Day 3935 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Romans 6:4 NIV

Through the glory

Such is where, and only where we’ll ever find this story of what is a soul exploring the entire limitlessness of the very existence of both God and thus that for which we were all created to live and now called to try for once. Yes, this Gospel of God’s grace gives us the place in which to begin this journey unto what is in every way a renewed story that’s been brought back from the very place where ours must now begin. And that’s because for life to ever exist, it must always be preceded by death.

In this case the death of us.

And in that case, well, we worry. We wonder. We wonder ourselves into such a worry that we only end up finding cause to wander from the journey altogether. Why? Because we don’t want to die! We don’t want to lose a life. Definitely don’t want to lose the life we’ve learned to live in what is a way we love to live the life we have, had, hope to have for long enough to have had a good life by the time we die. Indeed, dying is something reserved for the aged who’ve well experienced their every opportunity to experience more of this journey.

We’ve all then still plenty to taste and see but for ourselves, an undertaking we’re clearly well-fond of within this world so warm and welcoming. But welcoming of what seems the question none really stop to ask. In fact, we don’t even stop to wonder as to where we’re going, what we’re doing, what the both may have us becoming.

We’re just going.

And that wherever the winds of want, worry, wish or woe may delight for us to go. We don’t care, truth be told. We’re like dogs that hear the jingle of the leash and know then only to freak as such a sound means that we’re breaking free from what has been our scenery, a change coming that finds for us new things to see, new things to taste, new things to sniff. We don’t care.

For all we know is that we just get to go without the ability to wonder or worry as to where, toward what. Could be a day in the park spent playing fetch or meeting new friends. Might be a drive to some drive thru in which we get free ice cream. Could be that we’re loaded up and heading to the store to buy some new toys, maybe grab some grub while we’re there. Maybe a walk, maybe a haircut, maybe a trip to the vet to get feeling better.

Don’t always like that last one though, no. Because, ironically, we don’t like being healed. We don’t like feeling well. We don’t like getting shots or taking medicine or being put on a stricter workout regimen. Because we’re good with letting our sleeping selves lie. In fact, we do just that all the time! We lie about how good we feel, how good we are. We lie about how happy we are in whatever life’s been allowed to become. We lie about not knowing what life’s become. We lie about how we don’t really care.

We lie here. We lie there. We lie everywhere to everyone whenever we can.

Why?

Because such is life!

It’s become a time in which we lie in whatever way possible. Both that of rest as is won within our laying down under the sun and away from the Son and that in which we speak deceptively unto whomever we know is likely not listening to whatever stories we feel the need to tell about, again, how our lives are always going so well, and us feeling the same, that we needn’t endure the pain of admitting we’re hurting, scared, worried, weighted down by the life-crushing burden of a guilt so great that we’ve long since lost the ability to even be excited about ice cream.

It’s all crumbling.

Which is why Christ came running in what remains a life spent atoning for the every sinfulness of our every existence. Indeed, He lives now in Heaven to intercede for us on behalf of the better half of a life we’ve honestly at best only just begun to live.

And why is that?

Because the life He lives He lives by having died.

And we’re new to that approach to life.

So new in fact that we’re still mostly terrified to live like that. We’re in every way scared of the only Way that we can be found with life still left to live when we’ve left this land in which and on which and for which we’ve all learned to love to live. Scared to death. Scared of death. Scared toward death. Scared for death to actually catch us and do unto us what we’re pretty sure death really does.

But friends, what does death do?

Is it really just the erasure of everything we ever knew? Is it the removal of every morsel, every moment, every memory? Is it only the loss of life and our ability to live it? Is it permanent?

Perhaps.

And that depends solely upon where the soul’s aimed in regard to the general seeking of glory as is done by everyone within every life ever lived. We’re all seeking for glory to be added unto this story. But from where? For what? From whom? For who?

Who gets the glory of this story of our life?

Do we really still see this thing we’re living as being our life? Is this our time? Are our words really our words? Our thoughts our thoughts? If so, well, how did we create them? Where did we find them? Did we mine them, pull them from out of the dirt? Who created the dirt in which we found them if that’s where we found them?

Who gave us the ability to find them or think we’ve found them?

Did we define time and how fast it flies? Do we have the ability to define a life? Do we know where we came from, how we got here, where we’re going when here’s not where we can stay any longer?

What do we really know of our way?

Personally, I know my way sucks at life. Not that it hasn’t been fun at times, pleasing as well, and that quite often from what I remember. In fact, looking back, I’ve had a wonderful life filled with so many amazing moments that are now memories that mean more to me than just about anything.

Just about.

Was it all my doing? Couldn’t have possibly been seeing as how I can see now that my doing also found failure alongside the fun. I found quite a few problems hidden within the pleasure, some of them perfectly profound. I found hardship in happiness, languish and lament alongside laughing, pain brought about by power and pride. I’ve in every way found a life that’s already really good at knowing how to die. And yet I also continue to find that I find just enough hope in my plans and priorities that I can feel almost personally obligated to see where they go.

Even though I already know.

And that’s because I’ve been there before.

A lot.

And yet I live often as if terrified of returning via this turning both back toward Heaven and thus away from a life spent living as if I’d already found it. A deception designed inside this most common of lie that’s befallen and bedridden so much of mankind in which we’re of the mind that has us believing that living is only about what we have and how we feel and making sure then that we never lose the ability to experience more of the either.

That’s why we hate so passionately the purpose proven within the words written all throughout Scripture aimed at our demise.

It’s because we’ve gotten used to these lives. We know how to live them, and that often well enough to have within them quite a lot we’ve learned to like or maybe even come to love. Problem is that unto us love is lust, triumph is rust and life is lost living to find some way to prove otherwise unto only the rest of us who are themselves probably living much like we are in what is a way they call their own too.

But in truth it’s all just the same bit of survival aimed at barely getting by for however long we might with as much as we possibly can.

That’s the goal in this way of life we’ve come to know.

It’s to have. To hold. To treasure silver, to store up gold. It’s a journey spent to the store to buy the stuff we like. It’s wearing clothes behind which we hide that we’re not as able to smile as the witty t-shirt we wear shows itself to be. It’s donning jewelry to bring some shine into our lives. It’s cars that drive us wherever we want to go while never able to get us where we really need to be. It’s houses filled with all the joys we can afford, and nights spent within them saddened that we can’t afford more.

In truth it’s emptiness, this barren existence for which we’ve settled. We just don’t see it that way because we know well that seeing it that way would also cause us to witness that it was us who chose for it to go this way. And we don’t want to be the ones left carrying the blame for what we’ve become, for what life’s become, for what we’ve been so dumb to have let life become thanks to our refusing to believe just how bad we’ve become at living life for more than just the very death of which we’re all terrified.

So terrified that we all live as if we won’t, all while living as we do.

Indeed, the gravity of our existence is proven in that it’s ending. But the joy of our survival is, for the moment, that we can do so with all the pleasure and treasure one soul can find in a world that has this much to offer.

But friends, what does the world have to offer that God can’t take away? What of all He’s given can the world take away? Why do we live as if we’ve so much more then to lose in following His Way instead of remaining in step with a world walking so far away that they’re completely unaware that they’re closer than ever before?

If not because the gap of life is closed when the grave itself finally is?

That’s oddly enough the emptiness we all feel inside. It’s not that long-assumed belief that we’re missing something in life. It’s that we’re missing something of death. We’re disquieted inside because we’ve still dead things alive in our lives. And yet they remain only because we’re afraid to let them be what they’ve always been. Just dead. And we’re afraid of letting them be whatever they’ve been because we’ve long been living for them.

And well, living for death seems like a really stupid thing to do, a kind of idiocy that would all but instantly undermine this entire idea that we’re good at living life.

For if we’re as good at all this as we think we are, why then are we so miserable so much? Why are we always as unhappy as we are? Why all this anger and sadness and general resentment thanks to the both?

Indeed, of life what can we know when life continues to go from bad to worse with our greatest hopes and most wonderful joys anymore just toys we play with and the trophies they bring us? Aren’t we tired of playing this game this way? Aren’t we yet tired of seeing life as if a game? Do not we wish for something of a little more substance in life, a little more meaning maybe?

I know I am!

Just this past weekend I had my eyes opened yet again to the death I’ve left in. Paper and plastic as it were. Both of them hanging on my wall and accomplishing there nothing at all of the joy and peace I found in spending time with my family focused on something outside these four walls. Indeed, I’m tired of clinging to cardboard and crayons.

For as it turns out, they can’t actually create much of a kingdom, except one fit for a clown.

And such is what I’ve become. Just some court jester caught in this now general gesture of a life sadly fond of getting nowhere simply because I get to have a lot along the way.

Such is my way of what is my life in what is my time as has been lost to thinking that any of this is either mine to have or the same to keep.

It isn’t.

Never was.

Was always His. The story. The glory. The plans. The promise. The purpose. The reason. The reward. The reality then being that I’ve only learned to live a life spent getting in His way whilst trying to find my own. I’m tired of looking! Why? Because I know what I keep finding, and well, this much personal disappointment just ain’t good for anyone!

No, there’s got to be a better way to live this life. And I know there is because I’ve been doing this every day for more than a decade now. I know that His Way is the only way that life can be found. I know that His path is the only paved to a better day free from all the sadness and sorrow I’ve felt. I know that laying down a life is thus the only way to find my share of His raised.

Alas I know the worry is won within realizing that His was raised at first upon a cross well before His being raised to the right hand of our God’s throne.

And thus I know where I have to go in order to find where He is.

And it’s death.

The one place we’ve oddly enough never looked!

Indeed, we’ve looked everywhere else in everything else for anything else. We all seek for new inside everything just novel enough to seem like it could be. But it isn’t. New to us maybe. But everything we chase after within this world, the money, the fame, the power, the praise, it’s all been tried before. Humans have been going after the same prizes for as long as we’ve been here and of the mind to assume life a game.

And yeah, many have found some of them. There have been a lot of rich people, a lot of famous ones too. In fact all of us have had so many things in life that we ourselves have been richer in terms of worldly wealth and want that we likely know. All of us are known by people we get to call our friends. We’ve all some sort of family with which we surround ourselves and to whom we turn when we need some help. All of us have had some amazing lives!

And yet we’re all still empty inside.

And thus we see that this life is not about what we have but rather for what we believe.

Do we still believe that filling our houses will make us happy? Do we still think that climbing the corporate ladder is the best way to prove we matter? Do we really consider fame and fortune the very best place to pour a life’s foundation? Will having more of what we’ve had before help us to have what we’ve yet to find, yet to feel? Will feeling as we always have allow us to feel as if we’re truly alive?

Do we really think that in this life we should feel always so empty, heartbroken and unhappy as we do?

No. That’s simply the life we’re called to lose. It’s that one spent trying to gain all that only leaves us lost. It’s the one lived as if there is no consequence, not a single cost. It’s the life we’ve known lived chasing after all that only leaves us tired and alone. It’s the life that’s afraid to die to what was never a life to begin with.

Indeed, such is just the very beginning of life.

Because His version of life only begins when and where we end. And while none of us can possibly know where we’ll end, either in this world or within our ways spent walking within it, we can know when. Because we can start now. We can take this very day, this very next breath and with it what we haven’t ever done before. We can start looking for something new at the newfound enjoyment of our suddenly not worrying anymore about having to then let go of everything old.

And yeah, it will be weird.

Trust me, I’m myself in the very opening scenery of what is a life changing yet again in ways I never imagined I’d be so delighted for it to!

But that’s the beauty of a life spent seeking God’s glory for once. It’s that everything comes alive in ways that our old lives could have never imagined, let alone experienced. All because we finally agree to lay down what we had to keep alive so as to feel as if we were the same in exchange for the chance to change things in such astounding ways that, yeah, even our days start feeling better and mattering more.

All because we finally become willing to die to what isn’t a life and find hidden inside that alien willingness that new life He’s promised to be waiting for us.

And oddly enough right where He said it was.

In those crosses He told us to carry with us as we finally find joy in following Him. Yes, through the death He died, but friends, from there to the life He found in doing so.

That’s the whole point!

It’s that if we’re to live the life He’s promised we might, we have to stop living this one as if His promise is enough of a maybe that we can’t really risk leaving this one behind. His promises are said to be Yes and Amen. What are we waiting for then? For it to make sense? For it to feel good? For it to look better as we stare into a tomb still filled with our longstanding assumptions as to what happens inside?

We have to stop seeing His way for only the dying it asks and rather press into it for the life it offers. Because the life He offers is new in every possible way! And, well, speaking personally, I’d say that’s exactly what I need more than anything because my old ways, they’re not fun anymore. The life I used to live doesn’t feel as good now when I go back to trying those things out again. It’s needs to end.

I need to end!

Why?

Because that’s the only place that life can finally begin: At the end of me because that’s where I’ll find the beginning of Him.

And from there I know where and how the rest of the story goes:

Through the glory.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold