Day 3917 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

1 Corinthians 5:7 NIV

With the old

Rather than our getting to the point in this journey in which we each would elate to get both rid and thus away from all of such things we’ve rather sadly remained only with the things of old. And I believe that this is because it’s just simply what we’ve been told is what we’re supposed to do by those many toward whom we’ve lived to look in order to help if not all but allow them alone to determine what’s best for us all while we live as if we know too what’s best for us.

A really strange setup to be sure.

For despite how we all live as if we know what our best life is and just how close we either are or could theoretically be before too long, it seems instead that all we see is a people who don’t understand why so much is still going so wrong with still somehow this lasting ability to believe it’ll all still get better without our ever seeking ourselves the same. No, we just assume that things will change even though we all all but refuse to imagine ourselves changed.

But then again, we’ve never been the problem have we?

No, every issue currently being faced by this human race is a result of the failures and folly of those we’re following toward the collective better that they’ve convinced us they know how to find. Not that they’ve found it as we can all most definitely feel that we’ve not. But still, there’s just this tremendous ease in doing never any new things and that alongside our common estimation that something better will somehow come of it.

Insanity thus personified in what are, estimated roughly (obviously), about 8.2 billion different ways. For such is the number of us and thus too the number of the paths we walk and the choices we each make atop them. But then what I think we’re starting to find is that 8.2 billion people living 8.2 billion different lives each making within them 8.2 billion decisions amounts to only a confusion that’s growing exponentially while we’re not really growing at all.

Simply because nearly our every individual decision is largely made to just keep on doing as we’ve always done, seeing then no insanity in the doing of such. And that despite how we can all so clearly realize with our very own eyes that witness all the stinking time just how chaotic and confused this life has become, one that we don’t even live as if we’ll lose.

And I truly contend that whenever such a thought is so widely bought, well, it can only begin what’s already proven a vastly continued calamity the likes of which none of us are walking away from.

Why?

Because when we resolve to do the same bunch of nothing new that everyone else around us is so excited to continue, then everything that’s already been is all we can ever hope to become.

For rather than our walking away from what once was and now is seen as not good enough, we seem a people who ache to make that which isn’t good at all seem more than passingly okay. And why is that? Because, again, it simply asks so little that we know that we can both give it then the same and also expect the same in regard to the amount of risk we’re likely to face. For when you bet little, sure, you could still win something, but in the event that you don’t, well you’re not out all that much.

And to a people who’ve grown so fat, lazy, lustful and lost, the path which offers the least risk of any loss seems always the best one to take.

Simply because we’re all clearly more apt to agree to find some way to enjoy that close-enough to perfect blend of little risk and perhaps some sort of redeemable reward than we are to welcome an award so assured, and so amazing at that, that it deserves to ask that we risk all but everything we have in order to even have the chance at our having it.

That’s why so few will be found upon the road to Heaven.

It’s because the rest are still laden with the leaven of a life they’re just not interested in leaving. And, as we talk about quite often in these daily dives into the directives divine, that is for more than a great many reasons. But the lot of them all combine into this line in which we live in which we let someone else always lead the way. Which, ironically is all that Jesus is asking we allow Him to do. But, it’s just that we struggle mightily with that opportunity because His leading only leads away from both what we know and where all we still hope to go.

Indeed, we’ve all still plans aplenty for this life lived in sadly the same. And many of said plans are made to continue enjoying the plenty we’ve already collected or accomplished or sampled and there further assumed would be even better would we had a little more of that which already is. Yes, we love that which already is as it’s such a sure thing that we know we risk nothing in our search to settle for it. And that because we’ve already found it.

And so what do we have to lose by going ahead only for more of what we already know is already there?

And why then welcome the risk of such a sure bet within His asking to rid ourselves of the yeast that was for the hope that’s not yet?

No, we want promises. We want guarantees. We want only those things that we know without question are to be there when we want them presented. And yet it’s within this that we’ve only come about to present ourselves with what remains a problem so perfectly deadly that He who came to lead the way, to be the Way toward what is a better promise had to die Himself in order to do so.

That’s the Passover Lamb mentioned here.

It is He who is called the Christ who came to this earth with the express intent to lay down His life in the express request that we do the same as we see in Him a willingness to literally put His life on the line in order for us to have the hope at the something more we’ve never been, and something better even then. That is what Heaven is. It’s a promise so unlike every ounce of the little good that we see or feel while we’re here. It’s better. It’s bigger. It’s brighter and impossibly more beautiful.

That idea hit me as I drove home just yesterday after a nice afternoon spent doing what I enjoy.

Just bouncing down the road I saw all these incredible fields freshly mown with bales of hay basking in the warmth of the sun. An amazing mix of browns and tans and the sky so blue above. It was just amazing and it all caught me so unready for such a deep thought on a fairly normal Wednesday.

Never imagined I’d see something so beautiful only to follow it with praying about how I can’t wait to leave it because I know in my heart that Heaven’s to be even better.

And then I wake up today as the neighbor’s yapping dogs bark away risking my family’s rest and getting in my head making this post harder to write than normal despite how early I get up every day trying anything I possibly can to do this work as best as I possibly might.

And it’s this ongoing walking through worlds colliding that has me so aware of both what’s to come but that it isn’t here that has me angry to do whatever it takes to make sure that I and everyone I might be so able to help are ready to go whenever He comes and says we can.

It’s a good anger, a frustrated resolve to face anything and fight through the same if that’s what it takes to reach such a hope.

But it’s thoughts like that that make no sense to those who know nothing but that which is and a fear felt of their one day maybe losing it all. I cannot imagine so loving the old leaven that you can’t bring yourself to leave it behind, especially seeing as how such is exactly what we’re all promised to do. And that before long. And that because time here runs faster than we dare realize, a fact measured in just how distracted we are and distractable we’ll likely see many remain.

It’s all because we’re all afraid. Thankfully we’re afraid of different things which help us to hopefully help one another in different ways. But alas, we’re sadly mostly still a people who like to pretend we fear nothing and have oddly enough the same we’re thus willing to risk on our finding of what is truly better than best. No, we’ll happily settle for whatever we think our best to be. Could it be bettered? Maybe. Will we ever find out? Maybe not.

Why?

Because, again, the finding of something more demands the risk of the less that already was. But how can you ever agree to risk that which already is when you’re of the mind that within this life you’re supposed to find an excited agreement upon quantity rather than a humble contentment with quality? How can we undertake the journey toward better when all we’ve come to want is more? Does having more of what’s better make it better?

Has it worked for all the less we’ve had instead already?

And considering how we all seem to know that what we’ve had already isn’t really able to measure up to the more we want still, why then do we still live as if having more of whatever already is will be able to prove all that it already hasn’t? Is that not insanity? To do always only one thing and expect different things in different measures along the way? How can anything new ever come from doing only the old things repeatedly? How can we find better whenever we resolve to only do what we alone think is best?

Friends, we’ve each had more than a few things we thought would be the best there could be. Were they? Of all the plans we’ve made and the lives they’ve led us to live, did any of them find us to that place in which we felt peace? Of all the things we’ve owned and the joy they may have brought, did they prove we can buy a life’s true purpose? Of the many things we still want and the more plans we’re willing to make to get them, will they prove what all their counterparts haven’t?

Will human religion help us to know God or just more rules? Will confining worship to three songs sung before a 30 minute speech only on Sunday morning open us unto communion with Christ? Will continuing in all our well-trod ways help us to find our share of His having come to do new things? Will that tried and true leaven of the Pharisees help us to live as if we’re willing to admit that we might not always know all the right things to do?

It is impossible for a man to learn what he thinks he knows.

And thus it’s impossible for us to learn of Christ when we think we know the way of life.

But what do we know? Well, a lot in all reality. But of alas only this reality. For we know of such things as football’s rules and this weekend’s lineup of games. We know what they say the weather will be like today, and next week thanks to the ten-day forecast. We know that McDonald’s will still be there to throw our lunch through our car’s window as we rush on through the rest of our day. We know that we have bills to pay. We know that Thanksgiving is just around the corner.

We don’t know the family around the corner who may not be able to afford our usual feast.

We don’t know the feast unto which we’ve been so lovingly invited, or least we often don’t live like we do. We don’t know the Bread of which we’re to partake nor the Wine of remembrance that our words and deeds clearly say we seldom remember. We don’t know the location of Heaven as we can’t see it from here. We don’t know the population of the place as still we think that we’ll all get there. We don’t know the narrowness of the gates as we live still so wide that we’ll have a whole life to leave behind.

We don’t know how to start cutting away what all He said can’t come. We don’t know how to say that we don’t know how. We don’t seem all that afraid of that which we so clearly don’t know.

Because we do know that which is now as that which is promised best.

And thus we live for the mundanity of moments in which nothing new is ever chosen simply because such a choice isn’t asked by a voice we know.

It’s asked by He we don’t.

And it’s fair to say we don’t know He who is the Way because we often don’t seem as if we know how to walk the way He did. For His path is one still paved in sacrifice. In surrender. In the severity of seeing sin for what it is and what that wins. In the humility to meet such a demand head on and welcome then the death we all deserve. In the doing what none would desire to do due to a desire that none would die. In the dying to what most are still living for, and that despite His loss of life.

Because we sacrifice little in our own. Rather we anymore tout this arrogance in which we boast that we’ll never surrender, never back down. We see not only no severity to sin but rather a clear denial of the wage it wins. We hold nothing of humility then as we face not the honesty that would help us see the trouble we’re in. We die to nothing and walk away from the same, doing every day the same old things.

All still expecting better to come from it somehow.

Friends, better doesn’t just come around. Better is a gamble in which the payout is either that which is eventually the undeniable best or the utter loss of everything we had to risk in order to hope toward that better being best. And we’re just adverse to the risk. And sure, I guess that makes sense. For indeed, what we have and all we see is quite clearly guaranteed.

But is it what you want?

Are you who you want to be? Is the life you’re living the one you’d be willing to die for? Or is life still only about living to you?

See, I think the point is that everything deserves we give it something. That’s something I’ve learned in everything from starting a business to losing a bunch of weight to turning a night owl into an early bird against his will so that I could write these posts in a life that’s busier now than it was. Everything deserves we give it something.

It could be our time. Our efforts. Our energy. Our hope. Our trust. But we must give something up if we’re to have something else, something more.

And that’s exactly what the cross tells us.

That we have to let go of the sinful life we’ve all known if we’re find our share of that life that is thus free from the death that all such sinfulness so fully deserves. We have to come away from the way we’ve become known for having lived. We have to stop living in sin if we’re to truly hope of finding life in the Son. Yes, we have to be willing to let go of what we know if we’re to grow in the more we don’t.

But that’s a personal decision, isn’t it? Something that everyone has to decide for themselves. But that’s now part of the problem because, well, when’s the last time you truly made a decision on your own without any outside influence or expectation being allowed to remain involved? It’s probably been quite some time thanks to this world we live to walk behind so filled with influencers and social media always offering to make our choices and have our ideas for us.

Kind of starting to see the point and why we too might need to do some new things?

Friends, I fully understand the vast simplicity in doing the things we’ve always done the ways in which we’ve always done them. It’s inarguably easy to do so. But if all we ever do is all we’ve already done, then how can ever hope to become anything more than what we’ve already been?

It just doesn’t work like that.

No, if we want something better than all of whatever this is that already is, whatever we all already are, we have to do something new. We have to do something different. As this passage in particular posits, we’ve to rid ourselves of such things as boasting, malice and other such wickedness if we’re to find a life of humility, of kindness, or righteousness. Because the former have no friendships with the latter.

And sure, they do say that Christ is a friend to sinners. Even invited them, invites us still to dinner. But the difference is that He doesn’t seek to earn our favor nor learn our ways. Rather He seeks to inspire us to seek His favor so deeply that we ache to emulate His ways.

But we cannot do such a thing if we only do what we already know to. No, as He who is the Lamb came to do something new and make all things the same, so too then must we do new things if we’re to be found as those made new in and by all He came to do.

And yes, that means to cost us our lives. But friends, the point is that our lives were never our lives at all. Rather these breaths we breathe are but gifts given on loan to a people who then owe everything they are back to He from whom it came.

And yes, He is coming to collect that which is His and will take it back from whomever refuses to give it willingly. But He’s promised to give it forever to those who have humbled unto the point of sharing in His kind of sacrifice and surrender.

Again, the choice is ours, at least for now. But just know that He made such a big deal out of His doing a new thing for a reason. Might just be that He was excited to try something different. But it might also be that He came to inspire us to start trying something else.

Reckon we’ll find out soon enough upon that day when the now is then deemed old and we’re measured by just how much of it remains.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold