Day 3987 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Romans 6:11 NIV

Turn around

For the road we’re travelling as a people leads nowhere a people should so desire to be as it seems we’ve become so interested in becoming anyway. And indeed, when chosen long enough, the decisions and directions that we determine to take will come only to make what becomes our very identity. It’s like someone who goes to school to become something, a decision made to undertake their growth in this need to know how to do what they’re to eventually, hopefully, be known as such as doctors and chefs and such.

Problem for us is that none should so seek to become sin as in that there is no such hope within.

And yet, judging from the common undertakings being undertaken by those headed mockingly toward their undertaker, sin is sadly indeed not merely what we’ve all done but in fact who many among us have so become that they know not anything else. In truth, having each of us fallen so far short of the glory of God, even the good of ourselves, none of us then know the path that is to better as it’s simply one that none have ever dared venture down.

Why?

Because it’s backwards and takes the long way around and, well, we’re a people who vastly prefer to just get right to the point as that’s where we’ve made our plans for our prizes and profits to be both produced and thus promised. And with all of these little excitements we’ve imagined inside these wayward thoughts we’ve fathomed, we can’t seem to even begin to believe in anything else other than whatever it is that we’ve, again, determined to do so consistently that we’re all but perfectly oblivious to basically the entire sum of everything else.

And what’s worse is we seem pretty happy about it.

But why is that? Why such elation when it comes to such things as confusion and consternation? I mean, you’d think we’d be finding better returns upon our investments by now, you know, seeing as how we know what we’re doing and that all of it is always right and thus alright as well. And yet, despite it being apparently alright for our to be doing all of this that we’re apparently getting right, we sure don’t seem too hopeful in life, for life.

In fact it seems that our every hope has become a joke in which we mope through what are more days than I dare say we realize in what’s become a life in which unhappiness and unrest are entirely too common for a people who claim they know what they’re doing. Indeed, if all of us are as right as we contend, why then is everyone doing something different, sometimes so vastly so that it’s all combining to all but blow apart the very seams of society itself?

Does right truly run in so many different directions?

Is truth really such this divergent design that we’ve seemingly gotten it in our minds for it to be?

Is reality really able to withstand our each taking a stance at such opposite ends of its spectrum that we can’t even anything but hatred for those running toward the opposite end of it?

Do we honestly see as much as our rush toward more of the nowhere we’ve all already been having then the ability to prove any honesty to our claim that we know what we’re doing, and that everyone then doing something else is wrong, seeing as how we’re the ones getting nowhere?

Sure, doesn’t mean that anyone else is getting anywhere better either as, well, it mostly seems like everything’s only getting worse.

But friends, how is that possible if any of us are doing this anywhere near as right as we may like to assume we always are? I mean, shouldn’t we have something better to show than what we’ve become if that were truly the case? Would there be so much waste in this race if we knew where we were going and the necessity of taking it slow along the way just so we don’t miss something? How are we so sure as we sure seem to be that we haven’t missed something along to way to wherever this is that we are?

Do we even know where we are, who we are, where we’re going or what we’ve already become?

Sadly I don’t think we do.

And I say this because what we all seem to be is again just mostly only always unhappy. Now that’s not to say there’s an utter lack of joy in life as we all do seem at times perfectly capable of being pleased in such a way that doesn’t cause more of those problems that all but identical feelings have found for us in the past. It’s just that I don’t personally believe that something like joy should be so inconsistent. Rather I believe that joy should be constant.

But it isn’t, is it?

No, truth be told I don’t know that there’s been an unhappier time in all of human history than this story we’re living in today. Sure, I imagine that such things as Great Depressions and that time that the Plague spread throughout Europe were pretty bad. Been through a lot of wars seeing in them a lot of life being lost and, well, that’s not good times or a good thing. Indeed, our humanity has endured some truly inhuman experiences throughout our time on this earth.

And yet, despite our having more in terms of progress and possession than ever before, we seem as displeased with life as anyone ever has been. I mean, all we do anymore is argue. Every single day devolves into a fight just as soon as we miss a light or they don’t get our order right. We’ve entirely lost sight of that question asked of us in Scripture in which it’s posed why not rather be wronged.

Indeed, why not rather be wronged than lower ourselves to becoming nothing more than another pawn in this game of chance that has so many living as if but puppets on strings saying only those things that they’ve been taught, not to be chefs or doctors, no, rather just to be popular? Why not rather be wronged by another than joining with a decrepit culture into such things as flying the finger and dropping the f-bomb? Why not rather be wronged than once again become so numb that we resort to basic hatred of those we know nothing about?

Why not rather admit we are wrong when it’s said that the first step to solving any problem is admitting one had?

Do we really have no problems?

Are we truly perfectly okay with the way that life’s going? Are we good with whoever it is that we’ve become along the way? Again, do we even know who we are or where we’re going? Or are we just making it up as we go along all so that we never need either go alone or with any of those who say those things that we don’t like?

Things like how we need to die if we’re ever to live a life?

Indeed, that one’s still causing people to succumb to such confusion that the masses still count it foolishness perfected.

Is it?

For again, if the way we’re going as the people we’ve become has us only happy or content or hopeful for a few days out of the year, well then how can we be so sure that He who came to do a new thing didn’t actually do something better? I mean, sure, it does seem and sound entirely counterproductive to this production we’re producing. In fact, His path was one paved in pain that reached only what many here would consider a premature ending.

After all, I don’t think any of us are all that eager to die in our 30’s.

And so, yeah, what sense would it make to follow that path we’re all called to take when that same path brings about only so much hatred and misunderstanding that the majority of humanity eventually just determines to rid themselves of the hassle and offense?

Because none of us want to be offended, and thus none of us seek blatantly to offend. We’ve been all but conditioned to see such a thing as unbecoming of life itself. This is precisely why so many here are still convinced that to live is to die.

And yet those same many still hate the call of Christ, cross mainly, which says that maybe we have to die to live?

How backward can we be to have become so insistent upon it staying so backward so consistently?

Honestly, I get that we’re all used to this way of life we’ve known for, well, all our lives. And yeah, it’s the very same kind as that of those who’ve walked this very same road before we got here. And yet, it seems that despite our having now more to learn from than ever before, we rather seem to know less of such goals as happiness and hope and peace and love and mercy than ever before.

How is that?

How are we managing to go backwards instead of forwards? Isn’t progress our drug these days? Don’t we get all jacked up talking about all this technological advancement and social progression that’s apparently making it easier and thus better to be us? Or are such things as cell phones and political protests perhaps not really producing any real proof that we’re as better as our ego so desperately wants to think we are?

Because the truth is that so long as you go in the same direction, you can only ever hope to become more of whatever you’ve already become having chosen that direction.

And again, our overall estimation of life as a whole is that it ends in death.

And so, in this, our overall expectation for our life is to die.

Thus we’re of this mind that knows we’re headed toward our end, and, well, when all that waits up ahead is our lives lost, then no, maybe it doesn’t matter how we live them before we lose them. Maybe it is better to just do whatever we want along the way to what we still seem to think as nothing but a sad goodbye. Maybe the entire point of this life is to just have a much fun as we can hopefully keep from coming to regret before we hit that deathbed and think then of all that we’ll wish we’d have done differently.

What do you already wish you’d done differently?

Personally, I have working list of several things in life that I’d have done differently than I did had I known then what I think I know now. Chief among them, and something that would have helped with all of them is that right there. That idea that I try to hold onto now that I’m pretty sure I never did before. And I’m pretty sure I never have because, looking back, it seems mostly as if my story was written by a guy who knew for sure that he knew what he was doing.

But having gotten so much so wrong as I have, now I just try to go only so far as my thinking that I know something as that allows me to learn otherwise if need be.

And trust me, often it need be!

But I can say that because I’m certain that this life is meant for growing in such knowledge. It’s meant for our to change and improve as we do it. This life is our time to make choices, make mistakes and then make changes all so that we do truly progress toward our God-given potential.

Problem is that much of this world still lives as if the only thing that God gives is trouble.

And why is that?

Because He asks us to consider things backwards.

Such as how maybe our way isn’t as right as all our mistakes have already proven it can’t be. Or how perhaps then sin isn’t really our friend as regret isn’t really something anyone should seek in life. Or how, having found plenty that we now regret, maybe our being the ones still calling the shots is a little more foolish than our arrogance really wants it not to be.

Or how maybe it’s not even foolish to go ahead and agree with Him asking that we get the dying part of life over early so that we can then lose the hurry to experience all of life before we lose it.

Sure, it’s backwards as, again, the life we know tells us all that to live is to die.

But friends, why not at least consider our hearing Him out when He says that to die is to live?

Doesn’t that sound like a far more hopeful outcome? Granted, the preceding seems a problem as we’re all pretty much perfectly convinced that dying is something we don’t want to do as we’ve still what seems a life we’re living that we’d then have to lose.

But isn’t that the point?

Is this way of life we’re living really evidence of a life being lived? Should life be lived so aware of death that it only lives in such fear of it that it does everything it can to avoid it, prevent it, deny it, refuse it? What is it about this version of life we’re living that we’re so afraid to lose that we’d rather hold tight to our plan of just dying at the end of all this?

Must be something pretty amazing!

It’s just that for the life of me I can’t seem to figure it out anymore. Again, seems as if I once had it all understood for I too have lived that life in which I had all my plans and they all had all their expectations. Just that none of it managed to turn out like I expected. In fact, I don’t know that it could be much different.

And yet, I can say with all honesty that I wouldn’t change it. Sure, I’d change a lot of the things that I’ve personally said and done. I’d definitely not do plenty of the things that I know I did. But even then, I wouldn’t change this outcome I’ve been found toward because even such things as writing these that I’m pretty sure nobody really reads, it brings me such a hope and peace that I didn’t have before.

Mostly because I know that I’m not who I was before who did say and do all those things that I would take back and do differently if we could do that.

But friends, that’s the challenge with life!

It’s that we can’t. We don’t get do-overs. There are no second chances. There is one life and we are living it as we speak and, in so doing, we’re determining where we’re headed within every choice we make and step we take.

So then, where you headed?

Again, the vast majority here would just say death because, again, most here still believe that to live is to die. But folks, that’s the joy of Christ! It’s that He came to get the dying part done so that we could all start living the life that’s in the Son. And, well, He has so much life that, even though He died, He’s back at it! The grave couldn’t hold Him. Death has lost its sting!

Why we still giving it back then?

For that is truly all we’re doing every time that we deny His call to take up our crosses and follow Him. And yeah, I get why we do it. It’s because the direction He leads gets to our death way too early. His path literally starts with misery, with persecution, Herod wanted to kill Him right out the gate!

And, well, the people succeed in sharing his desire just a mere 30 or so years later.

But again, He died only to rise again.

As Mr. Phil Robertson once put it, “You got a better story?”

And well, no, no we don’t. Nobody does. Nobody can. Why? Because, again, His story, though it starts with our death upon that cross, the same as those He calls us all to carry as we follow Him sharing in His journey, it ends in life as He rose from the grave in what’s now a journey that continues in life forever.

Why then are we all so hesitant to share in it?

If not because it’s backwards?

You see, the issue is that we’ve all become so convinced that what we’re living is a life that we’re deathly afraid of dying to the kind of life we’ve been living. And yet, that’s exactly what that cross asks us to do. Jesus asks us to lose all we have, all we are even, in exchange for what is such a change that nothing about us or even the way we see the world around us can stay the same.

Friends, how is that a bad thing?

Speaking personally, there were a number of years in there where I straight up did not like me. Why? Because I was living in slavery to everything from lust to gluttony. I hated me. And in all honestly, no, still not my biggest fan because I still get entirely too much entirely too wrong. And I, like you, we don’t like being wrong. We don’t like looking bad or feeling foolish. We don’t like being proven to be nothing short of hypocritical idiots as that’s just not anything we want to be known as.

But friends, it’s something we’ll all be known as.

Question is whether or not we’ll be known as anything else between here and home.

We can be. In fact we can be known as the redeemed children of God, soldiers of Christ, light bearers in a dark and darkening world.

But we can’t be any of the above if we never step out from behind what has in all honestly been only a life spent being blind and following only the same.

And yeah, as such will remain common for most everyone, the same can then be said of us. We can all determine to never do His kind of everything new. But friends, I beg you to again consider the amazing opportunity it is to go at this from His point of view. For yeah, our understanding of life may have death as some far-off issue to be faced later on whereas His has us confronted with such a laying down of a life way earlier than anyone of us really want to welcome.

But again, our way has us thinking that to live is to die.

What then do we stand to lose in letting Him turn that around?

#LeaveNoSoulUntold