Day 4013 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Luke 10:41 NIV

Gone today

Because today’s always the one we waste within all this life given unto the race toward that place in which we hope, pray, assume always awaits the loss of the weight of whatever has long been the wonder as to whether or not we have enough, have done enough to receive enough as measured in always both recognition and reward. All because we’re anymore so afraid, so unwilling to be bored that we’ve also come to delight in the idea that so long as we’re busy then we’re doing this right.

And yet we stay so busy that we betray our very own minds.

For in all the hours in which we work for whatever we want to win in the end, we often give them no time to think, no time to learn, no time to yearn for the more that we’re not doing because we’re doing so very much that we haven’t any time to do anything else. All because we’ve become so very certain that whatever it is that we’re doing is so dang important that the world itself might well stop spinning should we stop working.

All because, unto us, our workings are what make life matter. They’re what gives this life its meaning. Our efforts and interests and their meeting is what we continue feeling is going to prove always the only best way of our finding whatever it is that we’re afraid of failing to see, be, hold or have. And thus life itself, unto us, has come to become nothing more than some glorified to-do list with our glory being the overall priority which drives us to do all of whatever it is that we all but feel we have to.

But friends, what is there that we truly have to do that really has to be done?

What is there under the sun that is so reliant upon our protection, progress or provision that would prove elsewise nonexistent should we not do it, not find it, not break it or forsake it? What in this life is worth the life we give unto it? Or do we still not see the sacrifice that is our time that is this life that we do give to everything we do for whatever happens to be the reason that we agree to?

What could we possibly have as a viable excuse for half of the stuff that we do do?

Or do we just continue to do whatever we do do because we think that being busy is proof of a life’s blessings? That the busier we are the more productive we seem and thus we seem more responsible by our being more busy? In all of our busyness, for what are we really doing it? Is it because whatever we’re doing is absolutely necessary unto life or something otherwise vital inside of it? Or are we just filling the time and trying to find some way to show those watching that we’re working our hearts out trying to prove that we’ve figured out what matters most?

And that it somehow depends solely upon us to find it, fix it, bake it, make it?

What is there in this world that we can make? What here can we fix? What here haven’t we already found inside the years, decades maybe, of mining this ground seeking to find all that we already have? Is what we have still not enough? Is who we are not enough either? Are the things we do and how sternly we focus upon them not enough then to prove that we are trying to spend this life wisely?

Will trying harder make us wiser?

Or does a little more effort sometimes only serve to negate the point of wisdom altogether?

Because the reality of wisdom isn’t proven inside how much you know but rather how well you use it. And, as with so many things in life, sometimes the more you use something the less it has to offer. And I contend that this is proven perhaps best within our efforts, our understandings, our abilities to juggle all of life’s insanities. For you see, we’ve become so well-versed in working so hard for so much that we still want that we’ve come to assume that we can do multiple things at once.

We can’t.

For in truth we are but one. We have one mind and one heart and two hands and two feet and despite them being six things we cannot do six things at once. At least not well. No, rather the more we try and take on, the less of us we can give to the many. We are simply limited. We have but so much time, so much ability, so much strength and not much ingenuity left once the others have been drained upon whatever thing it happens to be that we happen to see as something we have to get done.

This is the purpose of priorities.

Those things which matter most are chosen first so that they’re able to receive the most of us. We give them more of whatever we have so that they are given the very best chance to be figured out, understood, completed or concreted. And we do this because we know deep down that further down the line into every single day that we’ve still here to find, we’ll run thinner and thinner until we’ve not much left to give.

Because, again, we have limits.

We may love to imagine that we can balance all sorts of things at once. But the reality is that we can only manage, at best, two or three before even they begin to suffer should we keep trying to add more. Because our best doesn’t grow to meet the demands we place upon it, or elsewise agree to have placed upon it by increasingly persistent outside influences. No, rather our best just gets spread thinner and thinner amongst the bunch as the bunch grows bigger. And thus less of our best is being given to everything we’re doing.

Because God didn’t create us to do everything, to fix everything, to understand everything.

Instead He created us in His image so that we’d know where to look for refuge when life inevitably becomes too much for us to handle.

And make no mistake, contrary to a very common misconception, He himself gives us more than we can handle so as to help us come to realize that we cannot handle this without Him. Why? Because He wants us to need Him, to realize we need Him. Why? Because when we come to realize that, we also finally begin to seek Him. It’s why He calls all those who are weary and heavily burdened to come unto Him and lay at the ground before Him all the weights and worries we’ve been carrying.

It’s because we’re only built to carry but so much, and the majority of it only faith and hope and love.

Everything else is just everything less and yet we give it just as much as we do those three above.

Why?

Again, what here matters so much that our lives won’t mean as much should we not seek it, serve it, freak out if we don’t find it or feel it? Honestly, just how much in life do we really think hinges upon us? Has not God always provided? Has He not always made the way? Is He not the One calling the shots and ensuring then that everything works out for those who love Him?

Can we say we love Him if we’ll not lean on Him, look to Him, learn from Him?

Did not He do His work and then take rest?

Is not the Sabbath one of the most focused upon creations spoken of all throughout the Old Testament? Is that not because He calls us to rest in Him, trusting then not in our works but rather His? Is not Christ himself called the Lord of Sabbath as He, again, calls us to come to Him and lay our burdens down?

Do we honor Him better by our doing more as if He needs us to get it all done?

Can we ever possibly think we’re truly honoring the Son when we spend our every waking hour working our souls sour trying to prove it within our power to prove that we can do this all by ourselves?

Where’s there room for Him? Where’s the time that’s His when all our time’s been spent staying so busy that we haven’t had a chance to even catch our breath? Do we think He’s to be pleased by our working ourselves to death trying to manage all that we think matters? Will He be impressed to come to us and find us pressed and dressed and a table filled with all kinds of delights?

Is it His delight for our lives for us to live them trying to impress Him?

Do we think He who designed the Sabbath is impressed with our working ourselves ragged because the stress we allow ourselves to assume proves somehow that we’re doing what we’re supposed to?

Friends, how on earth are we supposed to be the ones who know what we doing, who know what matters most when all that we’re doing according to what we assume matters most is usually only found in or focused on this earth?

Sure, we have things to do here. Christ himself came with work to do. We were in fact created to tend this garden that is His creation. He in fact tells us that whoever will not work should not eat as they don’t deserve to do so. Also tells us that whoever won’t provide for their family “has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.”

And so yes, work is something that is a part of life. But you see, it’s a part of life.

It’s not life.

And that’s because this life is a gift that He has given us to live, to learn, to grow in our understanding and appreciation thereof. But therein seems to lie the issue. It’s that all we seem to have grown to learn is that it’s all on us to achieve all that we want, to accomplish all the things that we continue to think make us look good, to do all the things that allow a life to feel good. It’s that we’ve become a people who are willing to approach life as if it’s all on us, which can be a good thing, but not when we do it for things that only honor us.

Which is where we’ve gotten all this really mixed up.

Because yes, He created us to work and calls us to do just that. But the work He calls us to do, the work He gives us to do, it’s not about achieving things on our behalf but His. It’s not to accomplish our reaching some next higher tier of all that a fallen creation craves whilst here. It’s not to look impressive unto those who look at things like titles and trophies as the only best proof of a life being spent well.

Rather the work He gives us to do and calls us all now back to is coming unto He who is the Well and drawing from Him the Living Water that He has promised unto all who come to Him to drink a drink that don’t run dry.

And such is exactly what Mary chose to do.

Her sister Martha chose to take the world on her shoulders and pour herself into, unto the doing of all she felt as if she had to in order to make ready everything she believed was on her to get done, to provide, to produce. Mary on the other hand sat at Jesus’ feet listening to Him, learning from Him.

And He told Martha, as we read here, that while she was worried and stressed from working to perfect or produce so many things, so many priorities, Mary had instead chosen the better thing. Because Mary had chosen to look unto Him who could do all that Martha had become so worried trying to. Mary chose to lean on and look to He who could accomplish all that might be needed.

Martha just couldn’t believe that she didn’t need to be the one to get everything done.

How many times in life does our life look the same as Martha? We each give away so many days losing our minds trying to find a way to get done all we think we need to get done. Life itself has become this race in which we chase after so many things that we’re never anywhere for more than a moment. Rather we’re always working, always moving, always losing and never then looking for anything other than whatever it is that we believe to matter most in that moment before we’re off and running after something else within the next.

Friends, again, where’s Jesus left in this? Where’s His time? When is His space? Where have we penciled Him in to our already jam-packed schedules that always manage to find us running behind? Where’s the time we set aside to read the Word? When do we have scheduled a quick prayer of gratitude? When’s the last time we remembered to be thankful? For anything?

Or are we not rather usually so stressed and sure we’re running late for something that we know only to forget Him as we run on by yet again?

This brings to mind one of my favorite of all His simple questions:

“What are you doing here, Elijah?”

What are we doing here? Granted, in context God was asking Elijah why he was basically hiding in fear from those who he’d come to believe might well make good on their promises to kill him. And, yeah, seems a good reason to hide!

But deeper than that I believe that God is trying to ask why Elijah has chosen this path. Why has he chosen to run? Why has he chosen to hide? Why has he determined that this was the best thing for him to do?

Friends, why have we chosen the paths we have? Why do we so often continue choosing to run through our days in some form of that same fear that we might die if we don’t do something? Why do we continue to hide from God asking us to rest in Him, to trust in Him? Why do we determine, how do we determine that whatever it is that we’re doing is truly the very best thing we could be doing? Is it because we know it is or just that we want it to be? Is it something we really know to be best or just something that keeps us so stressed that we no longer worry about much else?

See, that’s the problem with our common understanding of work. It’s that, oddly enough, being busy can actually be a form of being lazy. Sounds weird, I know. But it’s true. And it’s true because, well, we can always find something to do. Technically scrolling on our phones for hours on end or playing video games for just as long, those are works that we choose to do. They demand of us effort, focus, attention. They take from us energy and interest and intention.

But are they the best things we could give all those to?

Could we not spend that time reading, writing, learning, thinking?

Indeed, when’s the last time you just sat down and thought some thoughts? I am increasingly convinced that our society is losing its ability to think because we’re constantly staying so busy doing something else that we don’t give any time anymore to practicing. Why? Because we don’t think we need to. Don’t think it’s that important. Don’t really feel the gravity of it anymore.

Other things just matter more.

But friends, again, we only have so much time, so much effort, so much energy. Eventually we’re going to run out of all the above.

What will we have when we do?

What will we have accomplished? What will we have grown? What all will we have to show for how hard we chose to go after whatever we did before the end?

And, well, will any of it matter?

Will any of whatever we’re doing make a difference when our souls are weighed? Is Heaven the promise of those who can prove they did enough to earn their spot? Has that not become what we consider pretty much all of work to be? Just our trying to earn something?

Can we earn salvation? Is hope the reward of those who focus on countless things trying to find it? Is wisdom the crown of those who memorize facts?

Or is not the hope of salvation’s wisdom only won within our learning how best to wage this war that is this life in this world that’s not our home?

And if this place isn’t our home, well then what are we so busy still building here?

Does God need us to prepare a table before Him in the presence of His enemies? Did He ask us to make this earth His footstool? Could we truly carry the weight of the cross that Jesus did? Can all of our efforts and affections afford for us a ticket to Heaven?

Or is not Heaven the promise given unto those who make best use of that which He has entrusted to us all, done only best as if we do all we do as if He’s coming back sooner than soon?

Will He return to find faith on the earth? Or rather will He only return to find a whole bunch of people faithful only unto their works?

Indeed, we, like Martha, are so often so worried about so much. All of us give all but all of our days to doing so many things that we haven’t time left to spend being calm, quiet, focused on something that doesn’t ask us to be the ones doing it. In short, inside every single day we’re all but not here anymore. We’re rather always somewhere else doing something else thinking that our achieving something more will achieve our meaning something more.

Will it?

Or will our focusing more on what’s here and what we feel we have to get done only keep us from doing what He calls us to be doing?

And what does He call us to be doing? Loving Him and loving others. And sure, there’s work involved in that. But friends, the point is that the work should never supersede the One we’re working for. He is our focus, not our own efforts. Why? Because we need Him far more than He needs us.

That’s just one fact that our arrogance knows only to overlook.

My point is that we’re often so busy that we’re not here today. We’re not living in the moment. Instead we’re working in the moment, and while that could be a good thing so long as we’re doing what He calls us to do, truth is that most of the time it isn’t because that isn’t what we’re doing. Most of the time we’re doing what the world has convinced us we need to do in order to prove that we have life under control.

Friends, life was never meant to be something that we control. It’s meant to be a gift that we both enjoy and give away to doing the things that He gave us this life to do.

But we can’t love Him like we should nor love others at all when all we do is only done because we’re trying to win some prize under the sun that our pride can’t imagine doing without.

Just don’t spend another today working so hard that you’re already filling up tomorrow with things to get done. Rather dare to spend today here, inside this very moment spent seeking what matters more than anything we could ever accomplish on our own. Because, again, this world is not our home and thus our works not our own.

For while we may be here to do them today, we might end up being gone tomorrow.

And what will any of whatever we’re doing today matter then?

And if it won’t matter then, well then why should it matter today?

#LeaveNoSoulUntold