Day 4015 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Ecclesiastes 2:18 NIV

A wasted life

Such is that of any who live it without the Christ. Because without Him, well, what does anything mean? For the overall gravity of this existence where it exists is that we’re all promised to leave it. And this seems then to mean that literally the entire expanse of everything we do while we’re here is all for nothing. It’s all accomplishing only outcomes and achievements that we’re leaving behind. It’s a life being lived unto it all being left. What then can anything matter at all if it’s all just a matter all but fading already?

This is truly an understanding entirely too heavy.

And indeed, it’s because of this that so many flee from this faith. Because it asks us to accept heaviness such as this. To sit within the reality that all we’ve done up until we meet the Son is nothingness. In fact, it might be even worse than that! Nothing would have been a better goal than so much of whatever else it is that we’ve gone after. Because so much of what we’ve gone after has only become the very matter that we’re now tasked with coming to see wasn’t worth anything.

And who can accept that? Who can allow themselves to grapple with that suggestion that their entire lives have been lived as if victims of a consumerism that’s inspired them to live only to amass all that cannot come wherever this ends? Who can welcome that weariness as is won within realizing that it’s all been meaningless? Years spent chasing after, and likely catching, so much that wasn’t worth even a fraction of the devotion we devoted to it?

It’s misery personified inside the very person looking back at us in the mirror.

I know this for a fact because I still see that misplaced monster looking back at me all the time. I’ll look up from all my toils and trials and trying to find some way to ensure I find what I still so love to continue to assume I need in my life only to find I’ve not lived a life in weeks, months, years perhaps. All because of all I do it seems only for things that I’m promised to lose. And indeed, I’ve done so much to gain so much only to have so much that I already don’t have anymore.

So why do we do it?

Why do we chase it? Why do we want it if it’s all just to be wasted upon what becomes a memory fading far faster than the hours we’d spent trying to get whatever our ‘it’ is? Do we even know? Do we know what we’re working for, wanting for, waiting for? Do we ever stop to ask ourselves whether or not it’s worth whatever we’re giving it?

What is your it?

Is it a house? A fancy car? A better job? A piece of land? A trophy that will eventually just sit on some stand next to a whole host of others you’ve already won? What is it in this life that we’re trying to win and why does any of it matter so? What will it mean five years from now? Ten? Twenty? Two hundred? And yeah, I know that none of us will be here for another two hundred years, but friends, that kind of proves the point inside this problem that all but all of every single life has come to become.

It’s that we’re living our lives trying to find so much of all that only stays behind when our lives come up well short of that two hundred. Or that ten or even the five. Indeed, we have no idea how long we’ll be here alive. In fact we know that odds are none of us are getting out of here alive. Why then spend all our lives looking in and living for only this side?

Because we know we have it? Because we can see the things that we want to have within it? Because we daily awake only to watch a world glut themselves upon so much gain that it’s almost painful to watch sometimes? Why? Because His Word says clearly that those many here lost upon the wide thinking they’re living a life will have had their reward. And while this world has some very nice things, things bordering on great if not tipping over into wonderful, fact is that it has nothing that lasts.

Rather all that’s here stays here. And again, that’s the problem because, well, we don’t. Our bodies do as they’ve been promised to return to the soil from which God took them. But you see, this unravels a new mystery because the same Word says that so too shall the Spirit return to there from which it came too. But where to then? Where does the Spirit go when it’s gone from the body that, honestly, most of us think is our home? Do we not treat these bodies as if they’re basically everything we have?

Because, well, in many ways they are. For here inside this world we have but this vessel with which to tackle all of life and all the fight it so often brings. We’ve but hands that seek to hold as much as we can. We’ve but feet that try to help us find the more we all know to want. We’ve arms which can lift and carry whatever worry we’ve chosen to work for. We have legs which carry the body as we walk out daily all the duties and priorities we’ve placed upon it.

We have eyes that we wear blurry as they’re always in a hurry to find whatever it is that we feel we might need in this place. We have ears that work overtime either trying to hear all we want to hear or make sure we hear nothing of the more we don’t. We have backs that we break working ourselves ragged for rags and ashes that we can’t seem to see becoming what they basically already are.

All we are is but a body that we seem to assume that we’re supposed to use and abuse trying to accomplish all that we’re told that we have to do in order for our to have what we have to lose!

What’s the meaning of this? Why does so much of it matter so much? I mean we all truly seem as if we know only to live as if our lives depend upon our always having something more within them. Do they? Can we truly work ourselves to dust only to amass what will eventually amount to rust as it’s left to ruin without ever daring to imagine the ruin that’s coming? How does that benefit us? Granted, it allows us to continue to see all we still seem to assume as things we need being worth the work and worry.

But again, are they?

Can anything we work for add anything of length unto our life? Can any of the hours we spend trying to make money we spend on things not worth the time we lost to get them give us back time in the end? Will we reach the gates of Heaven and there and then give unto Him a recounting of all that we’d lived our lives thinking counted and expect Him to be impressed when all we have to confess is just a mess of misplaced efforts given unto things that we couldn’t bring with us?

Why do we live so hard for things that don’t fit where we’re going?

If not because we’ve become pretty much convinced that we’re not going anywhere, at least not for a good long while?

Friends, how arrogant of us to assume something such as this! For we have no idea how long we have. We have no way of knowing which day will be our last. But the problem is that we’ve all become so consumed with whatever it is that we’re trying to do trying to find the evermore that we want inside these lives that we spend absolutely no time realizing that time is the one thing we’re running out of as it’s yet one more thing that only exists here.

And I know this to be true because, well, why does forever need it?

Why would Heaven have clocks? Wouldn’t that kind of undermine the entire premise of eternity? Can the everlasting ever end? Can unending peace and joy without limit reach their limit or meet their finish? Can He who promised never to leave us and never forsake us find a time when He changes His mind and leaves us behind?

Can we afford to continue wasting so much of life trying to find things we’ll leave behind, time we could have given unto trying to find Him before He returns trying to find faith on this earth?

Will He?

Indeed, I do believe He will. Question is though to what? To what are we faithful? What does our faith belong to? What do we believe in so very much that we give it so very much of all that makes us us? For the reality is that everything to which we give anything of our time, effort, energy or expectation, it’s something we’re being faithful toward. It’s something that we’re showing a belief in, a hope within. It’s our saying that we trust that this thing in which we’re trusting is going to prove worthy of the trust we’ve given it.

Is it?

And, well, how can it be if it’s but one more thing that we’ll leave? Where will that leave us when we do? And again, I know these are hard questions to peruse as we’re rather quite used to living that kind of life in which the only things we ever ask are either what more we want or what all we’ll need to do to get it. But friends, those questions only keep us focused on being faithful to only everything that exists on only this side of our grave.

And yeah, I know we don’t want to thank about that either, but you know what, it’s coming! And the problem is that it’s coming at a time at which we will not expect it to arrive. Especially if we continue to live these lives looking only to find all that exists only here. It’s all a distraction that causes us to lose eternal traction aimed toward eternity as it keeps us convinced that any of this that for now happens to surround us might be able to achieve some measure of hope.

Can it?

Can anything here prove worthy of something so wonderful as hope should be? Should hope ever be allowed to become something we can see on this side of eternity? Why do that to ourselves? Why allow for a hope that we can hold inside a life that we can only hold for a little while longer? Why agree in a hope that we have to lose whenever we have to leave?

As I asked a while back, why continue to live a version of life that has us looking at leaving as something we have to do?

Do we really have that much here to lose that we’re afraid to leave behind?

What about everything else that exists on the other side of the cross’s line?

We do know that that’s why He came to carry it, right? To draw a line in the sand of time and trial that shows us that the way of life we’ve come to find and learned to love is the very one that now demands that we do all leave? For way back in Genesis God looked down from Heaven and saw that the thoughts and intentions of every human heart were and are only evil all the time. And at that time He determined that He would not put up with us forever but that every life would be limited to 120 years at most.

And in case you didn’t know, there ain’t many making it to 120 these days!

Rather the average life expectancy for women is 81.1 years, for men 75.8 (because we’re often the ones who do far more dumb things), both combined to average out at 78.4. And so we’re all staring down the barrel of barely making it to 80. And yeah, 80 years is still a really long time, not even half way there myself quite yet. But still, what then? What will we do as that number looms only closer and closer? Should we wait for it to get closer to start worrying about what we’re doing here?

Or might it be far wiser to start worrying now seeing as how He’s told us that we know not the day nor the hour?

But that we can know, should know that we’re all leaving this place. Told us to be constantly ready, eyes glued to the skies waiting to see Him coming back to get us and take us home. Something that’s pretty hard when we’re so worried about so many other things, most of which presently surround us. Like houses and cars and jobs and journeys we plan to take on a vacation we’ve been saving up for for what feels like forever.

Indeed, all of us work so hard for so many things that take us so long to achieve. And no, I’m not saying that they’re not worth anything. I’m just asking what they are worth in regard to what ought to be clearly worth more. For again, while this world has a truly limitless amount of stuff, some of which most agree is seriously special, valuable, important and thus worth their wanting it, working for it, going to war over it, problem is that everything here exists entirely attached to time itself.

Because this world is passing away and thus too everything done, wanted or waiting to be won within it.

Why then live as what are but willing victims to a way of life that will only find that is has to leave all that it lived to have?

Does that not seem truly sad?

This has been something weighing on my mind for, I don’t know, weeks now, years maybe. For I look up almost daily only to see a way of life that I’ve worked fairly hard to ensure turns out always just right only to find that so much of it is measured in material, in money, in making plans and planning purchases of things that I don’t yet know I want or assume I need. It’s all just become about this endless seeking for things this world has us thinking that we just have to have.

And don’t get me wrong, a lot of what this earth has to offer does make life easier, safer, seemingly then far more comfortable.

But even that seems something inevitably counterproductive. For should we truly seek so much comfort inside the one place we’re promised we can’t stay? Why seek for such a reward if it’s only to be eventually left to ruin? Should we ruin our reward in what is this place promised to be proven, perhaps soon, as truly passing? Should we surrender any measure of our faith to all that’s fleeting? Should we continue failing to find the hope of forever behind all these figments of importance that we’ve become convinced might matter just as much?

How can they?

How can anything here matter more than everything that isn’t? And just for fun, what are some things that aren’t found or offered or anymore experienced here? Peace. Contentment. Mercy. Compassion. Hope, happiness, holiness. All of these things are fading into what seems an oblivion as most of society seems unto them all but entirely oblivious. Guess they’re all too busy trying to find so many other things that they’ve neither the time nor the courage to look for what most aren’t anymore.

Is that good enough reason for our to continue not looking for them either?

Because everyone else isn’t?

If they all told you to jump off a bridge, would you do it?

Sadly, yeah, I have to believe that most here would. Why? Because we’ve become so convinced that right and truth and hope and meaning are all things proven in quantity, and that not even of themselves but rather merely those who agree. We seem to think that the more who see something some certain way only means that such is the way we should see it too.

Friends, problem is that most here are living lives for only things they have to lose.

And giving next to no time trying to find the only One who went to the grave in order to say that He wouldn’t lose any who are His.

What here can give us a promise such as this? No, truth is that everything here will lose us and we’ll lose it. Because nothing in this place is permanent. Rather it’s transient. It’s temporary. It’s bound by time and will not be permitted to escape it.

Why then live for it?

Why work so hard for it? Why give so much of the little time we’ve left trying to accomplish or amass a bunch of stuff that cannot come with us?

Where?

Well, that’s for us to find out. But the problem then is that you just can’t find what you never even try to look for. And, well, while it’s indeed quite hard to look for what we can’t see from here, it’s only that much harder when all that’s here is allowed to remain all that we do look for.

Indeed, Heaven isn’t found by those who know where to find it. It’s found by those who trust so fully that the Son thereof has found them that they spend the rest of their lives trying only to find Him.

And that’s something we just can’t do so long as we’re trying to find all that we’re only going to lose.

As much as this is a really hard truth to accept, that so much of what all we’ve worked for so far is nothing much that matters at all, it also happens to be one of those hard truths that I just can’t help but see unfolding all the time inside my very own life. For I too have lived for so many things that I tried so hard to get that the worst of all things happened:

I got them.

And well, as much as a hope deferred makes the heart sick, turns out that hope found only leaves you wondering as to why you didn’t hope for more.

Truth is we often don’t hope for more because we don’t ever want to be disappointed. But friends, how disappointing will it be when we reach the end of this life and only there find that all we ever hoped to find or feel is all that will be left behind? No, I can’t imagine that horror and so I don’t see any sense whatsoever in continuing to live for only what we’ll leave.

Because it’s already hard enough to let go of all that we’ve gone so hard for. How much harder will it be when it’s all taken away and we’re left standing there with nothing else to show for the life in which we were each given the chance to know He who came to save us from losing everything?

Please don’t do that to yourself. Rather turn your eyes toward Heaven and refuse yourself any hope other than He who is our only Way there.

For any other worry is nothing but one in a life wasted.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold