Day 3793 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

1 Corinthians 12:2 NIV

Somehow

It’s both the perhaps still present mystery as to how it is that we managed to get here to wherever it is that we are in what is likely a life in which we are all, at times, barely living at all in light of this remained inability to speak due to our voices having been given on loan to all that is neither alive nor then able to promise we’ll be when we’re no longer here as such, but also then maybe the key which could possibly unlock the lock and let us go from where all we’ve gone in search for something to say that would make it seem okay for having so long allowed everything else to speak for us.

Yes, somehow or other, though now it seems the how doesn't really seem to matter as we're already well onto the ladder as the life we've lived as mute ourselves now lies in tatter on what is the ground both beneath us and hopefully too behind us as we've, I pray, hopefully taken His play for our part and found in that a change of a heart that’s at least, hopefully, begun a heart changed in such a way that's brought us back both to our senses and there back our voices and thus given us something to say that doesn't anymore rhyme with want.

Alas, since such a word’s always been such a part of our past it seems now that to let it go is something we either simply don’t know or rather only a matter we’d just prefer never try in light of how we still seem to think that this life is ours to win.

But friends, riddle me this, how is that we who’ve lost what we either can’t or won’t admit we’ve forgotten, given away, never really even pretended then to care about all that much, how is it that we who’ve lost what we can’t confess is missing can then be the same as those who succeed in its finding? I mean, if we can’t manage to bring ourselves to admit what all we’ve misplaced, well then how are we supposed to be the ones who know then where to find whatever it may be that we refuse to agree is gone?

Like our voices.

Sure, we live as if we know the sound of them, and indeed we do. There are literally folks, and plenty of them, who seem to carry inside this fear of their somehow being forgotten should they let a moment pass without it being filled with the echo of their presence as presented by their lips and whatever they apparently feel the need to say. But does our ability to form air into sound really mean we’re saying anything worth being heard? Or is not just a quite simple matter of physics in that air can be either compressed or hurried and, thanks to either, carry sounds that seem to matter?

We can hear the thunder and know that it’s saying that a storm is coming. But yet we always wait for the lighting to convince us to go inside and take cover.

Proving then that sound only ever matters if we allow it to mean what it should, which is something utterly unreliant upon sight or circumstance.

Problem then is that nearly everything we seem to feel the need to talk about is only able to matter in the moment in which we’re in a situation or circumstance that’s left us stood within the present tense of a person tense themselves in light of our neither having all that much of value to talk about. Thus we resort to the weather and whether or not we like it. Indeed, this is the very substance of nearly every conversation we have with every stranger we meet.

How’s the weather? Sure is hot today. Looks like rain again. Hear about the flood?

Yes, yes we have but alas we allow it always to rush on by with little more than a wearied eye given unto looking for the meaning meant to met within it, just too tired to try to look as we’ve been seeking and searching for something of purpose, of meaning in which to once more place our every hope as is treasure given mostly only to that which is only wholly unable to offer us anything but something else to dust and discount in a future yard sale.

Indeed, I cannot for the life of me remember all the things that mattered more to me than life itself was ever allowed only to have eventually been traded for a couple quarters just so I felt as if I got something out of getting rid of it.

Isn’t that ironic? That even when it comes to finally getting rid of something we’ve finally come to realize we never really needed, that even then we still feel as if we need to get something out of it so as give us some evidence of our not being entirely wrong for having given it so much time and triumph in our lives? Guess then that our time is worth only a couple bucks at best, after all, it’s better to get something than just throw away this something that means so next to nothing that we just hope we don’t have to put it back in storage.

But friends, just how of all such junk as given so much of our hope do our such lockers still hold? How many opportunities at personal or spiritual growth have been pawned in what are these pawn shops we refer to as hearts? How many meaningful conversations have we missed in which mutual edification was all but a given, a chance then left untaken because we didn’t have much to say outside of the day’s chance of rain?

How many prayers haven’t we prayed simply because we believed in some idol, money maybe, being able to make it all okay?

How much cash have we burned believing that something else was worth whatever another was asking in exchange for our thereafter being those having this ideal that we just couldn’t walk away from trying to get?

Do we not get it yet?

Sadly it seems that at times still we don’t as it’s as if we’re somehow or other still stuck living inside the or stuck between them. Somehow or other. Yes, still looking at best for reasons why we should now let go what never had the ability to hold us as tightly as we hoped it could, or at worst just something else that we give our hope unto hoping it can prove what’s finally able to cling to the faith we’ve given it. But friends, just how much more of our faith or hope can we really afford to waste on this worldly wager that there’s just no danger in such a spending of ourselves upon all that simply cannot satisfy?

For I thought the goal was life, you know, considering our longstanding fear of death. I thought we all wanted to stick around this living side of life for however long we might. Did we change our tune? Change our minds? See any life in having to die? Afraid of the life we’ll lose when we do? Or maybe afraid of the death we’ll find when beyond that line of this life.

I don’t know, but it sure seems that we’re still quite confused in regard to the whole ordeal. For still we do what we always have, giving our voices to the voiceless, and sadly not that quite heroic version as held inside our fighting for those who can’t fight for themselves. No, this has nothing to do with widows or orphans or the elderly or the shy. Rather this is all about us giving our lives away to things we can buy in what’s then a belief that these things, whatever they may be, that these things can prove worthy of the time, effort, attention we choose to give them.

That we delight to give them!

Get that?

That we delight to give away our time, our effort, our attention in what’s an intention to trust an invention made of human minds and hands working together to sculpt something that cannot then know anything of forever? Simply because that which is temporary can only ever then create that which is bound to stay the same. That those who’ve but a randomly assigned matter of time can only then ever have something for however long said amount of time may last?

And that once said time has elapsed we’ll no longer be here to speak to, nor thus for, all these things that we gave our lives to trying to prove to everyone else mattered as much as their being covered in dust will say they don’t?

Again, I cannot now even remember all the things that I once thought to matter. Just know that since I now can’t remember them, well then they obviously didn’t, did they?

And yet what scares me still is that, knowing my now lifelong tendency to being myself influenced and led astray to the making of mute idols seem to matter, I worry only that I’ve still of them plenty that I’m not aware are around me in light of how they can’t speak to let me know that I need to let them go.

Thankfully God helps with such a confusion upon what are crosses carried daily that, as done daily, ask us to look for more we can nail to them so that we never again dare leave them without use or purpose as was proven in our past. Yes, we’ve all walked by our crosses so many times and just left them sitting so still that they may still seem as lifeless as nothing else we’re serving for the moment may seem.

But friends, considering Calvary, what if life is only ever found in our finally dying to all it never was?

And oddly enough this is actually quite an easy line to find, this one dividing life from death and thus us from dying more to what isn’t alive. I mean, that’s literally the line! Is it alive? Can it move? Does it speak or make any sort of sound? Does it have a mouth that can speak or ears that can hear whatever another is saying? Does it have eyes to see? Maybe the best question is do we? Do we have the eyes to see the things that haven’t eyes in our lives that are thus asking us to give them ours in order to make them seem worthy of the life we’re giving away?

Do we have the guts to agree that we haven’t always even wanted our eyes to see such things as all the lifelessness laying around us in what is then a life lived itself all but lifeless as well?

Again, I truly can’t remember all the things I’ve wanted or won within my life that thereafter relied on me to tell others why they mattered. Indeed, at times it seems as if my entire existence was that of but a museum tour guide walking those around me through this decrepit heart fastened to a mind of disarray telling them all about how and why it all makes sense to have no such point as to have lived for all that’s since been forgotten or given away.

Why live like that?

Why give so freely this time that’s fleeting unto things that have not feeling nor the abilities of seeing or hearing or helping us when we need it? Literally the best that so much in our lives can offer is to again be sold off for a few dollars, which we’d likely only then again spend upon more of what doesn’t matter!

And again, how can we know what does matter? Well, is it mute? Can it say anything? Would it have anything useful to say if it could? Because friends, the reality is that one day, and that soon, we’re all going to have to say something in response to a question or two asking in regard to whatever it is that we’ve regarded as being worth this life that we’ve been given. And all we’ll have to say in the form of an answer is that which we’ve given our lives to.

What are we giving our lives to? What are we speaking for? What are we seeking for? What are we living for? Why are we alive? Is it truly for nothing more than trying to make some manmade material seem to matter? What’s the matter with us? Why are still forfeiting our very existence upon the substance of things whose substance can only ever be found here in this one place that we’ll not be for much longer?

And sure, another hundred years would be a really long time should we somehow have that many left. But friends, what’s a hundred compared to forever?

No, nothing here should ever be allowed to matter nearly as much as everything here has been allowed to matter. Why? Because if it doesn’t have eyes to see then it can’t help lead the way we need to go. If it doesn’t have ears to hear then it can’t listen for the whispers that help us stick to that one right, albeit quite narrow, path. If it doesn’t have a heart inside of it, then it can’t help us show we have one still beating in us. If it doesn’t have breath in lungs it doesn’t have either, then it can’t give us either when we inevitably run out of the first and leave the last behind.

And when that time comes, and it does truly come for us all, if it doesn’t have a mouth that is able speak then it will not help us find something to say in response to those questions we’ll be asked in regard to what mattered most to us.

No, we’ll just be left standing there pointing to everything that we tried to make mean something, only to see it all melting in the fire blazing around us.

Friends, let us stop living to ourselves melt alongside all that we’ve long tried to make matter more than life itself ever has. For why hasn’t life ever mattered more than the materials with which we fill it? After all, what makes a building special? Better yet, what made the Temple special? Was it the bricks and beauty with which and within which it was made? Or was it instead what was found within it?

God’s presence made the Temple special, otherwise it was just another building built by human hands. Maybe then we too should spend a little more time a little more focused on what we’re filling our temples with, because while the outside may be what matters most to those who’ve not themselves eyes able to look deeper than the surface upon which and thus for which more around here live, God is interested in what we have inside as that’s where He died to place His Spirit.

What is His Spirit being asked to share that room with? And if it doesn’t have the ability to offer us the same promises that the Spirit was sent to lead us toward, well then why does it still have any room, any importance in our lives?

My point is that everything here is headed for the refiner’s fire. Will what matters most to you make it through the process of refinement? Or will it simply be melted or burned away?

Truth is that we’re all answering that very question every single day.

I just worry that we might be both surprised and ashamed of the answer if we ever stopped to reconsider. For it’s an answer we will give.

Somehow or other.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold