Day 4051 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Colossians 1:29 NIV

The emptying

What if we gave this everything?

Where might we go if we allowed for nothing to restrain this faith that He’s given His life for us to have inside our own? Who could we become if we could become as willing to venture into the fray as He was that day that He took His body and literally laid it on the line to form the line over which the only life we can ever live is finally lived? What all might we do if we did only what all He called us to in whatever fullness He’d planned for us to?

How could life have been different if we hadn’t done all we wanted to back when we had all those opportunities to do something new?

It seems that as time goes wherever time goes these are the only questions it leaves behind. For the further I go in this life as is lived in what is a place which can’t contain life but for a collection of years we all learn to give our fears to worrying about running out at some point within them, it feels as if all I manage to find as I lose them is this odd excitement to.

To lose. To leave behind. To let go all that I slowly come to know was never a life.

At least not the fullness of one.

For what fullness or completion or even validity is there to see inside what is a set amount of time that we so often waste upon worrying over the things we both want within our time here and what more we have to do in order to get it? Is that life? Is it truly nothing more than the sum of everything we crave under the sun and our giving our bodies, our minds, our hearts and their hopes to doing whatever it takes to amass all that we can’t take with us when we go wherever we will whenever we do?

I can’t seem to agree to that idea anymore.

Now that’s not to say that I don’t still want things or need things as we all do for such is what we know to do. That’s what this life has long been! It’s become nothing but this endless search for that with which to fill what is our own personal list of those things we either want to have or think we need to have, a line which blurs all the time. And that because we’ve lost the simplicity seen inside our seeing that life isn’t ours to do with as we see fit, a matter often if not only proven in our trying to prove we fit in this place by allowing this place to fit inside of us.

Which is where we get it all wrong.

And by all, yeah, I mean everything.

Indeed, as David Crowder said in one of his songs, “I think that when we get to Heaven we're gonna laugh when we can see how hard we try to make it and how easy it should be.” Because, in all honesty, I think we overestimate how hard we make this journey thanks to our ongoing desire to worry about everything that doesn’t matter. Now that’s not to say that we don’t worry about some things that do matter as I’m sure we do and I hope so too.

But I really just can’t manage to see anymore any real reason for all that we fight so hard for.

Because so many of our worries and the energy we give unto them, it’s all only keeping us focused here. It’s about how we look, how we feel, what we fear and our always trying to avoid it. Why? Because our fears are all found on this line dividing the life we’ve chosen from the one He created us to live. And we’ve sadly just learned to stay inside those lines from the very same world that taught us as kids that coloring books needed us to do the same thing so that the end result would look like what the designer intended.

And ever since we’ve just submitted to adhering to everyone else’s ideas as to what our lives should look like, staying always inside the lines and giving our every single day to lining up inside the same so as to show everyone around us that we’re always doing our very best to make sure that we’re where, who, what the world around us thinks we all should be.

And it’s because of this that both our lives are full but our hopes are empty.

It’s because we’ve become such replicas of a rebellious world that so too do we now know only to reject, to refuse anything strange, anything different, anything difficult. And that because we’ve been told for so long now that life here is supposed to look this certain way and we’re supposed to look this certain way and we’re expected to say these certain things and to never ever talk about these other things. Because they’re scary, they’re crazy, they’re considered stupid to those who are perishing and too afraid to admit they are to do something with their lives before they do.

And that’s a mindset, an outlook that we’ve all shared thanks to our again staying inside the lines that this world wants us to stay behind.

See, that’s the real truth that those who lord life over us never ever dare to tell us. It’s that all these lines that we’ve been told we’re to stay within, they’re only lines that we then stay behind. They’re sold as these necessary limitations put in place to ensure our race, our focus, our effort and devotion are given unto doing something, finding something, making something or becoming something that fits the image that the designer of the coloring book intended.

But in truth all these lines that all of mankind has agreed to stay within are nothing but missed opportunities to see the kind of life that was waiting just beyond them.

And that’s a choice we’ve missed or messed up so many times that it eventually just became one that we were even afraid to acknowledge was there.

Rather we just slowly learned to do as we’re told by those who tell us that they know what’s best for us, something proven always in only comfort or acceptance or affluence or applause. Indeed, we’ve settled for these things being our rewards in life. Not because we need them but we’ve just learned to want them in what’s been a life in which want and need are always blurred inside those lines that have been drawn for us to stay within/behind.

Lines drawn in this lie that has us so exceedingly convinced that our very best hope of a decent existence is only to ever be proven in our doing as everyone else does, and that done in seeking to fill our lives with all this world has rather than giving this world all we have.

A difference so very incredible and yet one that seems anymore entirely illegible.

All because it seems as though all we see is just a world that has everything to offer that we’ve somehow come to need. Don’t you ever find that odd, the least bit ironic? That it just so happens that this world always manages to have exactly what it is that we’ve come to believe we need as has been learned by our having lived our lives listening to a world always telling us how life is supposed to feel, how we’re supposed to look, what all we’re supposed to do in order to achieve the best of both and all the rest?

Alas, no, no it doesn’t seem as if that seems ironic to most as rather the vast majority here still continue lining up in the drive thru lanes of the most popular coffee joint while the family-owned competitor sits wide-open and waiting right next door.

All because we’ve all become rather impressed with lines and our expectation that if we continue to line up wherever most others are that we’ll too come to find what they all seem then to assume is worth the wait.

Because we don’t mind waiting for what others seem to be convinced is worth it.

Thus finding us trusting in man who has but breath in their lungs and strength in their bones and effort screaming to be let out of the muscles that we only worry about because we think that others will be impressed by how tough and strong we look, never once seeming to understand that nobody else is looking at us because they’re all too busy too looking to also become whatever it is that this world has us all convinced we’re supposed to be.

Which these days is weak, fat, lazy, gluttonous, greedy, arrogant, prideful, vengeful, hateful and happy.

As to how we can be happy with who we’ve become and what this world still remains, I haven’t the foggiest idea!

And that because it seems as though I once did. For I too have lived that way of life in which I only chose to do whatever those around me were doing and/or expected me to. In fact I gave years, decades in truth and too all the effort and energy I had within them unto doing whatever it was that my “friends” wanted. Because I, like you, I believed that I needed them. That they could do something for me, offer something to me that would improve me and better the life I was living.

All because I, again, bought that lie that had convinced my mind that this life is a vessel meant to be filled rather than one we’re supposed to empty.

Cut to a guy who had all he’d wanted in life, or at least most of it. Plenty of friends, college degree, decent job making pretty decent money, a room full of stuff that I’d come to want, dreams and plans for more things and theories as to what I’d allowed the world around to instill within me as to the overall point and purpose for this life and its journey.

Yeah, I’ve had my share of all the world.

Somehow I just managed to look up one day and see that it meant nothing as it all turned away and waved goodbye as it walked on toward wherever it is that it’s all gone.

And actually most of it, most of them weren’t even decent even to say goodbye.

And yet, as much as I couldn’t understand why at the time, I thank God all the time that He emptied my life of what I can see now was only holding me back from both who I’ve become in the days and years since and, even more importantly, who I’m still becoming thanks to His still working away.

Because I have no doubts that I’d not be who I am today if He hadn’t removed from me all those plans and people and possessions that had become by focus, my fear, my faith.

No, I’d still weigh over 300 pounds, still be eating like an idiot, still be playing video games and planning on whatever party was coming up.

I can honestly say that I know for a fact that life is better empty sometimes.

Because the truth is that we have no idea what all that we so often fill it with is doing to us. We have no idea what our “friends” are keeping us from by our always feeling as if we have to always please them or impress them. We have no idea what our careers are keeping us from thanks to our having to always show up early, stay late, skip our lunch breaks and never ask any questions as to why. We have no idea what college keeps us from by teaching us not how to think but what to think. We have no idea what religion keeps us from by its always telling us what to do but never teaching us why we do it.

No, because we’ve become so unashamedly willing to just be led that we’ll do whatever we’re told by whomever it is that we just so happen to hear say something that we like the sound of.

Like those dudes in fancy suits that tell us about all the health and wealth and happiness we’ll have if we just say this one prayer this one time and then make sure we drop our cash in the little golden plastic plate every Sunday.

Yeah, we’re a people who think we can buy our way to hope, to healing, to salvation and something then with some lasting meaning.

All with our willingness to simply live sharing what we have with those who too seem to seek to only fill their lives, their pockets, their pews so that they make the news for how successful they are in a world that insists on measuring success in dollars and cents rather than in our doing of what He’s sent us into the world to do.

And what is that?

To spread the Good News of God’s grace as is given us all in Christ who laid down His life that we might take ours back from all to which we’d given them thinking them worth nothing more than the sum of the stuff with which we’d sought to fill them.

Yes, Jesus emptied Himself upon that cross to cover the cost of our having lost our lives and even our will to live them.

A fact proven in that most folks here still live to fill them with the sum of everything this world has to offer and freely gives unto all who’ve the money or means to make it seem that they really want it. Indeed, so long as we’ll do whatever it is that another asks us to, yeah, we can truly gain all the world.

Again, been there.

And yet somehow my greatest joy has come inside an effort given every morning to writing a post nobody will read in what’s become a life in which I have no friends, no plans, no expectations, no goals even. No, my greatest joy has come inside this hope that I can somehow manage to empty myself of everything I might have to offer unto doing as He put me here to do before I run out of time in what is a life that still sadly seems a bit too full for my liking.

No, I can’t have little enough. I can’t be tired enough. I can’t try enough, do enough, think enough, write enough to ever encompass the fullness of what this faith is.

All because it seems that in some ways I still don’t know yet as there are still things of this world that get in the way of my giving more of everything only to He who came to give everything for me.

And so it seems that my only worry is all that I’m holding back from Him that I might not even realize. It’s the life I’ve yet to live because still I live worried about worldly things entirely too often. It’s the man I have yet to become because I’m still the one who thinks that some of the stuff the world’s taught me makes sense. It’s the son I’m not because I’m still selfish enough to get angry whenever my dad tries to help me. It’s the brother I’ve never been because I’ve always taken my sister for granted.

It’s the servant I’m not because I’m still finding ways to focus on what I want to have rather than all I have to give.

These are the things that weigh on me these days.

It’s no longer the friends I used to have but have no more. It’s not the workouts I miss nor the ‘gains’ I then leave on the table. It’s not the time I don’t have to make sure all my plans and priorities turn out just right. It’s not even trying to make sure my life looks right, feels right, sounds right.

No, it’s what all I’m missing by my still worrying about filling my life rather than letting Him lead me toward its emptying.

Indeed, who might I be if gave Him everything?

What if my first thought every morning wasn’t how tired I was but rather what I had the chance to try? What if my main concern wasn’t making sure I managed to fit everything I needed to get done inside of every day I have but being thankful that I have another day in which to do something that means something? What if meaning wasn’t something we assumed proven only in our doing of only whatever everyone else does but rather in our doing as He called us to, no matter how stupid it might seem to everyone else?

These are the things that weigh on me these days.

Because I know a life lived filling life with all that I think a good life, a meaningful life, a successful life needs to have to show for the time we got to live it.

But sadly I don’t seem to know much of what life really is when it’s emptied of every misplaced priority that this place continues to insist we need if we’re to live a life that means anything.

For what if life can only mean what it’s supposed to mean when we give away everything we have, that doesn’t mean anything anyway, so that we can then give everything we are to the little that does mean something after all?

Indeed, what if we emptied our hearts, our minds, our lives of all that kept us from seeking for His glory, His honor, His praise? What if loving God and loving others was all we tried to do however we could?

What if Heaven were truly seen as the finish line beyond which our life was waiting?

I dare imagine we’d not spend so much of life wasting our efforts upon the gaining of all the grave says we can’t take with us.

Don’t know, just more ramblings on another tired rainy morning maybe.

But I just can’t help but feel myself wonder as to what all might be waiting if only my life were emptier of all that I’ve lived it for.

Indeed, what all could He show us, help us accomplish if we weren’t still busy still being whatever this is that we’ve become?

Maybe someday we’ll get there. I just hope it’s not one day too late.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold