Day 3836 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Isaiah 59:12 NIV

The silence

Though a place in which we’ve nothing to say, it’s too the only in which we can finally see we had nothing to say anyway. After all, with what answer can we answer those every asking of any question as was ignored in a life in which the way we walked they could not fathom? How can we so assume that we’ll know what to do when found on that ground in which all we’ve done is just done and we’re left there the only one before the only One who did what we couldn’t so as to help stop doing what we apparently couldn’t?

What will we say when we see Jesus face-to-face?

Don’t know why but all of the sudden Solomon came to mind. I know we’ve all read, or at least I hope we have, of his immeasurable wealth as won within his asking of God for wisdom first (as done to hopefully, no, prayerfully lead His people well). Indeed, despite the human inclination to ask for all these “other things” as coined as such in such passages as that of Matthew 6 in which Jesus is speaking to the people about all the worries of mankind, no, Solomon sought something different.

Yes, rather than asking, as most of us have, for such things as food and drink, fan and fame, no, no Solomon sought first the Lord and His Name as was done in his asking God for the wisdom he knew he didn’t have to lead a people he thus couldn’t lead into the future he couldn’t see and thus in which wouldn’t succeed without the wisdom and help of God leading the way for him to do this task of leading His people well.

And well, God gave him what he’d asked for as rewarded within the wisdom that made him into such a successful ruler that all the things he didn’t ask for were indeed, as Jesus says in Matthew 6:33, given to him as well. And indeed, Solomon became famous the world over thanks to his wealth of both wealth but also wisdom. It’s even said that folks came from all around to just hear him and the wisdom to be won within.

And too that these distant dignitaries often brought gifts with them.

Can you imagine how silly at least some of them must have felt?

For here’s this king widely renowned for having a wealth of wisdom beyond measure and thus a wealth of wealth beyond compare, and yet these people come from far and near to both hear this wisdom that he had and also bring with them gifts and things meant to please the king. Only to probably get to Solomon’s land and see everything he already had and feel as if what they’d brought was nothing he didn’t already have.

Can’t help but imagine that that’s how we’ll feel when found before Christ upon that coming Day’s having arrived.

Just left standing there, or kneeling probably, in what is this overwhelmed realization as to just how much He already had and always knew about both what to do as was always defined by what He’d done, and thus too the little of it we ourselves chose to do in what’s then a life left behind in which we’d done what was done and had no time left to do or say or try and think anything new.

No, only us left holding the little with which we came before the frame of this Name that we’d heard about, but not even half.

Yeah, I’m becoming more convinced by the day that upon that Day all we’ll have to say is something akin to what Sheba’s queen had to offer in 1 Kings 10:7. “But I did not believe these things until I came and saw with my own eyes. Indeed, not even half was told me; in wisdom and wealth you have far exceeded the report I heard.”

All because we’re a people who have to see before we’ll fully believe. And indeed, I believe that this is why God lets us enter that place in which we can literally see our death and feel the tangible presence of the silence itself.

Quite the drastic transition?

Indeed, going along and you’re reading about a bit of Biblical history as recounted in the retelling of the story of Solomon and his riches and fame thanks to the wealth of wisdom attributed to his frame having asked God’s for only wisdom with which to honor God by leading God’s people properly. And then, as if out of nowhere, you’re hit with this sudden shift into more talking about death and how we’ll likely have nothing to talk about once we get there other than how little we’d believed of all that was told us of this impossibly amazing King then stood before.

The lack of belief then what causes us to be then unable to say much of anything.

All because we chose to live this life thinking silence a strife that cut the knife right to our hearts and left them there all but torn apart in what will one day be a long string of days in which we did so little new that we’ll too have nothing new to say.

Because we never wanted to understand the silence as being the best place for us to hear the still voice of God gently whispering which way to go from all of those which we had chose.

I’m tired of being the one so choosing the way of which this life I’m losing unto the many things for which I’ve lost it in exchange for what’s became a daily fight to the right words find with which to express all I’m learning of all that was always there running in mirrored tandem with the life of choices I lived making as if only to flame I’d fanned them.

And it’s such the strange feeling sat still right here reeling from the feeling of that same old failing in which despite all the words in which I’ve tried, still I feel so often so far from the telling of what I know needs to be heard. It’s becoming as if not even 3,000,000 words can convey the gravity of the Gospel nor even touch the hem of Him who came to live it out on our behalf.

That’s why I love the silence so.

Indeed, to many it’s the death found and felt only after the rattle we talked about a bit yesterday has settled. For we all seem to know that when the noise stops, the truth will finally be heard of what we perhaps never knew to believe having listened only to the song of the streets still singing about how amazing or impressive or awe-worthy some politician or celebrity seems. Or how cool is the something that someone else is doing that we might should try ourselves.

Or how popular be the new trend that’s sweeping the nation both off of its feet and further under the rug. Or of the outcome of the latest outrage making the front page of whatever news outlet you prefer to get your thoughts from. Or some joke so dumb that it’s deemed both cute by some and sad by others. Or some new thought bought by a novel theory as to why life matters and what to make of it now that someone else finally agrees it might.

Yes, we’ve lived our lives so tuned in morning, noon and night to the noise of a world filled with that fear of being silent. It’s indeed almost as if we’ve become all but allergic to it. As if folks worry that they might break out in hives and start sneezing if for even a moment they gave up our favorite hobby of talking.

Mostly just to hear ourselves speak.

Mostly just to make sure that we’re still here.

Mainly because we already gave up looking in the mirror and rather chose long ago to walk away from what we’ve seen looking back, even chose to forget what we looked like.

Because it’s not a pretty sight.

No, it’s a hard thing to look in the mirror and see a dead person looking back. Add in the fact that they’re still breathing, apparently then meaning that they’re too still alive and, well, what you’ve got is a mystery we both made but have yet no idea what to make of. For what can you make of this sight we’ve seen of a person half alive and half not so much? What sense can you find in finding yourself still walking that line between the better you know you can be and that which you don’t want to reach for anymore?

What reason or rationale are we find in that way of life in which we’ve died the death of a million concessions?

And what answer then can we find to offer unto He who’s both seen them all and knows why we’ve chosen to never see them ourselves?

Hence the silence.

And yes, I mean that of death as, let’s be honest, that’s seemingly the only time in life that most us seem all that willing to try it. For around here life is violent, this daily fighting to make sure we’re heard but that often only in our talking over others as if both they and whatever they have to say isn’t worth the trouble it might cause in our maybe happening to hear that hint of something we don’t like as it cuts too much like the knife that is the truth that we all live as if silence can overturn.

It can’t.

Our being so insistent upon keeping the truth at a distance as designed inside this endless stream of the things we say, it doesn’t make the truth go away. It rather only keeps us from going the Truth’s way. And friends, as God doesn’t change, neither then is anything different in regard to Christ being the both as has become indeed the Life as well.

He is the trinity of such hopeful things: Way, Truth, Life.

And what’s that one thing He did that we so seldom try in our own?

He stole away into a quiet place where it could finally be just Him and Heaven.

Yes, Christ sought the silence, even through violence such as that of the cross. Why? Maybe because He knew it was just too hard to hear around here. Too much noise. Too many making it thinking it their solace and safety, maybe their very salvation even. Indeed, just too many doing and saying and thinking too many things that have so little to do with life that they’ll eventually find nothing left to talk about when this life is over and their words have run out.

Talked about that a while back, that idea that asks whether or not we’d use our words differently should we ever agree they, just like our days, are only running thin.

Alas it seems as if still we live as if that slip isn’t coming at all.

But that rather we’re all in no danger of such a fall into that place carved like a grave in which we’ve nothing left to say as life there just isn’t lived like the life we’ve gotten used to living the way we really aren’t anymore.

No, we’ve not been alive in years, and we just use all the noise to keep us unaware of it.

Because death is silent as it finds us finally beyond our ability to think life is won within the wisdom in which we think we speak what are every word that leaves our lips. Yes, we all live as if we know everything right down to always what needs to be said. And yet we so seldom say anything of our sin. We rarely speak of the mistakes we make. We don’t mention the misplaced intention that led us to make them. And we definitely don’t have much to say in regard to He who is the Way that came to say what needed to be said so as to save us from thinking our words could save us.

They can’t.

Just too many of them. Which ones then would we pick if even they could? Too much to choose from to know the best ones to lean on. Too much uncertainty there inside that quantity of a life spoken outside of quality. So much risk in our again making the pick as to how to say what we hope will say what we need said. And even then, how can we know what we need to say when all this way that is our own we’ve only owned so many messages that the mind’s all but muddied itself?

Indeed, I often find my mind is just a scramble of so many thoughts I never made the time to think. All because I knew then that I was scared to think about them because of the drastic changes they’d likely make in a life in which I dearly dreaded having to change.

Because all along I’ve liked it this way. I’ve been comfortable being me. I’ve even, at times, felt who I was was so amazing that others needed to like me and applaud me and laud me with the laundry of their laugher and love washing over me. Because I, like you, have known that life in which life was only about me and whatever I’d made of whatever it was.

Don’t quite know what to make it now though.

For today I look back on a life spent with always something to speak but never really all that much to say. And that’s the danger defined in the distance between where we are and our fear of being made different. It’s something learned only in the silence. For such is the only place in which we’re finally forced to face ourselves and there and then come to realize the razor-line we’ve been walking all this time between life and death.

And just how many times we’ve crossed it not knowing we had.

All because we’ve created a way for death to be louder than life was ever meant to be. For every person should be slow to anger, slow to speak. Two ears, one mouth, as if to say that we should listen twice as much as we talk. But no, rather this breed of death we’ve chose has left us with that equation all out of balance. For anymore we all but speak and really never listen. It’s not even a 2:1 sort of thing anymore. It’s all and none.

Nothing but noise trying still to keep silent the voice that keeps trying to help us hear what nobody wants to down here.

And that is that we’re dying in sins so deep that you’d think we’d have felt the sting awaiting at the bottom by now. But no. No, instead we just keep going as if we’re still not knowing that we’re doing so much so wrong that it cost the very Son of Heaven His life. You’d never know anything of such a story in the way we’ve chosen to keep living ours.

Never know anything of the reason why nor the outcome it means for us all either.

Because it’s a promise won in the silence in which we welcome the violence that demands the loss of life in order for us to finally find the kind of living we should have lived loving. That of meekness and humility, hope in the possibilities opened unto us when we finally stop insisting that everyone else keep listening to all we have to say as if we’re the ones who know the way.

Friends, we don’t even know what to say should we get there to wherever this way goes.

And that’s our own!

We don’t even know always what to say in a life that’s so gone our way that everything in life has become all about what we like!

What makes us think we’re ready then to walk away from it all?

See, that’s the problem that’s meant to be solved in the silence of our dying to ourselves and the life we’d lived unto the same. It’s that singular place in which every bit of all we’d been, become and believed is finally able to be seen and heard for what it was. And where we can finally sift through the wreckage trying to find some sort of answer as for what we did with our lives.

And no, as even His Word says, we’ll not be heard just because of the sheer number of our words. Why? Because God’s clearly not a numbers guy. After all, He’s the One who left the 99 to track down one!

Who does that?

Well, we haven’t! In fact the only thing that we’ve left the majority of looking for only one more is our sins. We’ve left our every past mistake sitting quietly behind us as if they have nothing of value to offer us. All while we go on ahead down that same exact line in which we’ve been living and losing this life to the making of more mistakes and more mistakes and mistakes some more.

All of which, or at least most of which those from the past could have helped us with.

But no, rather than accepting the many sinful deaths we’ve known, we instead live still as if we’ve known nothing of them simply because the little they’d give us to talk about. All because we like talking about how great we are, not how perfect we are at getting things wrong.

And we do have an immaculate record of ruined opportunities to do better than we did!

But I suppose that’s why we hate the silence. It’s simply because when we’re left all alone with just who we’ve become, we know that we’ll find only the image of so much we never wanted to be.

And that’s a hard thing.

But friends, that’s why Jesus did what He did! It was to off of us lift the weight of our every wrong so that we could be set free to do the better we never did. And He asks us to share in His death to that sinful way of life so that, in the silence strewn in between where we’ve been and where He’s gone, we can finally come to understand where it’s all gone so wrong and what we need to do to set things straight.

Not that it’s on us to think we can. But because it is on us to admit and believe that He did.

That is where our salvation lies. It’s in the life and death and new life of Jesus Christ and our believing in our hearts and confessing with our mouths that He is Lord of Lords, Kings of Kings and Savior of us.

But friend, we can only learn of this inside that silence that is the death of us.

Just don’t expect any help from this noisy world to get you there as, well, it’s just the last place any of us want to go.

Which only proves that it’s not what we think we know that means the most but rather that what we don’t know yet is what can help us to finally become all we’ve never been.

Such as alive.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold