Day 3938 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Philippians 2:7 NIV

The end of me

I estimate that such is where Christ I’ll see for ‘twas the end of Him that He found reason to find in order to leave behind the 99 of whom I’d once made the full 100, a failure to remain since becoming my name. Leaving the Name that’s since been given to all to willingly embrace my fall as remains my fault so as to halt what is my hate as has been aimed so often His way in what have been things that I have done that I now know I never should have even considered if I was to ever again be something of a son of He who is the Son but lived emptied of such.

Yes, this is the example unto which we’ve been called to follow.

Footprints pressed into the sands of this time in which we are now alive and here tasked with daily setting the match to what we’ve built of our many blasphemes and idolatries all accomplishing inside only a wrecking once more of His Temple thanks to these steeds of selfishness that we’ve long lived delighting to mount, ourselves seeking to stride ourselves unto the many successes we so love to assume still hidden somewhere within the plans we’ve made and between the mistakes we can’t admit we make.

Simply because to confess our faults and fears would come at the sign of tears as poured from eyes no longer left blind to whatever this is that we’ve become having taken so long the road opposite that of those footprints paved into the grave. Which is why we won’t take it. For we’ve never known anything of life in death, only knowing instead plenty of death in life thanks to the sin we win within what are plans we make for more mistakes we’ll have to claim we won’t.

All because we know nothing of such an emptiness as would be to clearly confess that we’re just not good at this whole living of a life business.

No, for all we know as the living of a life is done in a sort of busyness that binds us to that which blinds us to the better we’ve never been, and thus can never be so long as we continue to contend for only our every intention of adhering more unto our conventions of what is a contention aimed still against the God of all creation.

Indeed, we live a life staying always so busy within the same so that we’ve never the time to think all the thoughts that would cause us to realize how wrong we are within this living of a life we think we are.

Time will indeed come along to tell that we know nothing of living a life well. The tragedy to be proven so profound in that for some it will take said time all the time they have to finally come around as they’ll spend out the rest of their days seeking the rest of their ways in which to prove their way not so languishing and lamentable as blinded eyes can never see a life to be.

All because we’ve become of this widespread certainty that has us all but collectively certain, even if only individually, that we know what best to do with a life simply because we’ve found ourselves always so surrounded with so much with which to fill one.

Thus itself proving that we’ve lost the plot already as life, as lived here at least, is by no means something filling but is rather an existence that is in every way emptying, even if only eventually.

Which is precisely the part that causes all these problems such as profit and pride. It’s this generally approved of approach to life in which we fill everything from time to mind with all that only takes away the abilities of both to prove elsewise to hold something that allows us to hope in the more that isn’t here. Indeed, we anymore only know to fear our not being here in what have become lives lived so filled with the world that we all know we’re entirely unready to face the day in which this is world is where we ain’t.

Entirely unready.

Why? Because we again seem to always manage to misunderstand this now violent separation between a full life and a life fulfilled. And I suppose that is again simply because we’re so surrounded by so much and so many who are going after it all daily. It’s become something of a standard assumption, this idea of such selfish gumption that has us all grinding ourselves to dust seeking our share of what’s to one day be proven only the same. Alas for now it looks like gold, or silver, or acceptance, or applause, or approval, or affirmation, or the simple investigation of long-lost self’s insinuation that our assimilation isn’t as deadly as it’s always proven.

And that despite however much of the shiny stuff any may have wanted, won, had, held or hoped to have.

No, and that’s because nothing we have here can achieve for us a share in what isn’t here. It can rather only detract, distract, divide, disillusion, and thus inspire doubt and perhaps even dread. Why? Because again, when the things of this life in this land in which we’re so convinced we’ve our only chance to live one become the very foundation of what we’re thus living for, this world will become all we can ever hope to have, to hold, to know, to be known by.

And thus we all agree to die as we sign every morning upon the dotted line crafted of our comrades who’ve already so fallen in parade seeking to themselves hopefully find this day their measure of delight fulfilled within what is a world that offers us oddly always that very promise.

Everything we could ever want, and that along with absolutely no reason to worry about the cost incurred in such gluttony and greed.

No, in fact those things are here seen as good as they contain this ongoing reminder of all the more we’ve still to find in what are likely wants we’ve not even learned to want quite yet. But we will. Because such is what we know to do, and so that’s what we’ll continue to do until such time as our eyes are no longer blind to that which has only come to bind us to a time that finds us filling ourselves with all that we’ll one day be emptied of.

With always a more than fair dose of that doubt that says such a thing will never happen as surely a good God would never want us to do without.

Not within what’s always been a world that seems to offer exactly what we want in what’s then become a life of such greed and gluttony that we again haven’t any understanding as to such a self-limiting as that seen since the Shepard who came to lay down His life in what remains the ultimate scene of a God so good that He’d rather kill His only Son, who’d done no wrong, than to smite those who deserve said punishment for having done only wrong.

And yet our now longstanding refusal to even consider contemplating the full meaning of the Gospel, well, it shows us to still be standing in our common enmity against the very simplicity of all that God asks of all those who dare to be His once more.

What does He ask, He who has so fully shown us what is good in His laying down of a life for the very atonement of those who’d lived and live still in what are ways that treat Him as if only their enemy?

To act justly. To love mercy. To walk humbly with He who is then seen as our God in what is then a life that is daily lain down in what’s a scene we ourselves seek to show that of Christ we do know and that both somehow just enough to inspire in us that daily humbling unto crosses taken up but also never enough for us to imagine we’ve made it unto the fullness of that for which He laid down His life in payment to free us both from who we’ve become and thus toward who we still can be.

But no, no we can’t even seem to manage upholding what are in every way three simple agreements that would, if honored, only serve to make our lives better.

For what good might come if justice were what we sought as opposed to merely something we feel our own to measure out? What in this world might improve were we to lose this arrogant expectation of mercy always given our way alongside a mercy we’re always more than hesitant to give unto others, waiting always for them to say something, do something, change something in some way that shows us that they agree with us in regard to how we were wronged and they thus wrong to do so?

Yes, what of us might be indefinably bettered would we have the audacity to seek humility rather than these cardboard thrones from which we daily throw our judgements upon those around us down noses stuck so high that we can’t see how low we are?

What life could we know if we stopped with this idea that we know life?

Even more, what more might we find were we of that mind that held not itself as the single authority but rather sought the majesty of He who is higher, and that by becoming as low as we’ve lived in what was then a life taken to the grave because such is the only place to save all those who are headed there?

How deeply might we know both our salvation and He who achieved it on our behalf if we could allow ourselves to not merely understand, not only comprehend, but in fact fully appreciate the call unto death as is given well within life so as to help us put to the knife that which is dragging us down and so lovingly offering to keep us there?

Why do we so love that which hates us so much? And equally so, why do we so hate He who loves us so much?

What of this world can give unto us the joy of His promise of Heaven being found with a place for us? What of all we’ve had here can help us have hope for when here we’re not? What, who in this world is willing to lay down their lives for us to not only go on living our own but to do so in such a humbled way as to inspire in us the kinds of change that would in fact lead to life everlasting?

What of this world and the many herein would pay no mind and shed no tear if we weren’t even here?

Why then live so much this way of life that has us so fixed to finding our meaning within a place we’re leaving? If not simply because we’re here still living amongst those many who think they know what they’re doing simply because of the fun they’re having and the gain their finding and the pleasure they’re feeling and the excitement they’re nearing?

Why settle for an excitement we can find, a hope we can hold, a joy that can jade, a happiness that empties out?

Why expect a life that never empties out if not because we know nothing of such a surrender?

All because the one place we’ve learned to be afraid to go is the end of ourselves?

All because we know what we’d find should we venture that way.

Yeah, we know we’d find life as it was meant to be lived without all the selfishness we’ve instead come to live it for. We know we’d find hopes that we’d never known. We’d find joy we’d never felt. We’d find a freedom we never knew we always needed. We’d experience a happiness that refused to fade, even when life doesn’t go our way. We’d meet this meaning for our very existence that instills within us a resolve to dissolve all we’ve known to drive for, vie for, die for in what have instead been lives in which we’re all but willing to suffer but for only that which would never do the same in return.

Indeed, we’re a quite confused creation, always giving our time to that which can’t give us more thereof. Always offering our loyalty to that which is nothing but a matter of convenience or nearness. Always trading our purpose for that which has none. Always exchanging the gravity of true hope for what brings us the reward sooner, albeit admittedly measured.

Always measuring life in terms of how we think we’re doing at only the little we’re willing to even try.

Never then knowing what it’s like to die unto what instead remains a life only afraid of it simply because unto us such means only the end of it.

And as far as we can tell, if there’s a bottom to any well then it’s just not worth drinking from.

All because we’ve become so impressively dumb unto both the limitlessness of Christ’s existence and all it means and also the limitations that only prevent us from seeking for His fullness simply because we see in it our emptiness. Simply because that’s the example we’ve been asked to follow. It’s that seen of a cross taken and thus an entire life lost on what is this side of that unseen line as drawn between here and eternity.

A line that, since we can’t see it, we have thus no reason to believe in it.

For we only believe what we see, even though such all but negates the very purpose of belief.

We don’t care. Because it works well enough. It’s helped us find some things we’ve come to enjoy. It’s helped us to apparently avoid some of those we’re pretty sure we wouldn’t have. It’s accomplished for us a good life in which we do find quite a lot of what we do like. Indeed, life as we’ve come to live it has us living in what are several quite amazing ways with what are plenty of fairly amazing things.

And well, to a people always willing to go only but halfway toward anything, good enough is always good enough.

All because it doesn’t ever ask anything more.

And, well, Jesus does.

And so, when found between a choice that asks more of us on a daily basis and that which asks nothing and only gives us more on the same daily basis, it’s pretty easy to see which seems the most logical choice to choose. And no, it’s by no means that choice which asks that we lose. It’s the one that only promises we gain within the ways in which we’ve come to become convinced are best. All because they’re the ways that pay off the fastest.

Speed thus the option we choose, perhaps ironically chosen due to our understanding that we’re running out of time to find what all we’d be able to enjoy while we’re here.

Almost seeming to hint that we perhaps do understand that we’ll not be here forever.

But hey, why worry about tomorrow when we’re this convinced we’ve so many of them left?

In fact, why should we worry about anything, worry for anything when we’re this convinced we know everything? And, well, why then lay down a life if we have truly come to find ourselves this impressively able to always manage to find so much of what we like alongside what’s always been a path of so little resistance that our rewards basically just bring themselves to us?

Why leave that behind?

Well, because contrary to common convention, life isn’t about us. It’s not about what we find, how we feel, what we like, what more we don’t. In fact, life existed quite well without us long before we arrived upon what’s since become a crime scene in which we daily show that we’re so faithfully dead that we’ve no intention of ever going through anything that asks we refuse ourselves anything simply because we’ve become quite perfectly convinced that the entire substance of this existence is about nothing more than our comfort, our enjoyment, even something so pointless as our entertainment.

Indeed, what can any of those things bring us but more reason to remain complacent in what is, again, a place we are leaving behind one day.

That’s why we should start practicing now. To get ready. To make sure we’re all set to go whenever He says we have to. To in fact come to find, in Him, a way to spin this life in just such a way that we even become able to say that leaving here is something we get to do rather than having to.

Can you imagine that?

Being filled with so much hope as to something so much better that every day here is something kind of bitter simply because it’s only known as one more spent away from where we’ve the hope of getting to be?

That’s the life I want to lead. I’m not good at it, a fact this past week has shown me in many, many ways. But maybe that’s the point life’s miseries, sufferings, strugglings. Maybe they’re all there to help us grow closer to the end of ourselves thanks to the weakness, the worry, the strain that leaves us weary.

After all, where else are we more able to see Christ than in those places in which we know we can no longer look to ourselves?

That’s why He came. To give us something better to both look for and then forward to. Because that’s the example that He left for us to follow: A soul humbled unto the upholding of God’s will no matter the cost simply because it believes in the purpose of whatever He sends our way and thus asks we walk through.

He came to show us that while the road home might not be easy, it bring with it a peace that surpasses all suffering we will endure along the way.

And He did it via emptying Himself so as to show us how to endure what’s still to come.

For continuing to think that this life should be easy, safe, comfortable, that will only make this hard road harder still, maybe even to the point in which we just give up and walk away.

Yeah, I’m convinced that holding onto selfish assumptions and their greedy expectations is the surest way to make this life miserable.

And thus letting go of what we want and expecting nothing simple along the way, well, if nothing else it won’t bring disappointment.

For if we’re filled with a willingness to see Christ no matter the cost, then the cost won’t matter anymore. And nor then His call to empty ourselves so as to share in how He lived down here in what is a faith aimed at our share of where He went.

Which is Heaven, this much is true. But friends, He got there only after He finished emptying Himself.

Maybe that’s why we’re not there yet.

Because we’re not yet emptied.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold