Day 4067 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

2 Corinthians 4:18 NIV

Past the present

For the promise has never proven present in either the present nor the past. Rather every promise ever given is one always given for the future as, well, that’s exactly where we’re going and so that seems the very best place to place what is anything measured as a promise. And that’s because all promises are generally considered for something good, helpful, hopeful or elsewise beneficial. Granted, there are more weighty promises that are still considered promises, but they’re more generally considered threats.

And make no mistake, sometimes the two walk hand-in-hand.

But in general terms each of us have usually at least some say in which we find if even they do. And in truth the two do coexist inside this faith that is in Christ who is in us, or at least died to be so as to help us leave both behind what was/is a life that deserves the more threatening kind of promise as is to be soon proven in eternal punishment and that for what has truly been a rather defiant denial of what is the decidedly more hopeful promise of what is eternal life.

We may not have much say inside this fight as salvation is something won not in works done by us but rather given freely by the grace of a God who has reserved the right to differentiate those who are salvageable from the more to be proven elsewise. Indeed, He’s told us plain that He shall have mercy upon those to whom He shows mercy whereas those to whom He doesn’t show mercy are left then merciless in what can only then forever remain lives entirely the same.

Merciless.

For this is perhaps the very best way for us to arrive upon a simple summation of the very sum of everything done by everyone under the sun wherein herein there is still nothing new but rather only technologically advanced versions of the very same perversions that putrefied those who wasted this life long before we had the chance to do the same with what are phones in our hands but the same hate, doubt, deceit inside our hearts.

Indeed, we are merciless. As in we are a people who show increasingly less mercy, pity, kindness, caring. Truly, it seems as if we see what is a world that cares about more nonsense every single day but then among those things cared about are never seen those worth the worry. No, we’re rather quite stuck inside what’s become a world of viral vileness that continually amounts to nothing but a gross lack of life inside a life that’s being lost the same as the time we give to worrying about what’s popular at the moment.

Why?

Because moments know to do only one thing:

Pass.

In fact, notwithstanding however you may personally define a moment (be it something measured in a specific amount of time or just a baser matter of feelings) the fact is that our entire lives as we’ve lived them however we’ve lived them and for whatever they’ve been lived, they’ve each been made up of what were moments that we did have but now have no more. They are gone. They are over. They are history. This is indeed the entire point, premise, purpose of what is a memory.

A moment in which a memory is made is but a snapshot of what was a moment in which something happened that was so monumental, either good or bad, that it left a mark that we then carry with us for however long said memory is supposed to last.

Which is itself something that I’m personally quite convinced is also a piece of evidence as to just how little say we have in any of this journey that we call life.

For I remember so many things from my past without yet knowing why while also remembering things that I seriously don’t want to remember any longer whilst also knowing that I’ve not remembered what were probably a few moments that I may have well wished I had.

And that’s all because we have been given the gift of a memory for what may for here always remain purposes that we may never fully understand.

Because God is mysterious sometimes.

Which is a good thing.

Why?

Because if He were something we could always see He’d then too be easy to find. And if He were easy to find then everyone would. And if everyone could then nobody would be doing the vast majority of what we do. But that we do what we do which is so easily defined as things we ought not to, well, this oddly enough, in a clearly backwards manner, forms what is yet again an evidence of God. Because for there to be bad things in existence demands that there too be the presence of an untarnished goodness against which we compare them to realize their particular badness.

This is what we’ve been talking about for a few days now.

It’s this reality in which we walk in which reality is sometimes hard. Truly, I think we all would agree that life is at times entirely miserable. There’s pain, there’s fear, there’s worry. Some days find us waiting for the better things for which we’d hoped while conducting said waiting through what are things that make our hopes seem only that much more hopeful as they’re entirely hopeless as defined by the presence of the pain, the fear, the worry that we just discussed.

Indeed, this life is not easy. Some days it’s easier than others. But the truth is that rarely does there ever come a day in which everything goes exactly the way we’d like for it to. Instead most days tend to bring us something by surprise that causes us to lose those commonly sought estimations of comfort and the gains that we love to imagine inside complacency, sought so viciously because comfort and complacency are in fact easy.

That’s why they’re so common!

But they’re easy because we can see them, feel them, know them thus. And this achieves for us a rather resolved resolve as we know that we can repeat what is far easier than we can even begin to pretend we might eventually understand the sum of all that isn’t. This is in fact why we so love our routines and the patterns upon which they dance. It’s because they’re things that we know we know how to do. And when you add enough of them on top of each other what you end up with is something that looks a whole lot like a life.

Because it does in fact encompass as much time and thought and worry and waiting and winning and losing and loving and living as we’ve come to estimate a life might.

But the problem is that all our plans and preferences and pretenses and their patterns really only ever accomplish is nothing more than arriving us at this place in mind in which our lives are forced to fit the known that is. And while that’s easy as it all but instantly extinguishes any need for such things as learning or growth, living a life without learning or growing can only ever leave us knowing whatever it is that we think we know about what’s then only been already fairly understood thanks to our having agreed to either withstand it or stand next to it for however long it’s taken us to become so accustomed to it to mind not the idea of staying.

For that is the general outcome of every single routine.

They’re these things that accomplish this retirement from trying anything else. They prevent us from seeking for something different, trying something new, learning something novel. Routines are patterns so repeatable that we feel entirely obliged if not in fact obligated to repeat them. After all, we’re the ones who made them! And this idea really feeds well into this god-complex that we have inside. Which is itself nothing more than a pattern we’ve seen repeat countless times within this world in which everyone loves to live as if they’re the masters of their own makings.

We’ve in fact all lived like that.

And we’ve made patterns in doing so that have since become routines that bring with them plans that usually involve only our doing more of the same things over and over again.

Why?

Because we know we can’t get lost so long as we agree to only ever look for whatever it is that we’ve already seen well enough to have found enough to have measured up to what now amounts to our estimation of what our lives are meant to be.

Not that our lives are perfect as, again, we’ve been talking about the various pains and miseries met within them for days now. But alas they’re often seen as apparently being just close enough that we’ve arrived at this frame of mind in which all we seem to really seek for anymore are just tiny ways in which to tinker away on the way in which we perform our patterns. No big movements. No massive changes. No major chances taken.

Again, not because we actually think that what we’re doing, how we’re living, who we are and where we’re found is truly as good as all the above can be.

Mostly just because we know that anything different would demand from us an investment of time, effort and the chance that we were wrong to have left what we had become convinced was good enough simply because, again, it was something we couldn’t really mess up.

And being a people of pride who thereby hate making mistakes, we absolutely adore all those things that we can’t miss or mess up or mistake.

So we eventually settle upon this decision to mainly just stay whoever we are which is defined by whatever we’re doing which is, more often than not, defined by wherever we are. All the above only because all of it’s seen. It’s known. It’s already been learned, found, figured out. Indeed, we all know who we are at this moment. We know what are lives are. We know what our plans are, what our dreams are. We know almost perfectly how to stay whatever, whoever, wherever we are because, well, we’re here!

Thus it boils down to a simple matter of rinse and repeat.

Again, not much room for error.

But so too is there little room for forever.

Why?

Because what is may only be for another breath. What we know may be forgotten by tomorrow. What matters now might mean nothing next week. This is something we’ve all of us seen and felt more times than we remember. And that’s something of an obvious irony in that it seems we’ve managed to somehow forget all those moments in which we were proven wrong.

Strange how that works, isn’t it?

Well, no, no it isn’t. And that’s because we’ve again become a people of pride who find it protected inside our doing of as little that’s new or hard or uncertain as possible. For there’s just too much room for making mistakes, getting things wrong, in fact getting lost inside doing something different.

Especially when it’s something so different as agreeing to walk a path we’ve never walked taken in a direction we’ve never gone toward a place we’ve never been behind a Savior we cannot see who continues to say all those things that seem to constantly find all these things inside our lives that shouldn’t be there after all.

Meaning then that we’re now tasked with not only finding an entirely new way of living but that at the hands of letting go and leaving behind probably pretty much everything we’ve ever known.

Yeah, it’s fair to say that there’s more than a little room for messing up inside all that!

And that’s why the path is so lonely and untraveled. It’s because most of those who are here remain in love with their life lived out there on the wide open and easy. Indeed, broad is the road which leads to destruction and many there be which walk upon it. In fact, most of them aren’t even walking anymore. They’re dancing on it! They’re having an absolute ball, the very time of their lives living their lives as if their lives are already as close to perfect as they can get them, or plan on getting them before too much longer.

But only because most here seem to still assume that perfection is something we can find in this time in which we live this life as if time isn’t running out. And that’s an idea that so many believe because, well, we haven’t seen it run out yet. Rather time has been ticking away inside literally every single day that both we and everyone else has ever lived.

Time is known. Time is therefore trusted. Because time continues to prove itself trustworthy as, well, it seems that we obviously still have it.

Much the same as we always have inside all those moments which have since become memories of the best of times, the worst of times, all the times in which our lives proved so unique that we found ourselves scarred by the opportunity to relive them whenever we wanted.

But friends, what if reliving the same time over and over again isn’t a life? What if our living so focused on this time isn’t a life? What if our reliance upon time always being what time’s always been is nothing but risking our lives upon what will prove for us what it’s already proven for billions of others?

For there’ve been plenty who’ve already found that their share of time has reached its end.

What will happen, where will we go, who will we be by the time that our time has too?

Granted, these are things that we again probably don’t think about because we all seem rather content to continue thinking about how time isn’t running out as we instead continue to do the very things that perfectly prove our vast disinterest in coming to lose what is rather a life we continue to love.

But still, just because we don’t think about them doesn’t mean that they’re not supposed to be thought about.

For that’s basically the underlying premise of faith itself. It’s to think about strange things. It’s to wander toward worry rather than away, seeking for some way to assuage the wonder within our learning what to do with it rather than trying only to avoid it. Indeed, faith is the substance of things unseen, the ability to believe in all that’s unknown, the daring to do something different in the hopes of finding something better.

Yes, faith is firmly affixed to betterment as, well, why believe in anything less than everything improved?

But do you see the issue?

It’s that we can’t find something better than everything that already is inside of everything that already is. We can’t grow in learning when all we know is all we’ve already learned. We cannot improve that which has already reached its maximum potential.

And therein we finally find the question:

Have we and/or our lives truly already found the fullness of their potential? Have we indeed reached our life’s pinnacle?

Are we perfect and is our life the same?

And, if not, then why dare stay?

Because it’s easy? Because it’s safe? Because we know we can’t mess up the very sum of everything we’re already doing? Because we know we can’t get lost so long as we allow life itself to revolve around our doing never anything new?

Sure, those are all true.

But friends, when has there ever been a promise given for that which already was?

Rather is not every promise only given for something that as of now isn’t?

For who hopes for what they already have? Who dreams of where they already are? Who longs for a life that they’ve already been living?

No, rather we hope for better, for bigger, for brighter or lighter or elsewise more meaningful.

Why?

Because perfect isn’t life. Rather life is hard here. Life is here heavy. Life is still at times plenty miserable, and that then clearly despite the fact that we all try so hard to convince ourselves that our lives are good enough as they are so that we needn’t embrace the risk involved in our doing something different.

But friends, so long as we continue to confine ourselves inside of all that’s easy, all that’s safe, all that’s already known and obviously seen, we’re then missing out on everything that isn’t.

And no, I’m not saying that God’s called us to become risk takers who do a bunch of entirely dangerous stuff. What I am saying is that for long enough we’ve lived inside these lines that we’ve either drawn for ourselves or allowed a fallen world to draw around us seeking to keep us who we are, where we are. Because such is safe. It is easy. It is simple.

But it definitely isn’t everything!

And that’s because there’s no possible way that we’ve seen everything there is to see. Nobody has ever learned all there is to know. None of us have ever gone to all the places there are to go, and that even in our own hometowns. And, granted, there are reasons for at least some of that as, well, yeah, going to a strip joint or one of these vile new pot shops probably isn’t where we need to be as there’s nothing there we need to know or see.

But friends, what about all the other things that we don’t know or haven’t seen that we haven’t the same reasons for having missed?

What of all the life that we’ve not yet lived? Is our every tomorrow, however many we’ve left, is it truly something to be considered best if all we do with it is whatever we determine to do today?

But yet is that not something we’ve all done countless times before simply because we determined that what we did, where we went, who we were inside of a today was the safe choice, the easy option, the sure thing?

I understand that there’s risk involved in everything we don’t know. And again, there are good reasons for our avoiding some things. But when it comes to God, to Christ, to the Holy Spirit and that way of life that the First sent the Second in order to die to send the Third so as to lead us unto our living it, I don’t really see any real reason we might have to continue avoiding it.

Because if that life meant enough to Christ to die so that we could even have the chance to experience it, then I think it fair to say that we’re missing out on something pretty special so long as we continue to run away from it back to the same old lives that we’ve always known.

Especially considering those same old lives were/are lived in what was/is a way that cost Him his.

Friends, my point is that He did all He’s done because He had more for us to see, something better for us to be, somewhere better for us to go than where our same old deserved to. And sure, the path there is scary. It is hard. It is unfamiliar and asks then of us things that we’re not sure how to give. But friends, the path ends in our living forever.

What then do we really have to lose?

Well, short answer is found here.

It’s that all we have to lose is only that which is seen. A heavy request to be sure, but one made far easier by His reminding us that what is seen is only temporary. That means it’ll all end. We’re going to lose it all anyway. Why then spend our lives holding on so tight to what we can’t hold forever?

No, rather let us fix our eyes unto a life spent looking for what we can’t find here. Not because that’s in any way easy or will ever even make any sense. But simply because we stand a better chance of finding what we’ve never seen than we do keeping hold of what the grave is meant to take away.

We may not get everything right. We will mess up and fall short. We’ll even still go through the same trials and struggles that would have come anyway, maybe even more. But the thing that’ll change is the hope of where we’re going. And that because hope is able to lead us toward everything better than wherever we already are.

Because you can’t put limits on what you can’t see.

And well, isn’t that what makes eternity the hope that it’s supposed to be?

#LeaveNoSoulUntold