Day 3933 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Philippians 3:11 NIV

Only the lost

Can be found. Only the broken can be made whole. Only the used can be made new. Only the hurting can experience healing. Only the forgotten can be remembered once more. Only the shattered can be put back together. Only the weathered have the strength to carry on. Only those carrying burdens can be freed from under their weight. Only those who wait will know if it was worth it or not. Only those with such patience can see the fullness of a promise.

And only a promise can forgive.

Such as that of Him who calls us to forgive others so that we too can know the gravity of grace given by our at first giving it away.

Same said of life.

For that is the entire purpose of this thing, this journey, this jading jaunt through hollowed haunts hunting the hope that offers only a rope that leads still onward into that great dark abyss that is the past we’ve lived in the mistakes we made of a life we lost thinking we’d found the very best way to do what we still do not know how. No, there is so little of life we know how to live. So many we’ve still left to forgive. So many mistakes we’ve even yet to make.

Making us perhaps chief amongst those in need of forgiveness, and that both our own and even more that found in another. And what’s strange, a right struggle it seems, is that we can all at least venture toward that line in life in which we can finally find that forgiveness is perhaps the greatest gift we can ever give, and too that we do really need to if we’re to be forgiven as well, but well, problem is we know right where to find it.

And that frightens. For we’re a people used to looking for what we can never manage to track down. We’ve long lived for this ideal life that is still lost somewhere outside these little shelters we’ve made here in the middle. We’ve wanted so badly for some degree of happy but only ever manage to know that still somewhat solemn kind, and that often mixed with sorrow. Yes, we want to be made whole but know that do so demands we admit how empty we are.

But to do that would ask that we also agree that it was us who chose to empty what was a life that was thus once full of something.

A substance I shamefully admit I only sometimes remember, and that only faintly.

Because it was only way back at the beginning of us that such a better was made. Each of us have lost more than we know along this way called our own. We’ve broken almost all we’ve tried to hold, sold just as much and lost even more. But the problem for us has never once been the breaking, the beating, the losing, the stealing. No, rather our greatest adversary has always been the humility that would allow us to see more fully all we’ve been doing in what’s now long been a life not alive at all.

Indeed, I don’t remember the last time I felt alive. For to be honest, every time I open my eyes I seem only to find one more mistake made that I somehow didn’t see in that moment in which I made it as revealed to me in hindsight for the error I likely didn’t want to imagine it would be. Yes, hindsight and me have what’s a long-standing love/hate relationship. For it loves to tell me how wrong I’ve been and, like you, I too hate hearing about it as much as I know I need to.

And I do know I need to because I know if not I’ll still do as I’ve always done, sinking deeper away from the Son into a life lived on this side of the setting sun assuming here something equal to what my ego has never allowed me to see in Him.

Yet these days I only find myself wondering what He still sees in me.

For again, I see mostly only the mistakes I make, and that alongside those many I’d made before in what’s become a past so bruised and bloody that I daren’t offer myself the forgiveness I know I need. I don’t know how. Because I’m terrified that if I do forgive myself for the mistakes I’ve made, knowing me, I’d only take that as a license to do it all again. I’d only see it as a loophole of sorts, some extradition policy written by my ego for my arrogance to get out of any consequence I’d likely find more reason to find myself into.

Yes, I am dreadful of forgiveness, at least the selfish version as, well, I know that my selfish version would only use it against me again.

So what then? Am I, are we just destined to carry with us the weight of past mistakes and those presently made? Are we all just doomed to suffer inside this gloom of a journey spent willingly into the dark, there both lost due to the lack of sight and yet with that finding delight as we think it helps us hide? Indeed, what all are we hiding that would be better off forgiven? What forgiveness do we not ask for because we know we don’t deserve it?

What forgiveness can’t we ask for because we still think we don’t need it?

And what deaths then remain alive in us because we’ve yet to lose the pride which boasts of always a job well done in a life not well lived? How much better could life be could we see that He did come to forgive us, yes, but that this gift is one deserving some evidence that we’ve got it? What greater evidence might we offer than that of hearts shattered over lives lived the same, both of which offer us only more chances to see His forgiveness?

And maybe even find our own.

Indeed, what kind of life could we find had we found long before now some way to say no thanks to what’s long been that most friendly of enemy known as our way?

I think about this all the time these days.

And yet I only find I’ve no idea as it’s just a life I’ve never lived and thus can know nothing about. At least, that is, until it dies, this one I’ve been living instead. For that’s the gravity of this journey called life, that we can only live one at a time. Granted, some folks do all they can to live two, maybe even three perhaps if they’ve the time and both the ability to remember all the lies and manage to care so little about everyone who’s to be impacted.

But even then, there really is no such thing as a double life, it’s just a single-wide lived far too open and that because the ego inside seeks to find in life as much as one life can hold. But what can life hold when the life we all know is that kind spent trying to have all that has no life its own? Have we found anything of life in our looking for life in this life? Or have not our many mistakes only found for us more of those reasons we think we need to hide in this life all we’ve done in this life, to this life, with this life?

Friends, what have we done to this life that we’ve become of the mind that has us thinking that it’s better to never ask for forgiveness than admit we need it from He who so freely gives us?

What are we running from?

If not the loss of everything?

See, that’s the hard side of salvation. It’s not the saving but rather those who need it admitting they do. It isn’t the rescue as performed by those trained to help but rather those lost inside a life spent behind an ego that can never agree it’s mostly helpless. And well, that’s all of us! We all loathe having to admit we need some help, could use a hand, have all but handed our lives over to the grave having lived this long in sin, the same grave that acts now as the place to place all that’s been lost, broken, confused.

The same place He asks us to leave all our fear and doubt and the many denials they both design inside. The place He calls us into so that in Him we can share in what’s the laying down of a life lived winning the wage of sin, which is still death last time I checked. And that because His Word doesn’t change.

Which is why we need to if we’re ever to live again.

Because friends, I don’t care how long we’ve been here, how many things we’ve done, trophies we’ve won, trials we’ve endured or trips we’ve taken in probably the wrong direction. None of us can know anything of life until we admit that we’ve so utterly botched our one chance to live one that we turn to the Son and ask of Him the forgiveness that our every mistake knows it needs.

How’s that for a thing?

That it’s our mistakes that know better than we do just how much forgiveness we need? And that because they know themselves to be mistakes whereas we still think them “learning opportunities”.

Yes, we’ve come up with so many delightful little lies through which we strive to live this life, each one told so we never have to lay it down and admit we can’t get it right. Simply because we don’t want to. We don’t want to do it right. We don’t want to learn from our mistakes. We don’t want to admit we ever made one!

But what share have we then in the Son who came to prove we have?

And if we have no such share in He who came to pay the debt that our every error owes, then of what share can we expect to find when we’re eventually found knelt before what’s by then a God we never knew, and that simply because of the one choice we all know so well to make that it’s the one we’re all known by?

Friends, we are sinners, and as sin wins the wage of death, we are dead!

What then are we fighting so hard to keep hold of in this life lived as but dead men barely walking?

The barely part because we honestly seem to have all but given up trying at anything anymore!

Indeed, what are we trying for? More of what’s here? More of who we’ve been? More of the life we’ve lived?

What life?

What life is there to live when still lost in sin and thus earning more death? And well, as that is the life we’ve known, what then do we have to lose in coming to know the Son who came to set us free, and that so we could live with Him for all eternity?

Do we honestly not think that everlasting life is worth the laying down of the fallen aspects of the forsaken kind we’ve tried to live, and succeeded at that?

Or is it only because of our self-perceived success that we all but refuse to “attain to the resurrection from the dead”?

Yeah, I’m fairly certain that that’s the real issue. It’s that we’ve learned to think of this life as we’ve chosen to live it as the only right way to live it. And that because of the same pride that seeks only the safety of never admitting it has no idea what it’s doing. That’s basically the overall theme of our every single existence as lived in anything of pride, of arrogance, of ego, of whatever emotional retardation it takes to inspire in us a continued refusal of His salvation.

But friends, to attain is the exact opposite of what it is to refuse. To attain is to achieve, but to achieve is to try, and to try demands we admit we need to. But when all we know to do is to refuse, to reject, to never once agree to admit that our lives have become known for such a lack of effort, then a lack of movement is all we can continue to find.

And that which doesn’t move thus isn’t alive.

There is nothing that has life that doesn’t move. It’s kind of the one thing that gives it away!

When then will we give away those years spent never once moving on from what we’d done, who we’ve thus become?

We do know that what we do defines who we are, right? And that because that which pours out from the mouth or is done with the hand or found by our feet carrying us toward that place in which we seek that for which we’d longed to find, it’s all evidence of what we have inside. The mouth speaks that of which the heart is full. The hands reach for that which the heart desires. The feet follow only the paths planned by the heart toward wherever it thinks its desires are waiting to be found.

And thus, having spoken in lies, reached for the same, carried some along the way, followed a heart that remains deceitful above all things and never once dared to admit it might be deceiving us, thus we are deceived! Thus we are depraved! Thus we are deprived, and that my friends of life!

Because life does not exist inside a heart that didn’t create itself. Life is not the outcome of a mind that didn’t think itself into existence. Our existence is not the substance of our own doing.

Rather it’s our doing that has now cost us the continuation of our existence.

Yes, all of us are going to die one day.

Problem is our pride still seeks for a way to prove that promise mistaken, and our fear knows of every reason why.

It’s just that fear can’t save us. Pride won’t try. Our ego won’t allow us to admit that we’re hopeless without some help. And our arrogance refuses to see that we’ve been offered some.

And that only because it’s a help that calls from the grave.

And we’re afraid to go there because we think we know what waits.

But friends, don’t we understand that for Him to call from the tomb only means then that He’s still alive enough to call to us from within it?

What then are we worried about?

No phone rings without life on the other side. And thus His calling us to lay down a life, something He’s done Himself, it only proves that He knows the way to beat the grave!

We can’t say that. Our pride can’t say that. Our amazing ability to deny we’ve made enough mistakes to deserve to rot in that place obviously can’t say that.

So what then do we have to lose in trying that which we can’t do if we do it only by the blood of the Lamb and what becomes the word of our testimony as is given both against ourselves but that for our betterment?

I think that may be the greatest of impossibility for us to comprehend. I mean, yeah, water turning into wine, a few loafs feeding a few thousand, some dude walking on water and helping another do the same, at least for a couple steps, those are all amazing. The blind getting their sight and those long deaf finally being able to hear, those are incredible. All so amazing and so incredible that we widely agree them impossible.

But managing to obtain forgiveness by confessing all the things we’ve done that don’t deserve it, well, that makes it personal.

And well, when anything gets personal, we suddenly find plenty of reasons to doubt it.

All because we’re still convinced we have something we stand to lose in doing so.

In this case our innocence, or whatever measure of it we still think we have left.

Friends, we have none left. We left it behind a long time ago. We left it back with that better life we never got to know. We lost it in every mistake we made to say something we shouldn’t, to see something we shouldn’t, to want something we shouldn’t, to have all of this that we just don’t need and should have never wanted.

A fact proven in the presence of shame, of guilt, of regret.

And that in a life lived having met all the above far more than we’ll admit!

Why?

What do we stand to gain by fighting this hard to convince only ourselves that we’re doing okay at this?

What more do we stand to miss or misunderstand the longer we stand so impressed with ourselves?

Can we save ourselves?

Do any of us know the road to take to find our own way to Heaven?

Granted, some claim they’ve been there and come back, and maybe they have. But we haven’t. I haven’t. And thus, even if another has and now claims they know the way or some secret message they we’re given to give us, does this not demand from us something of belief?

And if then all of life that the hope of it being lived forever in that place so much better than we can in fact admit this one has in fact so sadly become is only found in our believing in something, why not start with the Son of Heaven who came down from the same to enter into that grave that we’re all so afraid of finding ourselves?

We’re going to find it, and that at a time that we likely will not know. Is that the kind of risk we’re this eager to take? Leaving every chance at freedom, at forgiveness, at mercy and healing and hope and joy and peace and everything else that only Christ is until the very last moment?

Or should we not lay down everything that has entangled, ensnared, obscured and left feared we who are a people so vastly lost that we think we’ve something to lose in letting go of what the grave promises we can’t keep?

Friends, the fact is that we’re all already attaining to something. We’re all living for something, longing for something, fighting for something. Why not life? Why not freedom from the weight we’ve carried? Why not the assurance that He’s for us a place saved in Heaven?

Why not that promise that we’ll be forgiven of every mistake we dare to admit we’ve made?

He can only forgive what we’re willing to, able to admit needs it.

And that because He knows that only the broken can be put back together. Only the hurting can experience the fullness of His healing. Only the hopeless can find themselves learning to hope again. Only the lost can be found again.

Only the dead can live again.

And that’s really good news for us.

But for only the lost.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold