Day 4020 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Psalm 90:10 NIV

Trouble and sorrow

I sit here at 38, apparently and probably halfway home if not more, and I can already look back on what’s been a ride long spent through a fair share of the both as have been met more times than I can remember as of this morning. For in truth, such truly is life. It’s but our time in which we find that we’ll all feel that we’ll always fail to find the fun, fame, fortune or whatever other such fast-paced frivolousness that the world continues to tell us that we need in ever-growing measure.

Why?

Because to many here this place is their home and thus too the same of their every treasure and, well, as time continues to fly by toward wherever time goes once it’s gone from us, the same then seem to easily understand that their running out of the time they once had more of demands they find more soon. Not time as that’s what we fail at in this life, finding time. But more stuff, more treasure as it were and for many will continue to be. Indeed, so many here are so focused here that they see not that we’re all to be caught up in a breath, the blink of an eye, the closing of the same and opening thereafter to the whatever that’s after here.

Another thing that many here will only find they’ve failed to find in full as, well, it’s just all but impossible to find what you never feel the need to look for. And as this world houses plenty of that in which the masses hope, so too is this world seen as something of a treasure trove through which then most agree to trudge through trial and torment, a veritable torrent of tempest and tempers always flaring as failure continues to be the one thing ever-nearing.

Never proving of the kindness to bring something fun or famous along with it.

No, inside our everyday we all seem to find that all we’ve found is still not enough. And it’s because of this endless want that we all continue to waste away inside each today that we give away to plans for a tomorrow that may not be there. A tomorrow we truly hope is there as there is only there all that we still hope to find, to feel, to be or see or finally know of what have long been plans made to know by now the better life we’ve still yet to live.

A life deemed better simply because we think always of one that might not weather the whether or nots, the worries for what we don’t really need as are then things we don’t continue to agree are worth the time we’ve given them in the past. A past now passed, taking already so much time with it that we can never again have to do anything any differently. And yet this is a mystery in that we want something different and yet so often seem not at all willing to do anything of the same.

Rather we fear different. We worry of change. We’re somehow already wearied by a life in which we’ve known so much worry for so much that honestly never even happened and plenty more that probably won’t either. But we agree to this worry, this want, this weariness as facing us inside of every need to do something different if we’re ever to do anything better because, well, better is nice to think about but always seems to ask that we do more than that.

Problem is that anymore we don’t really even want to do the thinking part.

And indeed, speaking again personally, I’ve myself found recently that I struggle mightily with something that was once so natural and easy. No, I feel so often anymore a struggle inside whenever it comes to mind that my mind needs to think, to reason, to weigh the wonder of whatever today might become. I’ve for a long time been stuck inside what is a pattern now so proven that I worry only of all I’ll lose should I ever try for anything better.

Something we all do.

For all of us give so much space in mind to these thoughts inside the same that tell our brains about all we stand to lose if we don’t stand real still and do our very best not to move. And indeed, we do have things that we could well lose. And yeah, loss is itself something that plays into the very definition of sorrow for such is defined as “a feeling of deep distress caused by loss, disappointment, or other misfortune suffered by oneself or others.”

And it seems we all then know this as anymore everyone wears this face of misfortune as they scramble along this soil seeking for something to turn their perpetual frowns upside down into smiles that we daren’t wear anymore out of this fear of our being found sudden strangers, with all their dangers, amongst they who are a people who are but strangers to themselves.

Simply because when we lose our ability, our willingness to even try to think, well, so too must we there lose our ability to be ourselves.

And this is something all of us have done inside so many days racing against the sun’s daring to set well before we’ve come to get whatever we’d hoped to have by the time tomorrow came around. Indeed, seems so often that tomorrow is both our very best friend and every worst enemy as within it we all seem to always see both the hopes we didn’t find here inside today and yet too the more we may have to do if we’re to find then what we didn’t by then.

Something that we hate the thought of considering how much effort we’ve already given unto our having already gotten so much of what we once thought would be good enough to afford for us something of a rest and relaxation, a veritable retirement from the long vocation of a life spent working so very hard for what has mostly already been lost behind.

A semblance of the loss known of all sorrow.

It’s in truth something we all know because all of us have lost things, have lost dreams, have lost those we dreamed wouldn’t be lost either to time or different roads in life. We’ve all known so much that we know now not and, well, that’s something that’s always hard as we live this life not looking to lose, not in love nor life nor the livelihood we seek so sternly inside the both. Rather we live this life to gain and we’re ready to prove willing to embrace whatever rain or pain may help life and love be proven.

Only to find them and then have to watch them fade away into the past that tomorrow will know today as.

And it all combines for us into this combination of so much joy and junk that we eventually just confine our days to leaning on luck to prove for us what all we want for us as we slowly learn to lose our willingness to try as even should we, well, still it seems that even should we come to gain whatever it is that we want to have, even then it never lasts. No matter how hard we hope, how much we pray, whether we work or whether we don’t.

Indeed, seems that all of life only knows that proverbial goodnight in which we all but bid goodbye to every bit of everything we’ve ever known of life.

And that no matter how sad we may be to see it all go wherever it does whenever we can’t go with it anymore. And that no matter how strong we are or how rich we are or how adamant we are that it be otherwise. No, there is in truth nothing we can do to stop the hands of time coming along to steal all that we have and know and hope to be in this life before we leave.

Yet we still seem to find it reasonable to focus so fully upon this side of what’s real simply because we can here see all that we both hope to have and plan to be.

Problem then left to become a truth which will tell us when we have to go, and one that won’t ask us if we’re ready when it’s time. No, rather He’s told us of a thief which comes to take us all away from all we’ve had, all we’ve been, all we’ve not been fortunate to have had or been by then. But again, no, no still we seem to assume we’ve plenty of time still of this life in which to find all we still feel will make our lives feel better and us too for having lived them however we still hope we can.

But friends, let us consider the measure.

Do you know the rarity of someone who even sees 90? And indeed, even that is a long time. I mean 90 years ago it was 1936 and even the Germans were participating in the Olympics, thus before the start of the second World War in which the Nazis became our mortal enemies as they became the adversaries to basically everything good or decent. That was a long time ago, and thus, sure, even 90 years sees a lot of life! Again, I’m a scant 38 and I’ve seen so much that I can’t myself even remember it all.

But even still, what is 90 when measured against eternity?

It’s nothing really. And yet so too, down here, it’s everything. And yet it’s within this that we ought to see the need for some sort of separation beginning between our fealty to all that’s already fading in exchange for a focus on all our Father has promised never will.

But so often we don’t. Rather what we see more often than not is a people who are still caught living this life as if everything that could ever matter is scattered here around us somehow. All of us have worked so hard to have so much only to then become convinced that we can keep it having given so much time and torment to the getting of it. We seem to think that we deserve to keep these lives and all that within them we’ve housed inside.

But we don’t. And, well, time will prove that we won’t. Because, well, time is thus far undefeated in regard to our striving against it trying to prove before it runs out that we’ve found what will prove so amazing that God in all His goodness wouldn’t be so rude to take away from us.

But He will.

Not because He’s rude or mean or anything like that at all. Simply because He has something better than all that we could find or have felt or might know of a life that must go the way that every life always has. Indeed, all throughout our history here it hasn’t really mattered the length of life as not one life has ever been lived here forever. And, well, looking around at what all the world’s become, why would we want it to be? I mean, can’t you see the possibility of everything better?

Does not the world’s choosing to continue chasing toward hell help us to better understand the very hope of Heaven itself?

There are so many things so far from good in this world that the world itself has become something of a perfect backdrop for a belief to begin in something better by far. It’s not even hard anymore! For inside of every day we all find or feel that this world continues to fail to even be decent. But friends, why then continue to work so hard for what’s here? Why continue to live as if this world is our home, our hope, our reward? Why seek for or dare to store anything of any worth or want within what is a world all but tearing itself apart?

No, truth is that we’re all living the honesty of this verse. Because yeah, life here, well, it hurts. It’s hard. It’s heavy. It’s heartbreaking. Indeed, as I said up top, I sit here at 38 and look back on what’s been a long ride spend through what were days that seemed, at least in some ways, better than our todays. Why? Because we just seem to get angrier as we go. Everyone is so unhappy anymore, and that despite our having things today that we wouldn’t have even dreamed possible 15-20 years ago.

Doesn’t that seem to say that no matter how hard we work for whatever it is that we think we want, it still won’t be enough to achieve in us anything of happiness, of hopefulness, of peace or contentment or joy with the content of a life spent as if what we need isn’t quite so able to define for us who we are nor where we hope to be?

I think it does. But, then again, I find inside of every single day that I think so many things that I have no longer any trouble imagining that not many others are thinking.

Because, again, looking around, it’s pretty easy to see what most here are thinking about. It’s politics. It’s sporting events. It’s gambling apps and their hopes of helping us win the fortunes we all still feel will help our lives feel better. It’s celebrity gossip and the awards in which they cheer each other on as the celebrate the devil himself. It’s music and movies and mayhem and madness and just the masses always mad because life isn’t perfect and yet they’re working so hard to make it so.

So what?

What do we do? Sadly most here seem entirely content to continue doing as they’ve always done. And indeed, many here will give the vast sum of their life spent under the sun to doing so much that perhaps will help them achieve the gaining of much too. But what then? That’s what I’ve been asking both in these posts and of myself for the better part of a week now. What then?

What will any of it matter when we’re not here anymore? What will all the work and worry have won whenever we’ve been awarded the chance to leave this world? We do see our getting to leave as a gift, right? Alas, no, no I don’t know that many here do as most here do seem to again only awake into every new day only to continue the day before in which they did so very much hoping to have so very much that they could finally feel even a little bit better.

Have they?

Are they?

Will they?

Well, maybe, don’t think so and probably not. Why? Because if our efforts as have always been given unto our getting of whatever it is that we’ve wanted haven’t yet accomplished for us an arrival upon the outcome of a life satisfied, what makes us think it ever will? If all our work and all the worry we’ve given unto it trying to ensure comes from it the way of life we want to live hasn’t helped us come to live the kind of life we’ve always wanted, then maybe our work and worry aren’t actually worth all that much.

Not that they’re not worth anything as God has clearly given us all the ability to do something, the desire to do something. We are all here to accomplish something.

But should it all be achieved in the mere scope of 70-80?

Is the true purpose of life something meant to be proven in what is the one place in which we’ll live it the least? You ever think about that? This life, though indeed long and so filled with so much, it’s the shortest life we’ll ever live. I can honestly say that before today I have never thought that thought. Never. But it’s true. This is the shortest life we’ll ever live because this is the only life we’ll ever lose.

There is another. One day we’re all going to wake up to find that we’re then on the other side of that eternal line being given the just due for whatever we did in this life.

But I think that begs a question:

What are we doing?

What are doing it for? Where are we doing it from? What do our efforts and actions have to say about what matters to us? What do our treasures and pleasures seem to say about who we are? Where do our hopes say we plan to be or want to go? Where do our prayers ask for our desires to show?

Sadly, it’s mostly still here, isn’t it? Because still we remain a people all but entirely unable to accept the fact that this life is just a trial size. It’s a sample. And indeed, within it we experience a great deal of both good and bad, happy and sad, heavy and hard and hopeless and hopeful and everything in between. And we experience this general blending of light and dark for what is indeed a long time.

But how much longer will we have in that place in which time itself isn’t?

I guess my point is that so much of what we do here is pointless. It’s all, as Scripture puts it, a chasing after the wind as blows still in want and our worry of our never having whatever we do. Indeed, so much of life here is measured in what we want, measured then by what all we do to get it. But my growing worry is that all we’re doing to keep on getting all we’ve gotten or hope to before long, it keeps us focused here. Our every thought, our every action, our every hope and other such belief, they’re all anymore only spent on what we see.

But friends, what we see is already fading because time stops for no one and nothing. Time rather continues flying by as we all get ready to fly away.

But that’s just it, are we getting ready? Or are we, as is clearly more common, only getting busy making plans and planning lives that time itself says we might not live?

Yeah, this is heavy stuff as none of us want to take that leap away from what is a life in which we have found, can find what all we all want in and of a life lived in and sadly of this place in which we have one to lose. But that’s the point. It’s that all this will be lost.

Why risk being lost with it?

We give so much to a life spent wanting so much that we end up only living through trial and torment seeking to store up treasures that, while cool for a moment, cannot last beyond our last moment. And, as we read here, we’ve only got roughly 70-80 to do it. Why then do it that way? Why give what little we have, quick math being 32-42 for myself, why give what we have left to what will be left when we have?

Yeah, life here is a ride through some hard times. And we have some good times too. But friends, fact is that be them hard or good, they’re both but times and, well, time is flying by as we have each of us less of it today than we had just yesterday. Let us be then careful how we spend it as one day we just might find that it wasn’t actually our time after all.

No, maybe this life we have is but one on loan that we will all have to pay back with whatever interest we’ve gaining inside of whatever interests we’ve had along the way.

Will He be pleased with what all we’ve found interesting along the way through our 70-80?

Guess it’s hard to know for sure, but maybe that’s proof that we shouldn’t settle for living in such a way that doesn’t know what He might say.

Because perhaps the way we live our lives has something to say in whatever He might.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold