Day 4038 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Romans 7:24 NIV

The realization

They say that the first step to solving a problem is admitting there’s one to solve. And indeed, fact is that we can’t fix whatever we can’t see is faulty, fractured, fading, forsaken, forgotten, floundered, frail or fake. But the first problem that we’re all sure to have in regard to fixing any of the others that we can’t see that we do have as of yet is that for so long inside each of our lives we’ve lived trying our best to assume our best was both something we could achieve all by ourselves and that, once we had, we’d have what would amount to a patently perfect life.

Issue is though that we have tried.

For a long time!

Granted, there’s no possible way that I can know your age, your story, even your name as it seems that many of those amazingly few who do read these things through even this far are to be but forever mysteries to me as on this side I can only see a handful of likes and a couple shares from time to time. And true, perhaps those are the only ones these posts manage to make it to thanks to algorithms continuing to prove that most folks wouldn’t be all that interested in reading them.

Either way, fact remains the same and that’s that I don’t know anything about anyone who may be an entirely unseen part of this journey as I can only see the words as I write them and this unyielding hope I have for them in that they’re both somehow acceptable unto Him for whom I write them and too that they manage to somehow send someone to Him from whom we all have this rare chance at life everlasting.

And so I don’t know who you are, what you’ve done, what you’re worried over or feel bad about. But I do know that even if you’re of reading age and beyond the lower legal limit of setting up an account on social media then the reality is that you’ve lived a long enough time to have done things, said things, believed things, allowing then things into your mind that have never managed to accomplish the outcomes for which you’d once welcomed them.

And I know this because it’s something all of us have done.

All of us have believed lies told us by those we wanted to believe because the words they said sounded so good to these ears that continue itching for those just-right words that always seek to tell us just what we want to hear, usually that we’re right about something. All of us have made choices that were influenced by alien voices of those we once believed to be our friends but only turned out to be fading acquaintances. All of us have said things without thinking them through.

All of us have had those moments in which we didn’t know what to say, what to do but did or said whatever we felt best only to realize it only made an even bigger mess.

Because such is life.

The hard reality that nobody ever really seems to talk about is that we’re all down here basically just making it up as we go. It’s that we’re all still struggling to figure things out, to understand why things are going the way they are, to find some way to fight back against the now general fallout, to fight for some way just to keep the lights on both in our houses and in our heads. Indeed, we’re all just kids who are hopefully doing our best.

But you see, that’s kind of the question that it seems this faith always manages to ask:

How does our best keep going so bad?

Because if you ever dare talk to anyone else, which most of us try not to anymore out of this ongoing fear of either offense or just common disinterest, and in said un-had conversation ask this soon to again be stranger for their perspective on their life and how it’s going and what they’re doing well, the truth is that all of us fall always back upon this premise that we’re doing our best. That we’re handling life well. That we’re gaining traction and getting closer and growing stronger and slowly but surely proving our best is all we thought it would be.

But the issue you see is that this only proves that words are easy. For it’s easy for us to tell someone else how well we’re doing when we know they don’t know otherwise. In truth, it’s even become easy for us to tell ourselves how well we’re doing as we’re now so deluded that we simply want to believe that whatever we’re doing is something that falls underneath that umbrella that is our self-perceived “best”. Yes, all of us have done this very deed thousands of times thus far in life.

Question remains though have any of the lies we’ve ever told ourselves ever made any of them out to be the truth?

Is the person you’ve become truly the best person you can be? Is the life you’re living really the best life you can live? Is the way you love those God’s given you to care about seriously the best you can do such a thing? Is there anything that we see or hear in the world today that any of us would honestly say is anything even anywhere near anything even close to anything acceptable at all?

Or is it not all just continuing to fall?

Because the fact is that one day reality’s going to catch up to all of us and show us that these castles made of playing cards upon which we’ve all bet on that which we consider as being our best managing to withstand the test as is tested by whomever cares to, well, can’t. Indeed, we’re all living as if everything we’re doing is both acceptable but also justified. But friends, that’s only because we live in a world so far gone in terms of sin and shame that, rather than change, we now just seek out ways to make such things seem almost commendable.

I mean we literally give awards to people who lie for a living, and we all tune into the award shows to see if our favorite of the bunch managed to win.

Is that our best?

Are the best of us those who wear fancy suits that have an acceptance speech in the pockets, yet always start said speeches with how surprised they are to need it? Are the best of us those in political office, voted there by a system that offers the illusion of input, which is something we all want to have seeing as how we again know always what’s best? Does our playing a role in politics and celebrity events accomplish anything of improvement in our lives?

Are we even aware yet of there being any room for improvement in our lives?

And, well, how could we be when again it seems that all we’ve really done really well is convince ourselves how well we’re doing?

Why do we try so hard to keep ourselves convinced that we’re doing so good? Is it because we are or that we’re terrified of realizing that we’re not? Indeed, is our best truly our best or just something that’s so close to good enough that our now instinctual laziness is always ready to accept so that we needn’t try any further into those places and changes that we know we’d probably only fail or fall elsewise short of?

Indeed, do we have any idea as to just how far short we’ve fallen of what is the undisputed best?

And again, how could we when so many here still seem to assume it best to dispute what He did?

And, again, is this not something all of us have done? Granted, we’ve maybe not done it outright like that. But is it not the same denial of Christ’s suffering whenever we accept a lie or ourselves decide to share one? Is it not the same rejection of His call to repentance whenever we turn back to doing as we’ve done before? Is it not the same hammer we hold whenever we hold another, be it thing or person, higher than we do Him?

How many things have we allowed to take His place in our lives?

Is that something that we can honestly say we feel good about?

You see, what I’m getting at it that there comes this moment in every single life in which we’re faced with the truth of who we’ve become at the hands of what we’ve done at the insistence of what we’ve come to believe. For belief is a truly powerful thing that makes folks do other things. Belief is this inspiration held so deep that it flows out in the form of words spoken, actions undertaken, plans made and promises set in place that we will do our best to keep.

Have we? Have we kept our promises? Are we known as people who stand by our word? Have we done nothing but good things? Are our plans made for our to do things even better?

Or are we just kind of settled in to what has become a life lived just sort of surviving?

In the end even these questions don’t really matter all that much because, well, their answers would only accomplish this collective adding up to whatever it is that we’ve again seemed always to see as our best having become the outcome for which we’ve gone however far we have toward however well we’ve lived as is measured still by what we think of whenever we think of whatever it is that we’re willing to pretend is our best.

And in truth, our best is a figment of our imagination that we constantly mess with, erasing the lies and redrawing the lines in order to make it look like we meant to make this life into whatever it is that it’s probably become without our having much in the way of excited agreement as being best.

No, rather it seems that most of us are usually rather upset, angry, disappointed, downtrodden, dejected, despondent, non-respondent to what is His request to come unto repentance wherein we could lose all that has us still feeling so lost, helpless, hopeless, unhappy, unhealthy, unholy even.

But then again, we admit none of these things because doing so isn’t common in this place. So instead we continue to contend that whatever it is that we’re doing as whoever it is that we’ve either become or are becoming is in fact our very best.

And so long as that remains the case then so too are we still on course to slam into that realization that one day won’t move aside anymore. We’re hurtling toward that brick wall that is our every better that we’ve always neglected every opportunity for our to become. We’re racing headlong toward what is a promised collapse of our every excuse, our every complaint, our every complacency, our every crime.

Yes, we are all on line to be found at that time in which we finally find that our best is at best a mess and most likely so utterly mangled that we ourselves have become so tangled in the lies that we’ve not really even lived a life. Let alone lived one that anyone would ever deem as seeming to be some kind of best.

No, truth is that so much of what we’ve all done is so far short of the glory of God that the gloating of man remains our goal.

All because the gloating keeps us from realizing the reality we’ve chosen to settle for.

Indeed, so long as we continue patting ourselves on the back for all these jobs well done that we’ve apparently done, so too then shall we continue to think that we have done well whatever we have done. So long as we continue to hear the roar of applause, be it from those around us or just that fool staring back at us in the mirror, we’ll too continue to do whatever it is that all these fans apparently agree with. So long as we refuse to accept any of all our many flaws, faults and failures in what is a world that continues to pretend that the only person who never has any is always ourselves, well, so too then shall we just assume that everyone else is wrong.

Because we can’t be, not if we’re going to get the glory of having written a story that’s gone so well that when God reads it He immediately hands us the keys to Heaven and cheers us on for having done better than He ever imagined.

Yes, we all live as if God’s to be impressed with how well we’ve done whatever we have.

All because, well, we sure are!

But again, why? Why are we all so impressed with ourselves? What is that we’ve accomplished that is so amazing that it’s inspired us all to basically stop trying? Why is it that we can’t manage to see that that’s exactly what we’ve done? That we’ve stopped trying. That we’ve stopped growing. That we’ve given up and moved the line that is our ‘best’ so close that we couldn’t mess it up if we did ever happen to try anything ever again.

Again, have we really made it? Is who we are all we’d hoped to be? Is the life we’re living the best life we could be living? Are we the best mother, the best father, the best sister, brother, teacher, doctor, interior decorator that we can be? Indeed, is our being a lawyer, a celebrity, an influencer, a millionaire, a maker of modern art masterpieces, is that all we’re here to have become?

Or are we missing something? Something like, say, a dose of reality?

And since we are, as I know we tend to go out of our way if not out of our minds trying to find a way to avoid such things as reality and reason and the baser human responsibility to live at least decently, then how can we know for sure that our best is our best? Speaking personally, I have no idea how much better I could have been had I not spent the better part of 30 years doing things that I now regret more with every passing day.

Who then am I to say that anything I do now is my best?

No, not when my past has proven so many times that my best was blasphemous, belittling, betraying, berating, all but holding a stick and beating to death everything better that I could have been other than this man who continues to feel wholly unworthy to try for something so holy as to write these posts as if I hold any words to possibly say anything that needs to be said about a hope that I never once tried to have in what is a past that went so bad that I can’t kill the man I used to be fast enough.

He just keeps coming back with all his reminders of the things I used to do, the life I used to live, the person I used to be.

And the familiarity of it all still sometimes inspires my mind to slide right back into the life that I hate so much that I sometimes get sick to my stomach thinking about.

Is that my best? Is our best measured in the fun we have? Is it accomplished in the achievements we’ve had? Is it already done? Have we reached the end? Is this goal?

Are we home?

No.

No, rather we’re just still here hopefully still trying to figure out what to do and then how to do it better. But friends, can we say with any honesty that that’s honestly what we’re doing? Or does not any moment in which we feel shame, experience regret, come again upon a moment spent in any such misery as that made of our meeting face-to-face with the fact that we’ve made yet again another mistake seem to say only otherwise?

For that is the realization.

It’s that we’ve messed this up so bad that it’s nearly impossible to believe that He’s given us another day to try it again. Because, let’s face it, we have an absolutely atrocious track record! I mean we collectively joined forces one day and insisted that Christ be handed over to be crucified. And yeah, I know, you weren’t there. But friends, again, is it not the same thing being said, being done any time we do anything as if the Son can’t see what we’re doing?

And is that not something we’ve all done more times than we can count?

Again, that’s the realization. It’s that reality as is perhaps, and sadly, probably still waiting in which we run headfirst into this honesty that shows us all the horror, all the hatred, all the hollowness of what is the life we’ve come to so arrogantly assume is our best.

Friends, our best is but another idol that’s poured of ideals and painted in our ideas.

And, well, the past hasn’t really played along in our trying so hard to prove that we know what to do and that we can do it well.

The only thing we do well is make mistakes.

My prayer is that we all see that before it’s too late.

Not because we can do anything about it because, again let’s face it, fact is that we’re entirely too good at getting things wrong to know how to do anything else. But the hope is that we can at least hear Him knocking on the door and someday give in to the curiosity as to what He has to say.

Most here won’t because it’s far from the common way and that’s because He who is the Way is the same as brings the realization as to our having fallen so far short of even anything decent that all we really deserve isn’t awards or applause but rather just a place amongst those who stay in the grave.

No, we don’t deserve any part of all He’s done.

But friends, He did it.

He gave His life so that we’d give ours away too. Why? Because in truth, the life we’ve come to live isn’t a life that deserves to live because sin is still death and nobody in their right mind would choose that outcome as much as we all have.

That’s the realization.

It’s that we are wretched. We are wicked. We are wayward and walking only wider watching a world so wide-open that anything goes anymore. The sad part is that most will continue running away from the truth of what we’ve become all because the reality of it all is just too hard to face.

But friends, He can only save us when we turn and face the fact that we need to be. And yeah, that’s a hard reality as none of us want to realize just how wrong we really are.

But again, first step to solving a problem is admitting we have one.

Problem is that we have far more than one.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold