Day 3879 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

1 Peter 2:11 NIV

Something’s off

That’s a feeling I’ve had inside far too many thoughts I’ve had inside way too many times I’ve held as if time might mean more if I could just figure out what it was and why. And yet try as I did and might still try I’ve never really managed to figure out much of what the what was and even less of the why. Why? Because in order to see such a simple shifting we have to at first have a solid building as built upon something itself solid enough to offer unto us that way by which to measure the lean.

Alas, none of us can really have that with this sand we’ve sought.

Yet we’ve bought the sands we’ve sought because we thought that the comfort they offered, quite cloud-like when compared to the firmness of bedrock, was more conducive to the sort of lives productive that we assumed we should pursue. And we’ve come into such an agreement unto these pursuits so common because, well, that adds an even more pillowy softness to our commitment to what is a contentment in the content of the current.

And having each become so aware of the numb that is the dumb that has become who we’ve become, well, it doesn’t take much effort or imagination to see that we might really need as much cushion as we can either consume or be consumed by.

Why?

Because trying to force ourselves to fit where we can’t will lead to one of two breaking points. We will eventually either break apart trying to soften the edges that make us who we are so as to fit where we don’t or we’ll break away from such trying to remain a part of what we’ll finally come to see is the same we where we should have never seen such a necessity of our fitting.

Either way it’s gonna hurt.

Guess the question just boils down to how bad and how long.

And yet this is where we tend to get tripped up because we almost instinctively seek the path of everything from least resistance to least change and persistence. Because, well, but persistence and resistance are really hard as they ask a lot of what is an enduring of things we’d rather never experience at all. In fact, they all but ask the same kind of effort in what is aimed in two opposing directions as one demands that we continue chasing what we’ve come to believe is worth the changing whereas the other asks equally that we continue fleeing from and fighting against that which asks that we give up.

We have to simultaneously resist our human urges to quit trying what’s hard while also remaining so committed to seeing it through that we continue to persistently pursue the better that can only ever come when change is both chosen and then never again unchosen.

Indeed, change becomes something of a habit in that once we find the beauty it can bring, we’ll simply always wonder what other better might come if we changed just a little more and chased it just a little further.

Problem then is that as soon as we start to see ourselves and surroundings as good enough to become acceptable, such change and the courage to chase it are off the table. And that simply because we’ll slowly find that there’s nothing left for which we feel the need to resist. And well, seeing as how persistence and resistance are kind of something of a team that works always best in tandem, we’re likely to struggle with either whenever the other is rendered basically unnecessary.

After all, if we feel at home and thus find nothing we’d like to change, well then what is there to either fight against or continue looking for?

No, such is sadly the story that many are living anymore. So many here have lost their courage to count themselves as the foreigners and exiles spoken both of and to in this verse here. Rather most have instead sought for so long so many ways to so enjoy the ways of what this world has become that they’ve become numb to the better they could be. In fact, I think it’s becoming quite clear to see that many see nothing to improve at all but that rather better is where they’ve so already arrived that their lives are the best they can be.

I know I’ve been there and still shamefully catch myself at times looking back on the good old days so fondly that I do as Ecclesiastes asks us not to. For yeah, I do find myself sometimes wondering why the past seemed better in so many ways than the present with which we’re daily presented. Growing up life felt simpler, safer, more sensible and even secure. These days it’s as if we awake unto a new catastrophe almost every day.

And yet we’ve become so convinced that this is home and we thus belong here that we’ve settled into searching for only ways to convince ourselves that we like it this way.

But it seems all we ever manage to find is this ongoing need to blame someone else for life being so broken on this side of what is our best life as drawn behind closed doors and similar minds.

For surely it shouldn’t be this way seeing as how everyone is undoubtedly seeking to live their best life too. I mean, how could there be so much that just feels so wrong if we’re all united in this idea of having already arrived at the very pinnacle of a life’s potential? After all, if each of us are living as perfectly as we can so clearly so assume, well then why is so much going so badly all the time? Sure, it’s obviously always everyone else’s fault as we’ve definitely never any of our own.

Still though, something just doesn’t seem to add up.

Something just seems off.

Might it be that we’ve lost not only our sense of resistance but also then that of persistence?

For the truth is that in what’s so clearly become a life in which so many feel such a lack of need to fight for anything better anymore, you know, having already become their very best selves living their very best lives, the same many thus have nothing more to look for as well as nothing to really resist. And that simply because of both the lack of humility that has the many seeing no possible way for them to improve in any way whatsoever and also the often corresponding presence of hubris that leaves those lacking humility unable to see the danger they’re in.

And indeed, everyone lives as if they have life so figured out and finalized that nothing could ever happen that would cost them anything. At least not by their own hands.

Yet it’s those same hands which anymore neither reach for anything that’s in any way any more nor work to keep at a distance what’s rather been so allowed in that it’s all but become us. And yes, I’m talking about the way of the world that works in a way that seeks to instill our running away from everything bettered in every possible way by both teaching us to believe in this lie that says our own lives are going just fine and that we’re so good at being that good that nothing bad can happen.

Thus we have nothing to fight against or flee from. Nothing to fight for nor run toward.

Rather we’re all just settled upon seeing ourselves not as strangers, not as aliens, not as out of this world beings that cannot wait to be out of this world again. No, instead we see ourselves as belonging here. We see our lives as able to fit in here. We think of ourselves as those able to accomplish so much of what matters to so many around us that we can become these shining examples of the greatest of all possible potential as pursued and prioritized by so many against whom we’re competing for what are your basic bragging rights.

That’s right, we’re living this life in this land to be so much like this land that we too have only lost all cognizance of the fact that we’re both promised to all be leaving and that that means we might not really belong here after all.

Because, after all, who in their right mind would seek to make themselves feel at home in what is a place that is neither permanent nor peaceful? Who would seek to assume they belong where the only thing that most believe about better is that it only existed in the past and that they’re thus so far past it that they needn’t worry about it anymore? Who would ever agree to anything being the best it can be when we can clearly still see that clock still ticking and feel both our lungs still filling and our hearts still beating?

Can we truly achieve this commonly perceived arrival at the very best of our personal potential with so much time left on the clock?

Can we afford to do so much giving up on then trying to do and be even better considering how little time we have left in which to look?

Resist and persist.

Flee both from and for.

Foreigners and exiles.

Alas such thinking has been mostly relegated to only being thought by those who’ve not so romanticized the idea as to assume it nothing more than another fairy tale told either for or by those so cold, tired and alone that they’ve no reason not to believe in something better. It’s just that so few of us have that weariness within us anymore thanks to our having allowed our childlike faith to grow up into an adultlike doubt. For indeed, anymore we needn’t believe in such things as our ability to fly as planes get us to the skies far faster and we can just sit down inside them eating peanuts and watching reruns rather than flapping cardboard wings like weirdos as the world watches on laughing at our refusal to settle for buying the easier ticket.

Indeed, we’ve all just settled for heaping up a lifetime supply of tickets to nowhere.

But I guess that makes sense when you’ve become of the mind convinced that there’s just nowhere better to be, nothing more to see, no room left to grow and nothing of life left to know.

No, we’ve got it all figured out. We’re all so good at living this life that we’ve already crossed the finish line and just live to pass the time until the time runs out. Nothing left but to just enjoy our retirement from all we used to try for or fight against. No, just come what may, we’ll be okay because, well, that’s what we’re best at being.

We are masters at being okay and doing the same.

Okay.

It’s all okay.

It’s just okay.

But friends, since when was okay the place we sought to be or the life we wanted to live? What even is okay? What is good enough? Where is far enough? What is so better enough that it can do no better? Is this truly our best? And if it is, as so many seem to assume it must be, then why does something just still feel off? I mean, even setting aside the most glaring examples of something not being right either in or with this life, examples like murder and hatred and racism and poverty and prostitution and the institution of pornography and a similar sexual perversion being taught in the classroom, I think we could all agree that something just ain’t right.

For where’s the peace? Where’s the joy? Where’s the hope or the lack of healing or the sorrow ending and shame and mourning doing the same? Where’s the lasting comfort of knowing that there will never be another war fought, another bad dream, another scraped knee, another rough day? Where’s the confidence in knowing that we’ll never again know of any kind of heartbreak or hardship? Where’s the lack of fear and the feeling of unending safety and security? Where are the unlocked doors and open arms? Where are the smiles we’ve not seen in a while? Where’s the love for our neighbors and their acknowledgement of us?

Where’s the contentment that has achieved for us a rest that knows nothing of want, nothing of desire, nothing of emptiness, nothing of the lies of the Liar?

Friends, where’s the life in this life we’re living as if we’re truly meant to keep on living as if this world is our home and we thus belong where we are? Maybe it’s just me but I ain’t seeing it. And make no mistake, I’ve tried! I’ve given decades to doing the things that this place has convinced us all to try in search for that life that we’re told is waiting just beyond college degrees and 2.5 kids. I’ve bled money trying to buy all the things I wanted in my life thinking that my having more would make my life feel the same. I have done everything I could think of, and plenty I never should have thought of, trying to find some way to make this place feel like home.

But still I sit here consumed by this realization that something is just off.

And well, I think it’s so simple that we should be as embarrassed as we’ve ever been once we realize it.

It’s that we’re the proverbial square peg and this world is all but even missing the round hole. We’re fighting an impossible battle in what is an approach to life in which we daily die trying to fill the void inside with things and theories that are themselves nothing but empty. Because that’s what sin is! Sin is the verifiable death of every better choice we could have chosen. It’s the missing of every single opportunity to make the most out of an opportunity as can only ever be done when an opportunity is never let pass.

We’ve let so many chances and changes pass us by in this life!

And why? Because we’re convinced that we’ve already passed the finish line!

We think we’ve already arrived at our best. We live as if we’re just certain that we both belong here and that we’ve become then so good at living the way of life here that this land wants us to live here that we can’t fail. And yet all we have to point to are all the things we’ve bought in an attempt to substantiate that belief via something of the common substances we lean on to make it look like we know what we’re doing.

Friends, how can we know what we’re doing when all we’re doing is the very same nothing that this world has convinced us is okay to do?

And yet even more, how can we know what we’re doing when we’re still living like we either can or could or even perhaps still should try so hard to fit inside what remains a life as is lived in a place that we’re not staying?

Indeed, why continue to allow into our lives, eyes, minds so much of this world and its lies when we’re all promised to leave?

Don’t we see the simplicity?

We are all foreigners here! We’re exiles who are far from home and can only grow again close to it when we admit that this world isn’t it. We are not meant to ever feel as if we should belong here in this place or its way of life. Granted, seeing so very many live their lives for the very same things really does make it seem as though such are the very things we should be living for.

But friends, contrary to common understanding, yes, they all can be wrong!

We’ve all been wrong. In fact, that’s all we’re actually best at! We are masters at creating disasters, and each of them designed inside the very same life that we’ve spent so much time assuming we were living just right. How is that possible? That we can make mistakes and yet never mess up?

No, that’s the finish line that we’ve crossed. But it’s by no means the one we assumed would find us having found the fullness of life’s every potential. Rather we’ve crossed the line in which we’ve lost our mind to actually thinking that we might could really belong here.

Where is here?

Sure, this world is all any of us have ever known and the lives we’ve lived within it are the only ones we’ve ever lived yet.

So what?

Just because what is happens to still remain what was, and thus we find easily a simplicity in that that we feel as though we can trust to continue repeating, that doesn’t mean we have to settle for it. Doesn’t mean we have to accept it. Doesn’t mean we have to do as everyone else is trying, and failing, and fight to make the best of it. What is there to make the best of when all we continue to find is the less of better that every doubt and denial seeks to disbelieve is there?

Friends, I’m tired of my such unbeliefs. I’m sick of my many settlings. I am so completely done with my refusal to come undone simply because I’m over feeling like something’s off in what I claim to know is a life that isn’t mine to keep anyway.

Why continue trying so hard to make it go my way?

Why keep on living as if I might feel at home here someday?

I haven’t felt what a home should feel like in regard to this world in, well, ever.

No, the closest I feel to anything that even slightly resembles the peace and joy that a home should offer is when I write the posts and think these thoughts and pray my prayers and spend time with my family who are likewise always seeking for something better. I only feel alive when I’m trying to grow. But that’s just it, how can we grow or take off on that journey home when we’re convinced we’ve already arrived at the best possible outcomes of both?

Friends, my point is that we’ll never get anywhere until we come to see that where we are is where we don’t belong.

After all, nobody wants to leave home behind. But if we can come to see that this world isn’t our home and thus its normal way of life not the way we should settle for living our own, well then we probably won’t mind finally setting out to see what more we can find.

Nor then likely feeling as though we don’t belong.

In fact, we might just get so far gone that that feeling only makes us feel as if we’re closer to home.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold