Day 4068 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Hebrews 11:1 NIV

The shift

Not sure when it takes place nor even how long it takes as rather it’s a change that itself aligns rather well with this word written here. For this turning of a life on its head is something that feels different, seems different, looks, sounds, is different nearly all the time as even time itself begins to take on a quite varied appreciation from what’s long been but a measure of what we think might matter. No, in truth everything changes when He starts changing us via the hope we’re called to have and the strange courage in which it’s had.

Because, well, it is entirely unlike anything we’ve ever seen or thus assumed we’ve known.

And that’s because most of our lives have found us alive inside what is this mind made of this belief of mainly only that which we can see as seeing is a sensation easily proven. And, well, being a people of pride nearly perfected, we do indeed love those things which we cannot fail or be proven mistaken about. This is in fact why our lives tend anymore, as always before I imagine, to dishevel into our doing of mostly only the same things over and over and over again.

It’s because in doing so we’re removing risk every time we do them. The more we practice something the better at it we become. The more we see something the more certain we are that it’s there. This is how we learn all the words to our favorite songs. We listen to them with the express intent of learning every part of them until we’ve heard them so much that it’s formed finally that memory of what’s being said and what the lyrics are which are saying it.

And there’s a confidence in that because it’s provable. It’s constant. It’s consistent. It’s unchanging, unchallenged and thus unchallenging. And while there are some of us who do still have this strange curiosity when it comes to things challenging, even those who do more often than not seek still for some place to pull off and become convinced that enough is enough.

Not because we’ve all completely lost our ability to believe there’s still something more but simply because along the way through this life we’ve all learned enough about that more to know that with more opportunity comes an equally increased risk of failure, of looking foolish, of feeling stupid. And, well, those just aren’t the things that a prideful people know to prefer.

Because they make us look contrary to this image that we’ve spent who knows how many years meticulously perfecting. And that image is of one who’s in control. Someone who has it all figured out. Someone who is so certain as to what they’re doing, and indeed so good at it, that they simply cannot get it wrong. And we love this image because it aligns rather perfect with the story we’ve cooked up inside our own minds in which these lives are meant to be masterpieces of our own designs.

But the issue comes in that when mixed together, this theory that our lives are our own to perfect as our pride may see fit with the fact that we’re thus afraid of all imperfection, well, what we eventually arrive at is this ever-shrinking list of things we’re willing to try, to imagine, to believe.

Why?

Because the risk we feel waiting inside the world finding out that we’re not who we’ve tried so hard to show ourselves to be becomes one of the very scariest things that we can imagine.

All because all we’ve become is but a stage performer paid in praise and adoringly showered in applause.

And we just can’t imagine letting go the glory we’ve gained in doing so. Because, well, such is pretty much all this world seeks for anymore. We’ve become so affixed to affirmation and adoration that we spend upwards of 7, 8, 10 hours a day staring at a screen either showing forth our acceptance of things that others are doing or rather doing things ourselves seeking such simple social acceptance.

Why?

Because we can see the likes. We can watch our number of followers increase. We can literally feel this wave of relief whenever we see that someone out there somewhere has chosen to support whatever it is that we’re doing. And this rush of being so constantly validated has only seemingly added a greater degree of willingness to do whatever it takes to keep the fans happy. Cut to today in which we exist through filters making us look better and ai making us sound better and, well, we’ve each now the ability to look, sound, live exactly how the rest of the world is and thus expects us to too.

For the more who do something the more those already doing it feel justified in their having chosen to not do something different.

It’s all a simple matter of ease and simplicity really. All of life has seemingly arrived at this place in both time and mind in which all we seem to think about is only looks, outward appearances, the things we see around us and our ensuring that they add up to our own personal estimation of what we believe our lives are supposed to look like. And in fact looks have become so important to us that we’ve throughout history resorted to doing some things dangerous potentially to measure up to the mold.

Such as starving ourselves, working out for hours on end, taking steroids, injecting ourselves with chemicals that have more side-effects than benefits, even going under the knife to try and make our life look more like whatever it is that we’ve become convinced it’s supposed to.

Why?

Because long ago we chose to ignore one simple request as was given us in God’s reminding us to not look at the outward appearance as there’s simply more to both a person and their purpose than the eye can see.

Yeah, forgot all that didn’t we?

Indeed we did because anymore we live for pretty much only that which the eye can see. Truly, our world is so lost inside every form of personal vanity that it’s actually quite amazing that we’ve any time at all to even acknowledge one another. Which, granted, even that’s becoming something of an antiquated practice as, well, we’ve just got so much going on anymore in what are lives in which all we’re living for is also all we can see.

Because it’s easy.

It’s easy to measure what we can witness. It’s easy to believe in what we can prove visually. It’s utterly simple to be assured of what our eyes know is standing, sitting right there before us. It’s easy to look into a mirror and measure the apparent goodness of the one staring back at us. Because reflections are facts. Pictures tell the whole story. In fact they say a picture’s worth a thousand words as it can accomplish a measure of evidence that really no amount of written attempts to do the same can ever quite achieve.

Because words ask that we believe what they say. A picture on the other hand shows us what we then needn’t endure the arduous task of believing anymore. For we can see all that’s being shown. We become then something of personal witnesses to whatever it is that we’ve now seen ourselves. And, having seen it, well, this pretty much arrives us to the conclusion of the matter as we’ve long been a people consumed by this idea that to see is to believe and so, having seen, we’re thus willing to believe.

For there’s no more risk involved. We can’t be wrong as our eyes don’t lie. No, rather our sense of sight has long been seen as the most assured of all because, well, if we can see it then it is there.

But if we can’t see it then we’re not so sure.

And it’s within this that we’ve all learned to betray the very purpose of belief as to see something only removes the necessity of imagining what it might be, where it might be, what it might sound like, look like, feel like. No, seeing something steals all of those wonders away because it shows us for certain the sum of what something is.

And again, we really like this because there’s next to no risk involved.

No risk of being wrong at least.

But friends, what of all the other risks incurred in life? What of the risk of never seeking beyond what we can see? What of missing out on the evermore that’s always in store for those who storm beyond the barricades of a proven belief to try and see what they never have? What of the courage to contend that there’s still more to come? What of the audacity to continue imagining that the best can’t be proven as of yet?

Have not we all lost that?

For the truth is that when we resolve to dissolve inside this idea that we need to see something before we believe it, well then we’ll never ever be able to believe in anything but everything we can see or elsewise be shown. And sure, for many here that seems to amount to more than enough as there is here quite a vast array of things to see and thus be made quite certain of.

Problem is you can’t take a picture of Heaven with a Canon. Peace isn’t proven in a Polaroid. Jesus isn’t taking selfies and throwing them up on His instabook feed. In fact the God of all creation Himself has shown Himself to but a handful of folks and even they saw only smoke or a sign of His back as He walked passed after the earthquake had ended.

For He wasn’t in the earthquake but rather exists inside the still small silence of everything that is entirely too big for us to understand, let alone actually assume we might contain inside the human eye.

Indeed, how arrogant must we be to insist that our eyes must see the sum and outcome of everything before we believe it! As if our eyes are the prize and everything in life itself must prove itself before we’ll agree to it being there.

Friends, what if it’s not on us to prove everything but rather to believe in something?

Can we make such a radical shift? The sum of everything known for the wonder as to what more there might be? Can we ever become so bold as to accept humility asking us to humbly imagine that we cannot possibly contain the entirety of creation, of eternity inside the human brain?

Can we at least try to stop limiting ourselves inside all our trying to prove to ourselves and everyone else that we can control everything?

Is that not pretty much what we’re doing with all this ‘seeing is believing’ nonsense?

We’re setting ourselves up as the judges who then take it upon ourselves to render verdicts in regard to whether something does or doesn’t exist.

But friends, since when did we actually arrive at a mind that’s capable of knowing everything there is to know? What excitement is there left in life if we think we’ve already found all there is to find? What joy might we know if we think we’ve already known all there ever was to learn?

Where beyond wherever we already are can we ever possibly go if all there is to know is only whatever is already around us?

What becomes of hope when it’s always asked to coincide with the confidence we have in that which we’re assured of only through visual proof?

Have we truly so forgotten the purpose of hope?

I know we’ve misplaced the point of faith as it was never meant to only accomplish our assurance of everything we want this life to be. Indeed, the Scriptures tell us plain that if it’s only for this life in this place that we have faith in Christ then we are truly of all people most to be pitied.

Why?

Because being able to say the Name whilst also thinking we can understand the fullness of all He’s there to accomplish as is proven to us via only our receiving here and now all we want while avoiding all we don’t, then we don’t know the Man and He’s said that He will confess the same in return.

For if we confine Christ inside the box that we’ve built for our lives and what our eyes, our minds expect for this journey to become, then we’ve become those who see Him as nothing more than some means to the end we want to find inside this life where we must then think that all of our life is meant to be lived.

And that simply because we can’t see the rest of the story that’s waiting to be told just beyond the moment in which we lose all we’ve had here to hold and fade into the forever that this place couldn’t even pretend it could offer.

Which is kind of the point!

It’s that we all know that all life here will end as, well, we’ve all seen that happen again and again. Truly, all of us have known somebody who was here but is, for whatever reason, not here anymore. Why then continue to confine our every hope, our every belief, our every imagination and every dream it can dream to what is only the sum of things seen that we know we one day won’t see anymore?

Friends, again, we’re betraying our hope every single time we ask it to agree with something we can already hold or behold. Why? Because what is is the sum of what won’t be one day. And it’s upon that very same day that the sum of all that isn’t yet finally is.

Which will we miss?

For the honest truth is that should we go on seeking our rewards of confidence and assurance in what we see here and now, then we’ll have too continued storing up for ourselves treasures on, in, of this earth. For such shall our every focus remain. But when we reach our end all we’ll there find is the sum of a life that we lived to fill with all that we can’t take with us beyond the veil that separates still all that is from all that isn’t yet.

That’s what every hope is supposed to believe in!

We’re told here that faith itself is a confidence in all we hope for. And too that it’s an assurance of all we cannot see. It’s being bold enough to believe that we can’t see all there is to see but are still willing to trust that it was never actually on us to see all there is to know. It’s knowing that all of this is simply far bigger than us. It’s the audacity to be of the humility that’s able to see that the human eye, though capable of witnessing a great deal of life, it’s simply too small and eternally unable to capture the entirety of forever.

In fact I think that’s why our sight begins to diminish as we get older. It’s because our getting older is accomplished alongside our too getting closer to leaving this place. And so our sight starting to fade feels something of the Father helping us learn to stop relying so heavily upon what we see so as to assist us in learning to look through the heart, through the soul, through the Spirit who just knows for certain that it was never meant for our eyes to see everything but rather for our lives to imagine that there’s far more that we’ve not seen than the sum of everything we have.

The point is that for so long we’ve all gone along with this idea that it was our eyes that were best capable of living our lives. And sure, our eyes and their sense of sight do accomplish a lot for us. They help us see where we’re going and to avoid things as we go. They help us learn as we use them to read and they inspire us to love, to enjoy, to appreciate many of the things and gifts we’ve been given the chance to see.

But friends, we cannot afford to continue ahead inside this assumption that our eyes can see the sum of everything there is for us to find. Because if that were true, well then what would there be to be curious for? No, we need those things which we cannot find as they’re what make this life so interesting, so intriguing, so fleeting.

Yes, we need to always keep in mind that everything in this life has at least some kind of limit.

Our sight included.

The question is whether we’ll ever agree to that and/or what all it will cost us until we do.

I just know that for a long time I’ve spent my life worried entirely too much about what I could see. So much so that even how I felt has at times taken a backseat. And indeed, as I sit here this morning I don’t really have any idea as to how I might fix that. Why? Because I’ve never had to before. And so I don’t know the way. In fact, it could be said, and fairly so, that I don’t see a way to fix it.

But I know that if I let it settle for what it is, all I’ll be while I’m here is as unhappy and unsure and afraid as I am right now.

Why am I those things?

Because I’m worried over losing what I can see.

But I can feel that something isn’t right inside. I can feel that there’s more to life than what I’ve been living it for.

Because if all life is supposed to fit inside my eyes then I would have to surmise that I’m living it alright as I can see a lot of things that I enjoy, that I appreciate. But it seems that no matter what I can see right now, none of it is at all able to offer me peace.

No, seems peace must be someplace else. Do I move toward it even though I don’t know where it is nor thus how to find it? Or do I allow again my eyes to convince my mind that peace is something I can find simply by sight?

It’s a choice we all have to make. But let us always remember that faith cares little about what we can see as hope itself believes only in all that we can’t.

And personally, I want to know where all hope can go because, well, I’ve already been where I already am. And while it might be nice to look at sometimes, that definitely doesn’t mean it always feels right.

Rather something feels off, and I have this hunch that it’s because my eyes are still getting in the way of everything getting better.

Granted, as I’ve found myself being wrong before I suppose I could be wrong again.

Guess we’ll see, won’t we?

#LeaveNoSoulUntold