Day 4073 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Romans 8:28 NIV

In all things

I’m increasingly convinced that one of the decidedly weirder symptoms of what is our human condition is this baser inability to differentiate perspective from perception. Because the simple reality is that all of us can physically see what is clear evidence of a God so filled with grace that even life in this place remains largely more amazing than it should honestly be. And yet despite all that we do see we still find what are ongoing ways to doubt, to complain, to argue in fact with He who ensures that this life is better than it ought to be.

Why?

Because we’re just blind like that.

Indeed, we’ve all the ability to see, to hear, to reckon, reason, recall and combine all into the honestly reasonable call unto righteousness and responsibility. I mean truly, we can all see things or hear things that are said or done within this world and differentiate between the good and the bad, those we like from those we don’t, the stuff that sets right and the more than that simply won’t. We’ve all within us this index of goodness and yet we’ve sadly seemingly only taken it and lived using it for mostly our own benefit.

Which, granted, a large part of it is as He has given us these senses and sensitivities so as to help us navigate what is a veritable minefield of a society in which anymore one wrong word could at least potentially cost you your job, a friendship, perhaps even your life. And why? Because we’ve taken something that was meant for our benefit and coerced it into existing as something assumed for only our good.

Which is another strange discrepancy we’ve somehow descended upon collectively.

It’s this perspective that our having been given the ability to determine right from wrong, good from bad, thus endows us with the authority to be the only ones who mete out the accolades or accusations based almost entirely upon our personal opinion regarding a specific situation. In simpler terms what I mean is that we’ve each taken the seat of judge in life presiding over the court of our own opinion in which we grant freedom to those who do what we like and sentence hatred, anger, sometimes even injury upon those who don’t so align with our frame of mind.

And this reality shows itself perhaps best in our relationship (or lack thereof) with He who is above.

Usually only because He retains this unwillingness to negotiate with us on what we continue to insist be our terms. And that because, though we usually can’t see this as being the case, His ways are indeed far better than ours. And we can see literally what is almost perfect evidence of this in that these lives are hard. That our walk is sometimes scary, dangerous, precarious. That our wants are sometimes left unsatisfied. That our ways are often times unjustified.

That our lives are sometimes so scattered and shattered inside our selfishness and its sinfulness that it’s honestly amazing that we continue to think we deserve anything good at all.

Why?

Because they who sin, which we all have, they then have chosen to do that which is wrong as can only be done in what is a either a glaring inability to know the better choice they should have chosen or simply a rebelliousness that chose to just not care.

Ironically we tend to estimate that the vast majority of our mistakes fall in the first category.

Pleading always temporary insanity or illiteracy or common misunderstanding or simple mistake. Yes, we’ve always some excuse for the things we do that come out as entirely insufficient and/or thus unbecoming of who we either wish to become or simply don’t mind to remain.

And yet there too we find yet another strange symptom of what it is anymore to be human.

It’s that we’re neither worried about who we’re clearly becoming nor then at all worried about changing anything as we can rather always find some way to convince our mind that whatever already is is always more than fine. Even if it’s not anywhere close! We don’t care as remaining mostly unchanged, and thus too usually unchallenged, that’s pretty much become one of our greatest hopes in what is a life in which our pride continues to keep us rather certain that we both know what we’re doing and that we’re doing it quite well.

And maybe we are.

Not sure how to fit all the entirely obvious mistakes we continue to make inside that cake.

But hey, perhaps He will give us some points for trying.

Even though doing so has us daily dying to everything better that He still calls us to be, and that because, well, every improvement exists only on the other side of hardship or difficulty or sometimes even danger. It’s kind of like that whole theory of our needing to actually face our fears. It’s because, would we could, we’d likely find that there wasn’t actually quite that much to be so afraid of after all.

Doesn’t mean we all need to jump out of airplanes or go swimming with sharks as the Scriptures themselves tell us that we’re not to put God to the test.

Which is ironically something we pretty much do all the time anyway as it seems that within every day we tend to find at least some reason to not do something He’s called us to or to not endure something we don’t really want to put up with or not seeking for the betterments that He’s calling us toward simply because we’ve again lost the ability to separate reality from what we want it to look like.

That’s the point I was going for in mentioning our strange confusion designed between perspective and perception.

It’s that while we can see the reality sat before us, we’ve alas allowed within us this ongoing unwillingness to do or endure anything that we simply don’t like the looks of. Indeed, if anything in life ever looks hard or scary or in any possible way challenging, chances are we’re going to pick another path. Like literally any other path. Even the path that we legitimately know goes nowhere and offers then to help us in no way whatsoever.

Yeah, we will always opt for the path of least resistance, even though the same is usually the path of least substance and reason and reward and hope and healing and happiness and joy and purpose and meaning.

That’s all okay.

Not that we wouldn’t like some of those things to be found or felt a little more often than they are in life. But hey, sometimes you just don’t get everything you want. And well, having become a people so entirely enthralled by this idea of a life of ease, our lust for such has a cost we’ve become rather willing to pay.

And that’s because we trust our eyes more than the God who made them.

That’s my point about perspective/perception.

It’s that within this life we’ve become of this mind that has us so affixed to such things as having fun, feeling good, looking impressive to those we stress over in what is a mindset that’s simply convinced that everyone is looking at us (a symptom of our selfishness having gone absolutely loco and arriving us at the point in which we’re pretty sure that life is really all about us) that we thus allow for nothing to risk appearances. We accept nothing that appears to us as being difficult or dangerous.

Again, we’ve become the judges in our lives and we feel it both our duty and thus within our self-given authority to refuse anything and everything that doesn’t match up to what we want for us.

This is the perspective part of the problem.

It’s that in our perception we can see, we can hear, sometimes we can feel what seems a matter that we measure as monstrous. We’ve all come upon all sorts of things, thoughts, theories that appeared before us as challenges so challenging that we couldn’t find any reason nor reward in our agreeing to being tested by them. We’ve all refused many such matters that simply made no sense.

But my question is was the refusal really because the issue made no sense or was it just because it didn’t look the way we wanted it to at the time?

For this has become a very serious struggle in life. It’s found in that our minds have become so adamant upon our understanding, our measure, our version of what we alone think is a good life that we now consider pretty much everything against our perception of what good is.

Let me unpack that a bit.

We’ve each developed, determined, defined, elsewise decided upon what all it is that we think is good. And, having done so, we’ve also, in doing so, developed, determined, defined and entirely decided upon this approach to life in which we only agree to those things which look good to our minds.

Minds which continue to measure everything against whatever it is that we alone think good is.

And so if ever anything doesn’t look good or sound good or feel good or seem good then chances are we’re going to quickly refuse it, reject it, rebel against it.

Why?

Because as these judges we tend to see ourselves as being, we’re thus personally obligated to do whatever we can to ensure that which is whatever it may be that we ourselves have come to see as the best case scenario. We, like all judges, are tasked with ensuring that such things as safety and comfort and even prosperity are all always secured and protected and looked after.

And yet it’s because of this that we now only go after that which looks good to us.

Thus leaving untaken every single path that ever even looked as if it might go bad.

Thus leaving sadly unlived so many growths, opportunities, improvements even. All of them missed because, again, often in life improvement is only found on the other side of hardship. Take the rain for example. So many people here hate the rain, are terrified of the storms which bring it. And yet without it crops don’t grow. And without crops growing we’re not eating. And without eating, well, we’re all at some point going to start dying from starvation as our bodies simply weren’t designed to exist on hope and happiness.

Though it’s pretty evident that we really wish they were.

And yet therein lies the entire point of today’s post. It’s that nearly everything in life has devolved to worrying about only whatever it is that we want. It’s all become about what we like. Truly, everything we do in our lives is done to either seek for something we’re sure we’ll enjoy or rather to reject something that we’re pretty sure we wouldn’t. We’ve each become the determiners of our own destinations, always picking only those that look right what are eyes that have believed all the lies that have led us to whatever this is that we’ve all become.

Something that we likely can’t even begin trying to unpack because, well, we just see entirely too much risk in that.

Indeed, this is why we’re all so adverse to change in life. It’s because it now brings with it this inherent air of shame as is always found in our having to admit that we’ve gotten lost, confused, turned around in what’s then considered to be a life not quite so free of mistake, nor thus consequence, as we’ve all tried to convince both ourselves and everyone else it truly was.

No, we cannot risk being seen for the foolish failures we hopefully know we really are.

But honestly, even that is something that I think is rapidly becoming an impossibility here inside what is a world of the mind that God himself literally exists only to ensure that everything in life goes our way.

Been talking about that nonsense for days!

It’s this lie that we’ve bought in bulk that has us thus just absolutely certain that He who’s considered a good God, a loving Father, that He’s then up there making sure that everything in our lives matches up always with whatever it is that we ourselves think is good. Starting to see the perspective/perception problem? It’s that we’ve taken what we ourselves think is good, as is often only whatever makes us look and/or feel good, and enforced it upon God.

Arriving us to this frame of mind in which He exists solely to make sure that our lives always look right to our eyes, seem right to our minds, sound right to our ears, feel right to our fear of tears and trials.

We’ve taken the fact that He is good and, as we’re told here, that He thus works all things together for the good of those who love Him and turned it into this idea that’s decidedly more focused on, worried about, almost always concerned over only what we alone think is good. In other words, we’ve spun God into nothing more than just another piece of what is a puzzle that is this life that we’re alone trying to put together so that it adds up the masterpiece that we alone perceive it’s supposed to be.

But it just doesn’t work like that.

Because, well, somedays just go bad. Sometimes life gets hard. Every now and then we even feel pain or get scared. I mean we literally all bear the scars of what are now stories of things that physically or emotionally harmed us. I’ve got a couple on my wrist and a doozy on my forehead from what were a couple of those decidedly scarier days in life.

But I survived. Not sure how as I’m even told now that the one on my forehead was stitched up in the same ER in which I apparently had to be revived. Don’t know, was pretty out of it and don’t remember much. But you know what? I know now that I made it. And that entirely not on my own as, again, I was pretty much out, apparently almost gone.

Definitely not what I would have ever considered a good day!

And yet laying in that hospital bed that night a few years back eating chicken and watching tv arrived me at a feeling that I’d not really ever felt. And that’s because I’d never felt that close to leaving, nor that measure of the assurance that I know where I’m going.

Guess sometimes you need to be that close to leaving to know for sure where it is that you’re heading.

And, well, I’d have never felt that feeling if it wasn’t for that morning in which I woke up like normal but couldn’t keep the lights on as usual. Wouldn’t have known that certainty as to where I’m going if I hadn’t head-butted first the bathroom counter and then the toilet on the way down. In fact, I can say now that I wouldn’t know all sorts of things if not for those things in my life that have been hard, that were truly scary, that even chose to cross that bridge from being scary to downright terrifying.

And that’s because I, like you, have spent my life trying to keep myself safe and ensure my days always go just right and that I always feel just right and that every aspect of life was a delight rather than a danger, a disaster, a difficulty, a decision even.

Indeed, we’re even to the point in which we can talk ourselves into being so scared to make a choice that we just don’t do anything at all.

But friends, while that may look like the best possible outcome, truth is that we rarely know what’s best for us.

And yet we often argue with He who does.

Why?

Because we’ve gotten in our minds this selfish understanding as to what good is supposed to look like, feel like, sound like, go like and we’ve had those perspectives for so long now that it seems as though we can’t quite manage to separate our preferences, our opinions from His purpose.

Rather we’ve chosen to all but insist that His purpose be changed so as to make sure that it always fits what we want it to look like.

In other words we’ve become gods in our own eyes and now live insisting that our lives go the way we want them to, all the way to the point in which we expect God to see things from our point of view.

All because we simply refuse to see anything from His.

Friends, our blend of selfishness and foolishness and impatience and immorality, it’s achieved for us this ongoing inability to appreciate all that God’s doing simply because there are many days in which His working of things doesn’t seem to be for our good at all. Rather, again, we’ve all had those days that have gone bad. We’ve all gone through times that were hard. All of us been scared, have felt fear, have known worry and thus carried the weight they all bring.

And no, it isn’t fun. It’s not enjoyable. It’s truly just about as far removed as possible from anything that we’d ever consider good.

But we’re a people of entirely too much trust in our senses. If something doesn’t look just right then we’re not interested. If it doesn’t sound right, matching up to whatever it is that we want to hear, we’ll probably just not listen. If it doesn’t feel right then we’ll find that as a reason to turn around and seek for whatever might feel better.

But better doesn’t exist where we’ve been. Improvement cannot be found by staying where we are. We cannot have removed from us all that’s holding us back if we never invite anything in life that’s meant to change that fact.

And that’s why life is hard sometimes. It’s because sometimes we need to have the hardness beaten out of our hearts so that hope can finally take its place. And, well, what can do that better than hardship? Indeed, does not hope shine only brighter the harder, darker life gets?

Problem is that that’s something we’ll miss every single time that we run back to that life that leaves us feeling safe, comfortable, unafraid.

No, friends we need those things as there aren’t many others that help us see better who He is. The challenge is in the whole “those who love Him” part. Because honestly, we all still love ourselves too much. We love our lives too much. We trust our eyes too much. And in doing so, well, we only remain almost wholly unwilling to lay our lives down and take up those crosses that we see as only the losses of everything good and safe and fun that we’ve ever found or felt in life.

And no, that doesn’t seem good.

But if we can’t trust Him to take something that seems hard, scary, dangerous and turn it into something that’s able to better us, then we simply don’t know who He is.

And if we don’t know Him then we should never expect Him to claim He knows us either.

Thankfully He sends us into the fire, the famine, the flood all to help us see that we need Him more than we need us to be comfortable, safe, certain of life being always easy. No, we need life to be hard so that we can finally learn what trust really does. For truth is that trust is too easy whenever life’s the same.

But trust was never meant to be an easy thing. Rather trust is supposed to cost us something.

Question is what are we willing to give it?

And in truth, if we’ll not give up our estimation of a good life to our trust in Him, then we’ll only ever know what we alone think is good.

And sadly then none of the better that He was trying so hard to lead us toward.

A better found just beyond the weather.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold