Day 4064 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

1 Peter 1:6 NIV

In all this

As in everything. The waiting, the worry, the wanting to go home once we realize this ain’t it. The promises, the punishments, the precariousness of their being always mixed inside what is so often a life that is quite hard and impressively heavy. The hope and the hardship which allows it to shine only brighter as we stumble ever closer. The joy of knowing where we’re going and learning as we go that it’s not what we go through that matters or makes the difference but that it’s rather the anticipation of the destination that’ll define all we go through as meaningless once we get there.

Yes, what matters in this story of God’s surpassing glory is just that:

His glory surpasses both all understanding, yes, even ours, but that most often as it even surpasses this passage aimed right through the heart of the rest of the worst that this wicked world both has to offer and insists we see.

But please don’t get me wrong, it doesn’t make it easy. Worth it? Yes. Easy? No.

And that’s because whilst in this place we will go both through trials and to those places in which we meet them. While we’re here we will hear of things being said and done which ought not be said, done nor even brought to mind. We will, while still here, we will witness a very vast display of moral decay and the human wickedness toward which it inspires so many of those around us to become absolutely nothing of anything that anyone should ever want to be.

A sight to see of a life to live that we happy few have already determined to lay down inside the giving it over unto the working of God’s will for our lives, the eternal ones, in whatever way and for whatever reason He may see so fit to fit so much of whatever He will into our walk that is now aimed unto that place in which all that’s here isn’t anymore.

That is the promise.

That is the hope.

That is our home!

And the promise of that most hope-filled home is one which needs to grow in us so as to instill in us a growing willingness to welcome whatever weather His will may blow our way, and that however and from whomever it may blow. All of it to teach us only to walk by faith and not by sight, not because we’ll become blind along the way but because we’ll rather have our eyes opened to see the very sum of everything that is being done down here that will even probably make hell seem entirely justified.

Yes, this world will, in these last days, however many of them we may have, this world will ensure that our lives here are lived in such a way that everyone will have every reason and excuse entirely revoked and utterly removed as to this still common consideration of the Gospel being foolish and the message then of the cross foolishness. Indeed, this world will help us see the very difference between not only good and bad, right and wrong, righteous and wicked, but this place will do so in the visible display of the difference between life and death.

And we’re seeing this begin to unfold as we speak.

For there’s anymore this general relaxing of the appreciation for the sanctity of life itself being shown upon the evening news all the time. It’s witnessed in all these petty arguments over politics and the power and popularity upon which they rely. It’s seen inside this common inconsideration of those around us as being more like us than they are as different as we’ve been inspired to see them. It’s heard inside the words with which we refer to even they who are strangers, passing judgement upon others without even knowing their name.

It’s proven in a society’s doing of things unto one another that in no way exhibits an understanding that those amongst whom we’re standing are our sisters and we their brothers as sadly so many simply have yet to receive that realization that we’re all called to be the very children of God, adopted unto sonship and daughterhood by He who is so very good that He gave Himself in our stead to save us from the death that He died in our place to prove we’ve in Him a place saved in that most blessed hope of that coming home.

No, the tragic reality remains that very few here seem to see any legitimacy to that hope. Rather most here continue to live as if they are home in what is a world in which division sells faster than unity and thus all of us are now incredibly more prone to hatred and the hostility toward which it at the very least leans if not ultimately leads than we are the love and kindness that are expressed in mercy and compassion and grace given where grace isn’t due.

That’s the problem though, and in every way one which proves just how lost we are and how little time we’ve likely left.

It’s that there’s not many left who even seem to believe in grace as rather we witness every single day a world growing colder in every possible way. Truly, I’m either to be considered a young buck still or an old man headed over the hill depending upon the age of those reading this, but at even 38 I find that I cannot today count nor recount all the ways in which both this world has changed and thus too the lives we live within it. Rather most days it just feels as if the world I grew up in is gone and all we’re left with is this increasingly strange replacement in which nothing feels right anymore.

But then again, perhaps that’s just because I seem to at least plausibly see myself as the old man with every bit of grump and gloat that comes and goes as our time goes wherever it’s gone.

But the point remains.

And that’s that it is gone.

Both the time I’ve had and my desire to have all that much left to be honest. Both the life I’ve lived and all the reasons in which I lived it like I did. All the hopes I had for what the world could become and all those I find myself struggling mightily to hang onto as the world continues to prove nothing of the everything better that I still remember almost everyone insisting it would be.

We were supposed to have flying cars!

Instead all we got was social media stars and the viral stupidities for which they’ve become famous. We got politicians who lord it over us and a culture that loves every second of it. We got jobs we hate and never enough money in the bank. We got inflation and all the frustration it brings just trying to buy groceries. We got so much anger and resentment that so many have just retired unto this complex of never leaving their houses so they needn’t worry about ever having to talk to anyone, all of whom we’re all convinced is but one wrong word away from an offense and its apparently mandated argument.

Yes, all we got is unhappy, unholy, unhelpful, unfriendly, unfaithful, and yet somehow unaware of how we got here and why we’ve any reason to strive still to be anywhere, anyone else.

Rather we just stay. We remain. We welcome the rain we hate so as to avoid the pain we hate even more. Truly, we are all scared to death of hurting physically and so we agree daily to just ache mentally and break emotionally and struggle so spiritually that all we seem to have to say anymore is just another story about how bad our lives are going.

Even when they aren’t going bad at all.

All because we’ve become convinced that pity is something that we should seek as incessantly as we do.

And indeed, as that one verse reads, there are even those who have this hope in Christ that only accounts for anything in this life as they live this life using His Name as something of a punchline or prosperity scheme meant to help them achieve or attain all the things that they want for themselves in this one hole in which their every hope is being forced to fit with their clear intent upon always staying put.

But friends, why stay?

Either for all we have or as whoever we already are? Is that which already is truly more than enough? Is this life we’re living in a world that’s falling, is it all we want out of this? Have we indeed found our best inside this societal assumption as to the necessity of living our best lives? Can a best life be lived in this one place in which life will be lived least?

Can we consider what we’re living a life considering all the hatred and hardship so always inside?

I can’t. Tried for a while. Truly. I made a fair go at letting go of every hope for anything better as I instead just tried my best to see the best in this place, giving always benefit of my doubt to those who continue to doubt in the benefit it’s meant to mean. But somewhere along the way as the streets grew mean and that because of the masses crumbling along them, I just gave up. I gave in.

I let Him win and I agreed to let go of any hope of this ever again feeling like home as I simply cannot seem to make it seem as if I belong.

Because the truth is that none of us do. Many still try and most will try all their lives. But friends, my question is what is there to gain in all our strain trying to find our place inside a place in which there is pain? What shall we benefit by trying to believe that this world can become the better that it never has? In what way shall we profit were we to gain all the world when so much of it is lost in this perpetual darkness and a growing disinterest in doing anything about it?

What is there to gain here?

Because here is where we learn fear, worry, doubt, resentment, anger, jealousy, greed, gluttony. This world teaches us materialism and vandalism and communism and capitalism and capital victims of what are crimes against humanity carried out by those in fancy suits who don’t even care to speak as if leaders anymore. This place inspires us toward hatred and dissent and division and this constant revision of our every dream when it seems still that everything all but insists that our hopes for better are best left in the past.

Here is where we learn to see Christ as only a theory fit for the foolish imagination of what are widely considered a few losers who spend their lives missing out on all the fun and fame that’s so easily found in the pursuit of profit and pleasure.

Indeed, this is where we’ve learned this idea that something can be too good to be true.

But friends, shouldn’t those be the things that we do believe in? Shouldn’t we strive to keep alive the hopes we have of things so impossible that we almost laugh whenever we think of them? Shouldn’t we want to know the joy of seeing everything here as loss so that we can finally understand just how much we stand to gain? Shouldn’t we welcome the worry, the waiting, the misery of it all inside what is an audacity to imagine that one day all the misery will be gone?

This world has taught us that it’s best to believe that our best is something meant to fade as we grow old and gray and unable then to carry on living the way we enjoyed trying when we were younger and far less wise, or wiser depending upon the direction we’ve chosen to go along the way.

And yet in this world we all see clearly so much pain, experience so much suffering, endure so much temptation and meet daily with enough strife to choke out a life.

Why live as if this is where our best is?

Friends, this world will in the end prove either the only Heaven some ever knew or rather the closest to hell they ever got.

Which seems like the best outcome?

Personally, feeling all this hardship and seeing all this hatred and hearing all this tragedy, it’s convinced me to stop looking for treasure here as I just don’t have it in me anymore to imagine that I might find something here that could forever turn my attention, my awareness, my understanding away from realizing just how decrepit this world’s becoming and how desensitized to it we’ve all become.

No, there is nothing here but trial and torment, temptation and taxes.

I’m just sick of seeking for my best in the mixes.

Because that’s just it. No matter what joys we may feel or how amazing a day may go, there always comes another that doesn’t go the same. Rather this place is this constant blend of better with worse, light with dark, hope with hostility. Why believe that this is how it’s all supposed to be? For we’re told that God isn’t a God of chaos or confusion but rather one of order and compassion.

And, well, this world is making it easier all the time to imagine such a thing.

Why?

Because this world just continues to do all these things, say all these things, believe all these things that seem to prove that so many here are just lost. Indeed, this world has become the perfect backdrop for a belief to begin as we see every single day something that shouldn’t be the way it is. The darkness in this world helps us to imagine His light. The hardships we endure help to believe in a day in which we’ll feel no such pain anymore. The hatred we hear about all the time it all combines to help us dream of a place in which only love remains.

All it takes is just enough imagination and courage to consider that there could exist such a place that is everything this world isn’t.

And well, as the days grow darker and these lives then harder, that courage is becoming quite a bit easier because some of us just have this still, small something in us that refuses to let us agree that all we see and all we hear is all that all of this is meant to be.

Even the good things as, again, even they bring with them some measure of cost or consequence in this place.

Shouldn’t be this way.

No, rather I’ve become entirely convinced that this life is our war and this world the battlefield upon which it’s to be waged until that time in which He will return to sort the first from the last, flipping our understanding of the standings as He’s so known for doing. Yes, I consider that we’re meant to lose here, to suffer here, to experience such misery that we can finally begin to believe in the mercy that experienced a measure of it we could never imagine so that we’d never have to fathom anything other than a faith placed in He who took ours.

That’s all I care to think about anymore.

Not that I don’t get caught up thinking about other stuff as this world continues to insist that we care about that, talk about this, worry about something new every single day as we’re told all the time of some new trouble on the nightly news.

But those are the moments in my life in which peace and hope are their most distant. It’s in those moments spent looking, listening unto the world that I feel the most disquiet inside, the most distrust, the most despair. I’m even growing to despise those days in which I do things that I enjoy as I just don’t want to risk running back to that still-held assumption that this life should be enjoyable in between the many moments in which it’s beyond miserable.

Why?

Because I want to retain that ability to look forward to something. I want to make the best use of this opportunity to peruse the possibility of Heaven and the audacity to pursue He who died to lead the way there. I want to keep hold as much of a child’s belief as I can in what is a world that wants us only to believe that growing up and getting all serious is all we’re supposed to do.

No, I want to laugh even in the face of adversity. I want to cry but tears of joy. I want to experience pain knowing that it’s all passing away. I want to love like I’ve nothing to lose and live willing to lose everything I have so I’ve nothing holding me back when He says I can go.

Because I believe with all I am that it’s never once been about what we go through but rather where it all goes to.

That’s what matters.

Not the battles. Not the failures. Not all these fears we’ve been inspired to have in regard to things which mean nothing in the scope of eternity.

No, what matters most is where our hope is as we’ve, for still today at least, this passing chance to not place our hope in a life here going smoothly or faith being easy or our finding some way to have the best of both this world and that still to come. But rather we’ve been afforded a welcome unto a faith that’s willing to lose all we can see inside this belief that that which is seen is only temporary anyway.

Again, not that it makes anything any easier as rather this life is clearly still often miserable.

But friends, while learning to see our joys and pleasures and treasures as temporary also means that so too can we see that our trials and troubles and torments are temporary too.

And that helps us more than we know or could ever imagine it might as it steals the worry from this life and replaces it with a humbling willingness to wait through what is a war we’re called to walk through in a world filled with a wickedness that we’ll have to wade through.

So be it.

For this was never meant to be our reward. This is just the field upon which each of us decides for ourselves what reward we seek and where we seek it.

The hard part is that the best is always saved for last in regard to this faith we’ve the chance to have. Most here just aren’t willing to wait for that. But friends, considering all the darkness we’re surrounded by and all the harm it so often does to us, seems we’re all waiting for something better anyway.

Please don’t settle for this world’s blend of good and bad. Rather dare to hope in a place where nothing bad is even remembered anymore.

May not make the road there any easier.

But knowing where we’re going sure makes the walk far simpler!

#LeaveNoSoulUntold