Day 3818 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Proverbs 26:12 NIV

A fool’s hope

It’s something found in the fact that perhaps only a fool can know they are both a fool and thus without hope. For, contrary to common understanding, it’s not always the having or knowing of something that offers us the chance to have it or know of it but sometimes, perhaps even oftenly so, our not having something that we elsewise know we need is what acts as the catalyst to our finding of it within this rare exchange of the arrogance which sees no need for the humility that knows such hope.

For in truth, only humility is able to grow, and so only the humble can really know of any hope at all.

After all, how can anyone ever come to have what they have no idea they need? And well, how can one think they need hope when they believe they've already arrived at the very best of their life? For, if such is truly the case and they have finished the race in what now was the chase of their lives to find this now found best of this life, well then what is there that’s left to find? I mean, once we find perfection what’s then the point in going any further?

Can perfection be perfected any further? Can what’s best be bettered in any way? Is there any rhyme or reason in continuing to seek for what you’ve apparently found already?

Who does that?

Well, ironically, it would seem that all of us do. Or have. Or are, will, might, might not. It all just comes down to this age-old and life-long battle raging inside each of us between the wisdom we think we have and the foolishness we likely don’t think about at all. It’s kind of like what we just talked about yesterday in that reality in which we don’t like to think about what we get wrong as that would point out the fact that we’re, well, wrong. And nobody really likes that as it is quite the quickly humbling realization to realize just how mistaken you could be.

At least theoretically.

Unfortunately that’s clearly not a theory we’re any of us at all all that interested in considering. Why? Because it really upends this whole image, this persona, this performance that we’ve all put on in which we’ve painted ourselves into our understanding, our estimation of what perfection might be, might look like, may sound like. And so anything that could in any way undermine all the work we’ve put in and cause anyone who’s fallen for it to start to question it is something that is clearly quite antithetical to our cause.

Which, in this life has been, at times, to make ourselves look good, feel good, seem good, sound good, sing good this song our seeing good enough to have found what everybody else seems to still be looking for. And that’s something that we discuss quite often in these posts due to the thickness of the irony found within. For if everyone around us, every single one of us, has truly managed to have found this ideal version of life in which all of life, ourselves included, is just this glowing image of a life perfected, then what is it that folks are still trying to find?

Again, who keeps looking for what they’ve already found?

And, well, if we have managed to track down this perfect life in which we ourselves are thus perfect too, then what are we all still trying for? What are we working for? What are we fighting about, fighting toward? If our lives and how we live them are as perfect as we’ve all told others they were, then why don’t we just wake up every day to sit in lounge chairs basking in the perfection we’ve found, become?

I mean, if life were perfect we’d need nothing. If we were perfect we’d want nothing. If anything was perfect then everything else wouldn’t matter anymore. And if everything were perfect then we’d not want anything else and perfection knows nothing of either want or need. And yet, like Martha, we too are worried about many things in what is, like Martha, a working to make sure that things go right and flow smoothly and look as good as we want them to look to those that we believe are still looking to us be this flawless image of a life perfected that we’ve tried to ourselves believe we can actually achieve.

But friends, feigning an image of perfection, as painted in the colors that our pride seems to think match the motif, it’s really nothing but our once more putting forth this image of what we are not seeking to just hopefully manage to convince somebody else that we are what we aren’t so that, thanks to their having fallen for it, maybe they can help us become a bit more convinced ourselves.

Indeed, I truly believe that such is what the vast majority of people are doing with and within all this nonsense as found in such lies as affirmation and applause. We’re just trying to coax others into agreeing that what we’re doing is as right as our unwillingness to change wants it to be, needs it to be.

And that’s why I hate it so completely!

Because all that affirmation is is but the external justification of what we ourselves seem to legitimately believe is best for us in what is, apparently, our version of what a life’s perfection would be like, feel like, sound like. It’s truly nothing but this societal voting yes upon whatever it is that someone may, at the time, think for themselves to be best.

But friends, such opinions change. Our perspectives shift. Our preferences move. Our desires and dreams become for new things once we’ve either found what we once wanted or just got tired of waiting for a dream to come true. Because life moves. It grows. It’s this ever-changing always-flowing never knowing of where we’re going because we often have no idea what we’re doing.

Problem is that we think we do.

Indeed, we’ve each of us lived this life like someone who's gotten lost and yet refuses to admit it or accept it but rather just keeps telling themselves and whoever they're with that they know exactly where they are. The issue becomes that all they can most likely find is just themselves even more lost because their pride just can't understand that they need to ask for help, for advice, for directions. They'll rather just keep going the direction they've chosen in this arrogant assumption that it will get them wherever they're trying to go when, in reality, where they're trying to go could very well be the other way and thus they're only getting further away from it with every step they take.

That's why there's more hope for a fool, because at least a fool is willing to consider the fact that they might not know something and thus, in humility, find themselves open to the plausibility of their needing some help with learning what they don't know and thus eventually even finding what they realize they would only continue struggling to find otherwise.

Those wise in their own eyes just don’t have that ability.

For again, who hopes for what they already have and who asks for what they don’t think they need?

That just doesn’t make any sense.

And yet, that’s literally how each of us have lived plenty of times already within this life in which we’ve, at those same times, considered ourselves to have held all the cards. But my friends, if this were truly the case, why then did we lose the hand? And if we still claim that we didn’t, well, again then, what are we still looking to find or trying to win?

If we’ve won at everything we’ve ever done and found all that we’ve ever wanted to find, then why is there still all of this wanting and doing and wishing and dreaming? Again, if our lives are truly as perfect as we so often tell everyone else around us that they are, then we shouldn’t need anything else. We shouldn’t be able to remember what want is if we’ve already found everything we wanted as wanted is the past tense meaning that it’s already happened and has since thus reached its conclusion.

A life perfected is one that’s obviously reached its conclusion.

So what then are we doing?

Because we’re all up to something. We’re all looking for something. Everybody in this world that’s alive right now is alive in a life spent wanting something.

How is any of that possible if there are truly as many perfect lives and wise people as there are claimed to be? If not only because wisdom is itself what ironically knows that it has no such end? Ever consider that? How wisdom is the only way to understand that there is no end to wisdom? How knowledge only knows that there’s always more to know? How the process of learning and growing only leaves us with more room to grow and thus plenty we’ve still left to learn?

Friends, contrary to common consensus, wisdom isn’t the finish line. It’s instead a journey taken without the willingness to agree to one ever being there.

And yet we’ve all come to live this way of life in which we, seeking to perfect everything, seem to believe that wisdom is something we can have, something we can be, someone we can become. And so we’ve each sat out on this race to this place in which the mirror looking back shows us the very face of wisdom. And while our trying to hurry up and finish something that cannot be finished is problematic, what’s even worse is that it seems that a great many have apparently done just that!

They’ve apparently managed to become wise and have now nothing left to learn, nothing more to know, no more room in which they could grow, improve.

Folks all around have just arrived at their destination, which is sadly only nothing more than as far as they were willing to go.

But what then friends? What do we do with all this time and energy we have left? What are we to fill our remaining days with? If we’ve already got everything figured out and our growth thus finalized, what then becomes of our reason for being alive? Is it just to tell everyone else all about how wonderful we are and how we managed to figure out the way to what we’ve apparently found? Is it to act as tour guides recounting a life lived so amazingly well that others keep coming to hear the stories of our many glories?

Is it to just kick our feet up and do as little as possible having, ironically, done basically only that already?

Again, any finish line in life is but a person’s agreement to go no further.

But friends, isn’t further where better’s always found?

And, well, isn’t that the problem this verse is pointing out? That those who think they’ve gone far enough to have become enough of whatever they wanted to be can thus go no further and become no better? Is that really the hopeful outcome that so many have cooked it up to be and sold it off to those willing to believe the same themselves? Does belief really have a finish line in this world? Does opportunity get all excited to run out of itself?

Should we be so excited as we’ve become for our own opportunities to learn, grow, improve to run out?

Again, what becomes the purpose of life at that point?

I can myself remember a great many times in which I thought I had something figured out. I’d found the goal, finished the task, run the race. But looking back now, well, it seems that all I won in doing so was just time wasted upon not doing anything else. I just sat down. I took a nap. I went on vacation from the vocation of trying as if there was nothing more to try for. But friends, doesn’t our trying for nothing more only say that we’re convinced that we ourselves can’t be anything more?

Is that really the story we want to tell? That we’re already as good as we can be? Is that really a story we even believe? Again, looking back it seems that I’ve both told it and believed it. But yet here I am still messing things up, getting things wrong, learning how to do things better because of it. Does this mean I’m wrong? Yeah, because, well, you have to be wrong to get something wrong. But is it then more wrong to be wrong and know it or to be the same wrong and refuse to see it?

Is it better to mess up and admit it or to make the same mistakes and never agree to notice them? Is it better to be a fool that knows they do foolish things or to be a fool that thinks they’re not foolish at all?

Which one has the best opportunity for growth: Those who know they’re at rock bottom with only room to improve or those who think themselves on the throne and thus no higher to go?

Friends, there’s a very direct correlation between arrogance and ignorance, and, should I still be here tomorrow, I’ve got notes and thoughts and things I hope to have the opportunity to say in regard to it. But for today, for this post, this point, the point is that the more we think we know the less we’re able to know. And at the same time, the less we’re aware that we have understood is what offers us the more room to build onto that understanding a growth in the very same understanding that such a humility helps us see that we just don’t have quite yet.

And that right there is pretty much the whole message summed up.

It’s that what we can allow ourselves to see that “we just don’t have quite yet” is then the very same as what we know to be there waiting as something we either know that we need or think we want. And while there’s all sorts of things to discuss in regard to the dire difference between want and need, the point is that both are things that keep us going toward the more that both this life has to offer and that we ourselves have to give.

We can all always be more, we can all give more, we can grow more, learn more, find more, know more. But only when we humbly accept that, again, no, we’re not there yet.

And why is that? Because again, wisdom isn’t a finish line but rather a journey spent without any willingness to allow for one to exist. And that’s simply because wisdom knows there’s more to know. Wisdom understands that there’s always something to better understand. Wisdom realizes that blinded eyes can only grow to see better and better as they humble themselves to always accepting that there’s more to see but that it’s only met by our usual inability to see much of anything in life all that clearly.

No, I’m convinced that wisdom is the game that only fools can win because only fools know that where they begin isn’t where they ought to be. Those wise in their own eyes only seem to think that where they are already is right where they should stay. And friends, wisdom doesn’t want to stay anywhere! Rather wisdom wants to grow into the knowing of every form of better that there is.

And well, those who think themselves as having already arrived at that better are thus the same as can never then find anything of everything that’s still waiting beyond it.

Now I know that all the childishness and laziness and name-calling and arrogance alive and thriving in this world has left us all jaded to the fact and unwilling to see through the offense, but friends, the fact is that it’s better to be a fool that knows you’re a fool than to be the same fool without the ability to realize it. Why? Because the fool who can see their foolishness can also see, maybe only eventually, the need to fix some things and do some stuff differently.

And it’s just better to eventually find that desire to get better, do better than to never agree to realize that better is always there waiting for all of us to admit we can be it.

I understand that we all want to appear wise and sound smart and look as if we’re “winning at life.” But friends, how can we be winning anything if we’ve all but quit? That’s not winning, it’s just wasting every chance we have to do even better, go even further, know even more. It’s our giving away our chance to become the evermore that we can all always be.

After all, God hasn’t left us here to bask in the brilliance that we may enjoy thinking ourselves having become. No, He’s left us here in what is a patience that’s willing to give us every opportunity to grow and improve and change and seek Him at the expense of who we’ve been that we can possibly have.

He gives us all the opportunities we could ever need to become the more He created us to be and now calls us to become. But alas, those who think themselves as great as they can be already are thus the same as will take none of those opportunities thinking them all simply unneeded.

Be rather the wise person who sees yourself as the fool who can grow and improve, not that fool who thinks themselves wise and thus sees no possible way to do either.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold