not that we want to, but simply because we have to. Because any semblance of our wrestling with guilt or shame seems only to say that we knew or know now of a better that we’ve not been. But then, that we’ve not been the better we knew or know to now exist, well this seems to all but insist that there’s long been another voice in this song being sung. And that, if ours has only sang the song of sorrow and shame, then the other must be One who sings that song of salvation from the same.

For we’d not be able to see the things that we don’t like if we didn’t have the Life that helped us to see what life was meant to be. And so that we’ve indeed been sown of that seed that helps us to see that we are doing things, saying things, believing things that are not making us better but rather only leaving us dead inside of such things as shame and regret, this seems to prove that we’ve both nothing to lose and yet more then to lose than we could have ever imagined otherwise.

Because we’d not have the eyes to see all the changes we need if not for the seed sown inside that tomb as taken and turned by He who is known for doing just such a thing.

Indeed, that God helps us unto that point in which, or from which, we can see that we’re still doing things that we don’t like having done, it is evidence that He considers us a daughter, a son. Why? Because, as any other parent would, our Father rebukes us in such a way as that feeling of guilt and shame so as to help us see that we’re doing things that do not lead us to the life He created us to live. Rather, that we’re doing things that make us feel so terrible about ourselves seems to say that we’ve instead allowed inside ourselves something that He never intended to be there.

For we’re told elsewhere the faces of those who are His children are radiant with the joy of hope itself and that, as such, they are never found with heads hung down in shame.

And so, that we can feel shame seems only to say that we’re doing things that we know better than to have done, or thus continue doing. And while this may seem to so clearly inspire change, friends, that we have that chance to have pruned from us the parts of us that are bearing fruit that is not in keeping with the life He created us to live, the very kind of life that He came and died for to live, this is truly among the very best proof of both His existence and too the forgiveness that may actually allow us to enter into His presence.

But not as who we’ve become.

Because there is no weeping where He is. There is no sorrow either. And thus there must be no shame, no regret, no guilt left to carry. And so, if still we carry any of the above or any of their like, such is both reason to change and cause to try. Not because we can alone, no, but rather because we now we know that we’re not doing this alone! No! That He helps us feel guilty, dirty, foolish or ashamed, friends, these are only feelings meant to invoke a change that we need if we’re to find anything other than the death we’ve all but allowed inside.

Yes, the presence of regret as met within either our reflection or recall sounds only the alarm of something alive in us doing the things that we don’t want to have found ourselves having done as defined in those things that we’ve done of which we’re now ashamed. And indeed, that the shame always outlasts the satisfaction is truly evidence that there was no profit to ever prove produced of those things that we have to admit that we’ve really done that we really are now incredibly ashamed of.

Because friends, this feeling of shame as is a death all its own of the joy or peace or sense of self-worth that we’d all much clearly prefer, it is proof of a presence of something in us that we should not want to stay. Simply because when feeling shame, the one thing we don’t want is to keep feeling that way. And this is why the Way is defined as He who’s said to have scorned such shame and embraced the grace of that grave into which it led so as to overcome the latter by facing the full fatality of the former.

All so as to lead those willing to be led in the same unto the same overcoming of both the shame and its grave.

In short, the presence of guilt or regret are the utmost exemplars of the necessary evidence as to the dire necessity of our dying to something that’s for too long been allowed to remain alive in us. Yes, we must put to death all deeds done to please the flesh if we’re to ever reap anything but the shame, guilt and/or regret that are evidence of the death of the joy in which we were made and to which were all in Christ called to return.

And we should know by now that to it we have to turn and return as we must also confess that we’ve found quite little of the either within what is now the aftermath of a past so violently mishandled that all we can see are the mistakes we’ve made, and yet a regret so very deep that still we seem only able to assume that we don’t deserve anything better than whatever this is that we’ve become.

But friends, He didn’t create us to be sinners, but rather sons and daughters. And so if we feel as if anything other, this is but evidence of death still alive in us. For if we were made to be His children, then so too were created to continue living as, having been made in His image, so too then we were supposed to be existent beyond the scope of time, space and matter. And so, that we’ve become so confined as to be found within a way in which we die, this proves that we’ve allowed something else to become us.

Because death was not His initial intention for any of us. But if we continue to choose it within the choices we make that become more of the regret that we do not want to feel, that’s on us.

He has done more than enough in trying to help us to become that better He created us to remain. Christ dying on the cross in the sort of humiliating shame that we’ve so often felt seems to say that we’re a part of Him, and thus He of us. But friends, we have no part in Him, nor thus He in us, so long as we live to trust in only ourselves to eventually become what we’ve thus far never proven able to be.

For regret is nothing to live for, and so there must be something else alive in us that isn’t all that interested in the life of us.

And it clearly ain’t Him, because He died so that we could live. Maybe then we should insist upon the dying of whatever then keeps us feeling so far from He who is closer than our choices have ever seemed to realize.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold