Day 4052 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Romans 8:12 NIV

What remains?

Both of the opportunities to which we were at first allotted what’s long been a life spent not worrying much if all about them and too the time in which we can change that? For I’m somehow convinced that I’ve often missed my chance as my life, though amazing, it’s not gone the way in which I know it should. For in His Word we read that He created us to do good and, well, I must admit that there’ve been many times inside my life in which I didn’t.

Rather there have been more than a lot of times in which my mind seemed to either care not as to what good possibly was or just wasn’t able to see it at all.

And this reality has caused me to wonder why. What was there in my life that kept me from seeing the better I could have been doing all of those times in which better ended up being further away than I thought it was in the moment? For isn’t that so often how life seems to go? We think we’re doing well as things are going pretty alright and yet then we look up one day quite far down the road only to realize we’re somehow looking back on all these mistakes we’d made along the way?

We call it regret as it so often deals with things we wish we could re-get the opportunity to somehow go back and do differently.

But we can’t because life doesn’t work like that. And yet what’s often so confusing is that, by this point, you’d think we all knew that. And yet, whether we do or don’t want to admit we might, the simple fact of life is that we continue to opt for these choices that speak in voices telling us what we want to hear, messages about avoiding fear and forsaking the fight and leaving even unfinished our faith as it too is often quite a scary and scrambled adventure into what always seems to remain the unknown.

But you see, that’s kind of my question.

What all don’t we know because of whatever it is that we can’t see is in the way of our knowing it?

Indeed, what’s in the way of our walking away from all that’s long held us back from the better that our regret over the past has long since proven wasn’t as great as we tried to make it seem? What remains clogging or cluttering the path He’s paved to our living a better way toward a brighter day? What is there in our lives that we’ve lived keeping alive that should have died long ago so that we could live for something more?

What remains of the more we could still be, and, well, just how much time have we left to find it?

Or might it actually be already gone?

Wise or not I worry about this kind of thing all the time anymore. I wonder about what all I’m missing as I lie here stressing about this life I’ve ruined upon this floor of a faith that I’ve allowed to flounder so many times simply because it didn’t fit where I wanted it to in life. I wonder about all the people I’ve not met, all the chances I didn’t get, all the truth I wouldn’t listen to because I thought I knew what the truth was supposed to sound like.

I wonder so often about the life I haven’t lived because I chose to live the one I did in which I know now so much regret that it’s the safest bet of all to imagine that I did in fact get a whole lot really wrong.

And so I do wonder as to what all remains of the opportunities that He gave back when He first created me to be what I must confess is probably nothing much of what all I’ve become instead. And yet, and maybe even more than that, what remains in our way of changing that? What remains in our path that’s stood still as the same obstacle we allowed it to become back whenever it became one that we agreed to allow to hinder our path, to block our belief, to burden our better in such a way that we just gave up on it?

And, well, just how much longer can we afford to give up on better before it just agrees to let us be nothing of what all He created us to become?

None of this is to say that we’re not any of us better in any way as I’m sure we are. Truly, I know that all of us have changed, have grown, have come to know what is hopefully a better life than the one we’d lived in the past. I honestly hope that we have all known some kind of mental, physical, personal, spiritual growth.

But my worry anymore is what all of such things haven’t we known?

And, well, why?

What is there in life that continues to keep us from going further, trying harder, finding more, feeling better? Granted, that last one can quickly become a stone blocking our path too as we anymore seem always able to allow our feelings, and our preference for the measurably more comfortable ones, to cloud our consideration of why we’re here and what we’re doing.

Indeed, there’ve been so many times in all of our lives in which we chose to chase after comfort and missed a lot of growth, purpose, improvement because of it.

So thus it seems that even such things as comfort can become one of those things that blocks our path toward better.

How many times has that been the case without our ever being able to notice it simply because life felt good in that moment in which we felt comfortable, safe, relaxed?

What all does our feeling like that make us miss?

And, again, how many opportunities at those same growths might we have left to risk upon our tendency to try for that which is easy rather than the decidedly more sketchy?

Again, these are the things that I find myself thinking about all the time anymore. Not necessarily in these same words really. Rather most of the time they pop in mind as questions such as ‘why do I feel so off?’ or ‘why did that go wrong?’ or ‘why isn’t this making any sense?’, ‘what am I missing?’, ‘why am I so unhappy?’, ‘why does nothing feel right anymore?’.

I have so many of these questions which seem only able to come from this place of an honesty that knows I’ve honestly missed something, messed something up, misplaced an effort or given some energy to what simply wasn’t, isn’t worth it. But alas, such has become so commonplace inside this place that I dare say we don’t even realize it anymore.

Rather we all just keep going along this path of least resistance always ready and ever willing to shift our stride or turn our mind or simply walk away altogether should the going ever get tough.

All because we’ve become convinced that something’s wrong whenever it does.

Indeed, it seems to me that we’ve come to think that God’s love is supposed to ensure our road to Heaven is easy. That our journey to and through salvation is something that should feel safe and always make sense. That our growth in hope, both in Him and then that too known inside the many changes He intends to start making in our hearts, our minds, our eyes, our lives is supposed to come simple.

As if we’re just supposed to close our eyes to sleep one night only to open them again the very next morning entirely fixed and put back together with absolutely no effort needed on our part.

Likely believed because we don’t want to offer any effort to the sum of everything that we don’t easily understand.

But you see, that’s just it my friends!

What all don’t we understand? What all can’t we see from where we stand? What all remains in our way of walking His Way? And what remains of however many chances we had in total to do just that before this life proves totaled and from it there’s no walking away?

Don’t we understand that that’s the promise of that coming Judgment Day?

That we will then receive the reward we’re due for all we’ve done as will be known as split in half between what we did and what all we didn’t? That He’s promised to give to us the just due that we’re due in light of all we’d lived to do, to say, to think, to try? What then haven’t we tried? What couldn’t we do because either didn’t want to, didn’t see a way to, didn’t know how to? What all didn’t we say as we instead wasted our words upon whatever it was that we said instead?

Indeed, this is one that’s been in the back of my mind for years at this point, even have notes of it typed up for a post at some point, but what if we knew that we only had a set number of words which we could speak across the entirety of our lives?

Say, for simplicity’s sake, we each have 9 billion words that we will say between the time we’re born and the time we’ll die.

Sure, sounds like a lot. But the simple fact is that regardless of the sum, every single word we’ve then said is one that we can’t say going forward.

Everything we do is one action that is cemented in our choice as to what we do in life.

And yet we all continue to live as if nothing means all that much. As if we’re just free to do whatever we want to. As if it’s somehow justifiable to just continue living this life so vile as to allow so many things to distract us from what Christ literally died to show us.

What did He show us?

That we have an obligation but that it has absolutely nothing to do with what we’ve wasted it upon. For His death proves that our having lived to please the flesh is something done that deserves death. Why? Because the flesh desires that which is contrary to the Spirit and the Spirit that which is contrary to the flesh. They are indeed at war with one another!

And yet we live as if physical and spiritual harmony are not only possible but should in fact be our priority?

Friends, where inside of this incessant seeking for comfort is there found that faith such as Paul had in which he discussed striking a blow to his body in order to make the body his slave as opposed to the commonality of what remains the other way? For indeed, all of us strike only blows to our faith seeking to make it fit wherever it is that we want it to.

It shouldn’t be this way!

Faith shouldn’t have been allowed to become the thing that has to bend and twist in order to fit wherever, whatever, whenever we want it to. Rather faith, a matter worth dying for as far the cross contends, it should be the sum of everything we do and our every reason why.

Has it been?

Or rather have we been playing this life as if a game, something like a puzzle in which we see ourselves as the only ones who know what the picture is supposed to look like and that it’s all supposed to go so easily together that we just throw up our hands and walk away whenever it doesn’t?

Truly, I cannot tell you how many improvements, growths, changes and their hopes that I’ve walked away from thus far.

Why?

Because I cannot possibly know them now!

You see, that’s the gravity of every single choice we make in this life. Everything we do comes at the decision not to do something else. Every word we say is said with breath that we didn’t then use to say a different word. Every thought we think takes time and energy away from the others that we didn’t for whatever reason that we assumed that to be the right choice to make.

And yet, having each of us known regret, what then makes us as sure as we seem to be now that we’re not now getting things wrong still?

Indeed, what remains in our way of all the better that we could still be?

And, well, if the flesh and its being comfortable and successful and satisfied is still on the table and thus of any importance, how can we know the more that the Spirit was sent to lead us toward?

Again, it’s said in Scripture that the flesh and the Spirit are in war with each other. Thus seeming to say that one is always in the way of the other. But the problem then seems to be that we all have spent a great deal of our time, of our effort, of our energy, of our lives upon pleasing the flesh.

Does this not mean then that within all those moments in which we did as the flesh desired that we only died to what the Spirit wanted for us to do?

How is it that we continue to miss it if not for the flesh continuing to get in our way? Indeed, how many days do we waste worrying about whatever it is that the flesh wants? How much time do we spend trying to make ourselves feel good? How many times in life have we chosen to treat ourselves to some kind of reward for a job we thought was well done or done well?

I’ll tell you the truth as I always try to, I literally hate the word ‘treat’.

It just feels dirty to me.

Why?

Because what do we deserve to be treated for? Other than sin and the shame it ought to bring but somehow so often doesn’t?

No, we’ve all come upon this way of life in which the rewards are constant and the responsibilities nonexistent and we somehow think that this is how it’s supposed to be.

Clearly then missing the obligation we have to uphold these fleeting opportunities we’ve been given to have become by now more than we’ve become.

For what have we become but distracted, disinterested, indifferent even?

And to what?

To everything!

Christ especially!

All because He came to remind us that we’re here to be more than servants of a flesh that is destined for death because of all the times inside our lives in which we knew the right thing to do but chose instead to do something else. He came to show us what a life lived for the flesh will receive as the just due for all that’s done seeking to satisfy ourselves.

Many cheered as they enjoyed watching this man suffer, some turned away because they simply couldn’t take seeing the sheer brutality of our sinful depravity and what God has determined it deserves.

Where do we fall on that line between happily denying Christ and simply never looking His way because we know the horror of what we’ll see?

And is not our fear of suffering only one more thing that’s so often been allowed to block the way of our walking His Way?

My point is that so often in life we’ve chosen to do what was easy, to choose what felt safe, to prefer that which profited us in some way. And yet now looking back upon my own past it seems as though all I can see is this maze of misunderstandings and the many, many mistakes I’ve made because of them. All of them leading me to this very moment in time in which I awoke once more only to find that not much feels right.

For anymore I’m just tired, I’m angry, I’m sad, I’m unhappy.

Why?

Truth is that most of the time I don’t have any idea. Rather anymore it seems as though my mind is always racing a million miles a minute trying to make sense of all the stuff that I’ve willfully allowed to clutter up what He came to make clear and level and simple.

Every single chosen obstacle placed by my hands because my mind seems still to assume that my life is supposed to be easy, safe, comfortable.

Friends, easy and simple can be the same thing but they don’t have to be.

And I think a lot of our struggles come because we continue to live trying everything we can to force them to be. And this too becomes yet another stumbling block that we place in our own way of what could have been, should have been a good race before all these other things cut in on us and threw us off course into a life spent chasing other things.

What all remains of those other things that we’ve looked for in life? What remains in our lives of the lives He came to save us from? What remains in His way of helping us to leave behind all that we can’t take with us whenever we go wherever we will?

And what remains of the opportunities He’s given us to get ready to go?

Truth is we can’t know as none know the day nor the hour upon which we’ll leave.

But friends, our getting older inside what is a world that’s getting darker should help us understand that we will leave.

Whether or not we ever do anything to get ready is on us. But the problem is that we’ve allowed for so many distractions and denials that we’ve now each spent years living as if we won’t ever be anywhere other than here. And that’s fine. If the kind of life you’ve come to live in what is this one world in which we all live one is all that you want for or from one, then good for you.

I personally just can seem to shake this feeling that there’s just something more that I’m not seeing. There’s still something in my way of being ready for that Day. Don’t know what it is but I have a good idea:

It’s everything that isn’t Him.

And while that doesn’t make it any easier, it at least gives me an idea as to where to start looking for things to clear away while I can.

What remains in your life that’s keeping you from the life that Christ died for you to live?

I just pray we all start working to clear it all away while we have the chance to show Him we’re trying. Not because our salvation depends on our efforts but simply because if we give no effort to our hope of salvation then how can we ever assume we have it?

And maybe you still think you don’t need it.

But what if that’s just another lie blocking you from the better life that God created you to live?

What remains of that better life, and well, will we find it in time or continue spending our time messing around with all the other stuff that doesn’t matter?

Choice is ours but the consequences will come from Him.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold