Day 3812 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Colossians 4:5 NIV

“for which I am in chains”

I wonder what our world would be like would that we could share in what Paul seemed to see even in his captivity. What might it be to feel that kind of urgency to continue doing something that meant so much that not even prison was allowed to alter our passion? What if we could see through the chains we wear unto the beauty of our being here able to share stories of our too having held them so as to help others see that we have a Savior who came to destroy them? What might we have to say if that was the story we felt we couldn’t help but share?

What if the Gospel was the story we felt we simply had to share no matter when, no matter where?

It’s these sorts of questions that I find my mind asking my heart in what’s been a now long-fought fight between my head and my hope as was for a long time held inside a heart that just wouldn’t listen to anything anyone else had to say. For in that way all I felt I had to say was this story about what mattered most to me. And indeed, all of us have known that lane in which we’ve lived that life looking only to our own delight, our every desire, any and every opportunity to stoke that fire that we just couldn’t see was raging through every chance we had to make an impact that just might last.

And that’s the heartbreak of today’s hindsight in that it helps us to see now a past that didn’t last, and that no matter how much effort or importance we may have put in to all those dreams for all those things that we may or may not have found.

All of them combined now into what’s a collection of days gone by, and with them every opportunity they had to do something different than we did.

For that’s the tragedy of time. It just keeps slipping into the ahead without any way to stop it. We can’t manage to make time understand that we need more of it. And that wouldn’t change even if we could bring ourselves to admit that we do. But alas, we can’t and so we don’t and thus, until and unless something radical changes, we won’t. We will never come to live as if we need more time to do what we’re here to do unless we at some point come to see that we don’t have much time left in which to do what matters most.

And we can’t possibly understand what truly matters most until what matters most to us alone isn’t allowed to matter as much as our past contends it has.

And I’m not saying that we shouldn’t have our own personal priorities or passions or pursuits or paths. We should. And that because this life is a largely solo undertaking aimed at what is a very stark finding of oneself all alone before the throne of He who holds the keys to life and death and stands ready to determine which gate we walk through.

But friends, what I’m getting to is that every single person around us is headed toward that same fallout.

And yet we just keep walking right by one another with never anything more than a “how are you” met with an always quick “fine thanks.” As if that’s the extent to which these opportunities should go. As if that’s all the effort they should have. As if we don’t have any idea as to just how bad the forever for some will be if they’re found apart from the Tree.

As if we’re afraid that taking more of their time, intruding more into their lives, letting them take ours or likewise come on into our hearts and hopes might prove somehow detrimental to the schedule we’re each on.

Indeed, we all live as if we’ve so much to do and always less time in which to do it that we just can’t spare a minute for what’s a miraculous meeting of two souls starving for the hope that hopefully one of them has, and that alongside then a willingness to share it with they who have not, a willingness only won within a faith that isn’t afraid of running out.

Yet that seems like one of the things that could be argued about our faith, that we’re seemingly afraid of it running out and us having none should we ever dare to share some with those who may have none and be desperate for some.

Rather we just continue to keep quiet about Christ as if He’s some secret password that will eventually grant us entrance into that golden tree-fort in the sky.

Friends, we’re all going to die!

And well, despite our constant contention as to the obviously otherwise, we have no way to know but that it might be later today.

And yet still we walk beside one another either desperate for hope or with hope to give and yet leave that exchange perpetually undid due to whatever reason that we may have that might make that lack of love look reasonable. Too busy. Too shy. Too well aware that it’s not what most want to hear. Too cool to look religious. Too religious to be loving. Too something.

Yes, we’re always too something to start sharing what we’re here to share.

And we’re not even in prison!

Or are we?

See, this passage is one written by Paul as he sat in jail for doing the Lord’s work. And you know what he was doing despite society saying that they didn’t like what he’d been doing? He was still doing what he’d been doing despite society not liking what he was doing. Why? Because the opportunity mattered more than the outcome.

Read that again.

The opportunity mattered more than the outcome.

Can you imagine what this world would be like if we could say the same? That we were worried more about making the most of every opportunity we had to share the Name that sets captives free than we were over perhaps facing captivity in a world that doesn’t want to hear anymore any more about the Name of He who they thought they’d rid themselves of? Yes, what if we only cared about sharing Christ and not the amount of hate or judgement or “humiliation” that doing so might bring?

Why do we still seem to consider sharing the Gospel to be humiliating? And if we don’t, well then why don’t we share it more often?

Is it fear of man? Is it uncertainty as to what it is that we actually believe? Is it that maybe we don’t really believe? Don’t think we know enough? Don’t think we can measure up? Don’t have any reason to imagine it going well considering how well it’s gone at times in the past?

Friends, whatever the reason the outcome is the same and that is that we’re all missing so many chances every single day to be found with something to say that someone desperately needs to hear.

Why such desperation?

Because deep down we all know we’re dying and we’re thus all trying to finally start finding a little bit of hope in that most hopeless of promise.

We’re all born into a life spent living afraid to die. And yet we all do just that anyway.

If only we had something to say, something to share, something to offer one another that might make that promise into a table so wonderfully turned over that we actually looked forward to it!

Oh yeah, we do have that something. And yet, oh yeah, it’s the very same something that we so seldom talk about because we’re either still trying to figure it out or simply because it’s not hard to figure out that most folks in this place don’t want to hear any more about it. And that because most have become quite convinced that there’s another way around it.

That maybe if we make enough money we can buy a second lease on life. Or if we achieve some sort of socially impressive standing as stood upon social media platforms or award show stages that our name will live on forever. Or if we manage to squeeze our way into always being able to say whatever everyone else may come to want to hear that they’ll remember that we were here and thus, even though they’ll still end, at least our lives will have mattered at the time.

What if we realized that these opportunities that He gives us to share Him were the same as would make a mark that was in fact so amazing that we just might show up in Heaven and there be met by folks we met along the way that wouldn’t have made it had they not heard about Jesus from us as told in a life spent unafraid, unashamed of the Gospel?

What if we stopped living for all of these what if’s and just decided to find out?

After all, again, we’re all running out of days in which to do just that.

And because of that, so too are we running short on the overall number of words that we’ll have spoken in our lifetime.

What will we have said when those opportunities to say something have run out?

Why is it that we still live as if the both never will? Indeed, why is it that the two things we most often take for granted are both the time we are most certainly running out of and too the words which form amongst our greatest resources with which to make a positive impact within the time we’ve been given? And that even an impact potentially lasting? Yes, why is it that we take both our days for granted and too our words which we often let flow as if they too are as equally meaningless due to their presently perceived inability to likewise run out?

I mean, the two outcomes, as are again all but entirely guaranteed, they will actually literally happen simultaneously. For upon our last hour here we will also have said our last words within those waning seconds of this life as will then be fading both forever away from here, and that toward wherever the rest of our forever is waiting to be found.

Isn’t that in and of itself worth far more than our taking still as if limitless this entirely limited-time existence?

For indeed, my friends the fact is that forever is already well on the way, and well, do we not feel as if that’s worth talking about? And sure, there are those, and maybe many so, who themselves don’t really believe in anything beyond this life as lived within this land and all there is to love within. But then again, for those of us who do believe, well then how could ever we simply agree to pass silently these strange ships cast adrift atop the very same ending waves of the very same ocean of opportunity that we ourselves are swimming in for this time?

Yes, for such a time as this is perhaps why we exist, and too that with the ability, the understanding, the belief that allows us to speak something worth saying even to those who’ve no interest in what we have to share.

And yet we settle most always for simply repeating the same nothing of which we’ve all so sadly become so expectant. How’s the weather? Did you see that game? Any plans for the weekend? It’s all the same.

Just always the same.

We endlessly awake to only repeat these things in order to show some feigned, if not blatantly fake interest into the lives of those around us, and yet we ask them as if often only rhetorical as answered most commonly within “yeah, looks like rain” or “may go camping with the kids.” And then it just ends as whomever was involved is thus resolved from their expected engagement and rather sat free to continue on their way toward wherever it is that they both may be going and thus might end up.

Don’t we care? And that about both about where they’re going and where that direction may leave them landing? Friends, we’re all falling from this earth into whatever is there waiting for us when we’ve gone, and yet still it seems that gravity is still just playing its same old joke on us, convincing us that we’ll be here for a bit more. And because we’ve all learned how to buy that lie, so we just talk more so as to fill the time elsewise not muddled through by minds seeking unto the planning of our evacuation expectations.

Yes, we talk about everything under the sun, never then once seeming to realize that all that’s under the sun will one day be gone when that sun’s gone out and the only light that’s left is that of the Son that we likely never spoke about.

And what a heartbreaking day that will be for any and all who thought all along that all that mattered was only what managed to fit under the umbrella of small talk.

Why keep talking so small my friends? Why keep living so small? Why keep loving so small as to walk along and always watch all these opportunities to perhaps alter someone’s eternity for the better just pass us by and fade into the night? Is it that we’re unaware of the bigger picture as is already painted of life and there aimed to last for all eternity? Or are we simply scared of such a scope and our inability to see it in its entirety?

Don’t know, but something sure keeps us saying an awful lot without ever really saying much at all.

How much longer will we take our words and days as if both exist without measure, without limit, and thus justifiably taken as if limitless and thus leaving us with no danger of running out with something left unsaid or undone? Can’t we see the risk in this, in our not saying what we need someone else to hear? Of not doing what they need to see us do? Of not being who we were made to be, called to be? Of letting life just simply slip by as if tomorrow is promised, and it with a million more words that themselves already plan to mean nothing?

How can life, as will be measured in both days and what we said within them, possibly mean so little as to talk about so many things that mean so little, and that every single day? An undertaking undertaken always as if we’ll just have another later, word or day, in which we can talk about a bit more of what will hopefully still matter then?

My friends, what if there is no then? What if we’re but an hour away from finding our last later in this place? What if tomorrow is crying because we won’t be here then to see it? Bet we’ll then have wished we’d have said what we needed to back when we had the time to!

Maybe today’s that last chance.

And even if it isn’t, will we truly regret saying what we needed to say today if tomorrow then comes as a surprise that gifts us then a little more time to say a little more about what will still mean everything to us?

Indeed, if we knew that we only had so many words to say, would that not change how we said them, or in fact what we said with them? Would we not use them more wisely, not wanting to waste any along the way? Same of our days. Were we to number them realizing that we had but a limited number of them, would this not inspire us to live them differently? Would we not strive to live them with purpose, with passion, thus purposefully and passionately? Would we not life itself become a passion that we cared about so very earnestly were it to be understand that we've but a few days left in which to live this practice for what is a chance to find out whether or not we knew Him by whether or not He agrees that He's known us?

See, I'm starting to believe that this life is just a warmup, an intramural opportunity, a practice sort of thing in which we either get used to bowing the knee before our King and too in this confessing our need of He, or we don't. And yet, if we won’t even tell someone else what we know of Him, however little that may be, well then what can we know of Him?

After all, the Bible tells us this 66-book story of this Son of Heaven’s glory that came storming into this sea in which we were all drowning in sin to pull up from within unto the life He’d always wanted for us to live with Him in the peaceful perfection that is this placed called Heaven. And it speaks as to how He did this by dying on a cross as if to place the fruit back on the tree and thus set free you and me from the unending guilt incurred in our having eaten ourselves drunk upon delight and deception.

It says that He died for us because He loves us that much.

What then are we missing that’s still got us thinking that this isn’t worth talking about?

Because friends, we’re running out of opportunities to do so. Are those really the chances we want to leave untaken? Is it wise to make so little of such an opportunity to perhaps be the one that introduces somebody to their Savior? Is it wise to think we’ll have more chances later?

Is it wise to risk everyone’s forever on our fear or laziness always being able to imagine a later in which we can try better or prove then better able to try?

Truth is that it’s not about what we know or how well we know it. What matters more than anything is that we share what we know before the sun sets on our last chance to maybe accomplish something in that strange willingness to be honest and humble. And that’s exactly what He calls us to be.

So then, when do we start?

And is there anything that feels right about any answer other than now?

#LeaveNoSoulUntold