Day 3779 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

1 Peter 4:1 NIV

To be done

It’s both what we need and thus defines what we need to do, to be done. For to be done describes both the entering focus as placed upon the purpose of something that we apparently feel strongly enough about in regard to the proposed outcome that we feel sternly that it has to be done. And then too it also sees us through the many strong storms and tumbling stumblings that we’re sure to meet along the way unto that day when we can look back in peace and say that we’d by then done what had to be done to by then be done with what was needed to get us where we’ve come.

And that itself is perhaps the blanket purpose of all we do or is rather left undone within what is still plenty of life left still to come.

It’s for our to come somewhere else at the obvious necessity of the necessary through whatever may lie along the way to what our hope demands defined as a brighter day in a better place. I mean, this is what we all seek for in life, for life is it not? Something better? A day brighter? A home more peaceful and that peace so profound as it’s finally there so permanently found as what is perpetually resolved that nothing even dares shake it anymore?

I know of a place.

Granted, never been there before and I don’t really have all that much of any idea as to how to find it. But despite none alive having ever been, and thus the only Way in that shared in the death of He who is the Way, well, still it seems a strange confidence of mine as to this line I’m walking behind the Way I can’t see. And indeed, it may actually be that I can’t see always the Way nor understand the ways in which He leads me to walk that has allowed for such a confidence as to the outcome still to come.

Because it’s a confidence finally not in me.

And if we were all to ever wonder anywhere near honesty I believe that we would all agree that we honestly need that sort of hope that isn’t held inside our frame nor the failures by which it defined. Because despite this long-held fascination with such societal ideals as self-help and independence, well, fact is that without an external assistant assisting with the assistance as to the persistence of this path we’re on, we’d be left then to only ourselves and whatever we alone can find, do, understand or thus become.

And having done this that way I must now humbly say that I’ve seen enough of what all I can find. I’ve experienced plenty of all I alone can do. I know now the many limitations to a human understandings, and that they somehow grow more limiting the more we learn. And too I thus must in light of this agree that my continuing to believe in my singular ability to become anything of the better that the past I’ve lived has already failed to find would only prove it still unfound in days ahead.

For doing the same things again is not only crazy but it’s also so common that it’s borderline criminal.

Which begs the change as given inside all that comes as a challenge.

Indeed, you’ve likely heard it said or seen it read that that which doesn’t challenge doesn’t change. And while this seems to promise a quite perfect platform for the pride pursued within such deception as the ideas of self-help and the self-confidence to which it leads, the issue is that our going any further into a way of life left there unchanged due to our distaste for challenge will only leave us so obviously unaltered that all we can become in days still ahead is only more of what all we’ve been in a past now behind.

And personally speaking, I don’t find much point in that.

For what can the point, purpose, pursuit or promise prove to be when all we see is more of who we were yesterday? I mean, I know that guy already. Known him for years, all my life in fact. And yet, having now said that, I too know that he’s the kind who, although changed in a great many ways, also spent an even greater number of days denying, debating, all but defiantly avoiding those very changes that he now knows as such growth as that of hope itself as now held inside the frame of mind that seeks to keep changing as that’s apparently where better is always waiting.

But still, to change remains a challenge and thus every challenge inflicts a change.

And our pride just don’t like that way.

Because it’s hard. And all that’s hard feels somewhat scary in that it seems to always offer us this opportunity to fail or fall short of the better we may well believe we could most certainly be would we could forge ahead into the flame of the Name. And thus it’s the Name which scares us as, well, we have seen, or at least heard about the path He walked and all the lack of comfort and ease He found along the way to His becoming the Way.

And well, we don’t like lacking comfort or ease or the overall sense of a life’s tranquility as offered by both and preferred by all. Because we can handle those things. We can welcome those things thus as they thus bring us nothing that asks of us any risk or willingness to lay anything of ourselves on the line that says we might in fact lose something then of ourselves along the ride toward wherever it happens to be that the Way is leading us.

Which, though terrifying both in light of what all we don’t know and can’t see in regard to the however many days ahead (an unknown and thus scary numbering all its own) and of what all we do know in regard to the path He walked and the things He faced and the pains He felt as are miseries we truly cannot begin to imagine. And indeed, it’s the inability to even imagine the worst of what He went through that tends to inspire us unto a great deal of worry as won within our wondering as to what all of it we might be asked to share in along the way.

But oddly enough, that inability to know, as thus designs an utter lack of any semblance of our preferred ability to lean upon such lies as self-confidence, it’s become something of a confidence in my life.

Because if I can’t be the one to ever prove able to see the way nor walk it as perfectly as it deserves, then nor must I be the one left to lead the way, which then leaves me only to follow as best I can the Way already walked in that direction that I now stand confident has hope waiting for me to be found fully rather than my having to fully find it alone. Yes, this faith is truly become my last remaining confidence as it asks that I leave no confidence in myself.

And that just really works out well considering how much I’ve proven within the past my amazing ability to fail or fall short.

Yes, that He invites us unto sharing in suffering, struggling, hurting and fighting there to find hope, it’s something of the greatest hope we could ever feel. Because it opens our eyes to a strange way of life in which we just don’t feel the need to worry about whatever we once did. Like struggling. Indeed, anymore I find my wrestling with this faith to be proof that I’m growing in it. I find my stumbles as if evidence of a greater ability to notice them. My weaknesses and failures are finally seen as scenes painted by the hope of my holding to a higher standard.

I wouldn’t notice them otherwise.

And I know this because, again, I know the guy I used to be who lived that life in which I used to see more success and comfort than anything else. And having been there so lost in looking for luck (which is just blessing translated into our world’s lack of any ability to believe in divine assistance) I know how amazing it is to not be looking anymore for what never existed in the first place.

The luck part at least.

No, I know that there is nothing real about luck as it only incites us to imagine the presence of some mythical happenstance that just happens to go our way only every now and then. And well, I don’t want to believe anymore in such a randomness as some chance’s roll of the dice in my life. No, I rather prefer to stand upon the firmness of even such things as my failures because at least I know them the real and thus without necessity of a misplaced hope in some ability to consider them only accidents.

It has never been an accident all the mistakes I’ve made, for if I can know now the information I apparently didn’t when I made those wrong choices, then so too could have I have known it then in what would have been better choices made and thus the mistakes missed.

And it’s that kind of honesty that finds me elated at the generosity of God as given us in His endless blessings as opposed to the commonly held hope for luck turning our way every once in a while.

No, I want something more constant as, well, such seems a far firmer foundation upon which to build a belief such as everything bettered upon that coming of a day brighter. And, oddly enough, our consistency as toward the making of mistakes and them many seems to be something of an upside-down look at what growth really is. Because, having gotten so much so wrong all this time, we’ve now plenty against which to measure the presence of better as it both comes pouring in blessing and being proven in failure.

Yes, the thing we’ve learned to hate the most in life in light of our pride’s insistence upon always protecting itself is the very best evidence of our growth in hope and thus He who is the only we have thereof.

That’s why we’re called unto an arming of our minds with the same attitude of Christ. And while it is a narrow way indeed, and one won within more storms and struggles than success and snuggles, I find it’s the violence of it all that awards us such a profound brokenness that we even lose our ability to believe in ourselves in the wake of our coming to see our tendency toward the making of both mistakes and the many excuses and denials we’ve always leant upon to make rejecting our soul’s growth in hope seem reasonable.

And yeah, the vast majority of this world would most definitely agree!

Because, again, this place knows only to seek such vanities as comfort and complacency. We crave so desperately this identity as formed behind both mask and masquerade as it allows us to never be the ones seen for who we hopefully know we really are beneath. And if we don’t know then I pray He opens our eyes and hearts to the presence of that hope that doesn’t ask we find it lurking in the same shadows that our pasts have been confined within.

For that asking of hope to be as hollow as every one of our past’s hopeless pursuits has now proven to be is nothing but a self-betrayal as bought for the simple luxury of this wide-spread assumption of a way of life lived without something in the way of struggling, stumbling, suffering and seeing inside of them their unique evidence of the lack of our ability as met with, finally, a heart willing to consider just how much help we need and how we can’t be the ones to offer it anymore.

Because that we’ve struggled so very much only to determine to cover it all up, friends, this just shows that we both know the difference between right and wrong and too the vast distance we’ve come in a life lived almost solely for the latter. Yes, we have done so much wrong that our failures to do better are now what allow us to imagine what better might be.

And it’s all done within the humbling won upon the cross as told of us in Philippians 2:8 wherein Christ, “being found in appearance as a man”, “humbled himself by becoming obedient to death— even death on a cross!”

Thus we see that hope is held inside of humility, and that He who is humble is the same as the only hope we have as we have not been the ones known to have carried anything of the costs we’ve incurred in a past in which we preferred to avoid all such sufferings in exchange for the continued assuming that this life we weren’t here to live losing. No, we don’t want anything to do with laying down our lives as done in the then struggling to keep doing so.

Because struggling makes us look bad as it proves we are weak. And in a world where being weak gets you killedd, well, we’ve learned to leave locked outside anything and anyone who asks that we die.

Even He who is the only hope we have as has been knocking upon the door of our suffering asking us to simply admit that we are so that He has an opening to finally come in and help.

And He helps by showing us that suffering in this life is not only not a bad thing as this life is the life that ends, and so too then everything experienced within it, but also that suffering is itself the very key which unlocks the gate that is our grave and turns it into a getaway from the suffering that we’ll all experience anyway. Yes, everyone will have trouble in this life, and turmoil too. And yes, many of those trials will feel quite the misery as they bring us only the same.

But the difference then is whether we continue seeing them the same, treating them the same or if we do His kind of something new.

Something like no longer worrying about how miserable this life may be. Or like no longer caring as to whatever anyone else may think. Or refusing to continue living as if life we’re not losing. Or laying down our lives as lived to protect ourselves and instead denying ourselves everything from protection to pleasure as we come, in Christ, to finally see that those things are not the treasures that this world has long told us they are but are rather only distractions that keep us enemies of our very own hope.

Yes, continuing to have hope, even if in Christ, in, of or for only this life leaves us the most of all to be pitied. Why? Because if we know the Name but refuse the Way then we’ve only welcomed half of He who is our only hope. And well, a half of hope is basically no hope at all. For ask yourself, what is half of peace? Where is half of home? Who is half of who we’ve always hoped to be but still half of who we’ve been instead?

Why continue living for half if not only because it only asks that we give half ourselves?

Friends, I can’t speak for you and so I won’t, but as for me, well, I’m tired of living for half. I’m tired of trying to find ways to make my half-empty seem half-full to a world fully empty and halfway to nowhere.

I don’t want to be nowhere anymore. And so I’d rather be found struggling than just standing still. Because I know that I know how to stand motionless within the continuance of that past I’ve already lived doing basically only that. Why settle though for more of what we already know? I mean, sure, if what we already know is truly as good as it can be, then yeah, we’d have every reason to stay.

But all the confusion, all the fear, all the struggle and yet all of it still mixed with hope only helps me to know that there is something better. Simply because I can’t wrap my mind around the purpose of a life meant to suffer somedays and find success and comfort in others. And nor then can I comprehend the existence of a God who would create life to have become so chaotic and unhopeful.

Yet I can comprehend a God who would create life to be lived in a garden of His goodness, proving Him of so much the same that He even came to save us from our all having left His promised peace to the past only to find a general lack of hope in the here and now.

And that I can imagine that Jesus did what His Word and it’s witnesses say He did, well, this just seems to me to be pretty amazing proof that maybe my struggles and stumbles don’t define me as much as I’ve let my past convince me that they have.

No, maybe the cross defines me as done by the Love that chose to take it in my stead. And that He did that, well, if He thereafter asks that I struggle with sin as done fighting to break free from its every form still found in me, so be it. For while His path may lead through suffering, it leads to salvation.

And salvation is the help we all need.

And thus He who suffered for us is the only hope we have.

And thus our sharing in His suffering is the best evidence we could ever hope to have of a life lived bad being left behind for good.

And that good as in both better and that better then forever.

And it just doesn’t get any better than that!

#LeaveNoSoulUntold