Day 4074 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

2 Corinthians 4:16 NIV

Day by day

Hour by hour. Minute by minute. Moment by moment if not in fact breath by breath sometimes. Indeed, this life, this line upon which it’s walked and the increasing narrowness thereof, hereof, hereon, it’s something in which so much has come and then gone that eventually all you come to know is this song you sing as the rain falls in sheets upon what is a ground you trust to hold up no matter the weather nor the worry as to whether or not it really will.

A worry we all lose hopefully as, well, one day we’re going to find that it’s never once mattered in life what we thought this life was like nor even if we liked whatever this life was.

And now that’s not to say that we shouldn’t as Scripture itself, God’s very playbook for how a life should look (and how it’s usually not what we make it out to become), it’s says that there exists nothing better for a man than to enjoy His lot, appreciate His toil, give all He has as if giving it to God in whom we can trust, should believe that, as we talked about yesterday, He can and always is working all things for the good of those who love Him and are, therefore, answering what is this ongoing call to adhere our lives to His purpose rather than our preference.

But so much of the time that’s the line that we don’t wish to answer, the call we don’t really want to take, the choice we simply choose not to make. Why? Because His will as is written within His ways, which are higher than ours (as in better in every possible way), they’re also just that: different than ours in every possible way. Truly, I’m starting to find myself believing if I might not be better off to simply believe the opposite of pretty much everything I’ve ever believed.

Why?

Because there just comes a time in which you can’t seem to outrun this reality that this version of reality we’re having to fight so very hard to make come true is such a fight for some reason. Indeed, I’m increasingly convinced that so much of the hardship, the struggle, the worry, the weight of life’s wait through which we always seem to be left a million miles and/or memories from the better for which all hope hopes, it seems like most of it is our fault.

I mean God came down in the man Christ Jesus to free us from what sadly remains a way of life we all know far better, and that thanks to our having all lived it far longer, than the life for which He created us. The life He gave His life for us to at the very least consider trying on once more. The life that thus meant enough to Him for us to have even the opportunity to experience that He experienced something more brutal and miserable than anything we’ll ever be able to fully comprehend.

And yet so many days find us so stuck in our ways, to our wills, on our wants that we still think we’ve got it bad.

Indeed, we’re all continually convinced that our lives are harder than they need to be. That we’re suffering more than we deserve to be. That we’re broiling in this misery that’s made in our lives to see any sign of happiness or hope so hard to find that we almost seem as if we’re finally just starting to stop looking. Truly, have you stopped to take a look at the state of things lately? I honestly haven’t seen so many people so unhappy in all my life. And yet what’s becoming rather scary is that it doesn’t seem as if anyone even cares to acknowledge that, let alone start working to fix it.

And I honestly don’t know why.

I mean sure, I get it. Life is hard. It’s oftentimes heavy. It’s quite frequently unfolding in this frequency that seems freaky and feels rather far from fun. And to make matters worse, we’ve become a people so adamant upon our always enjoying everything that our enjoyment has become something of an idolized ideal that has us of this idea that anything we ever face in life that’s not quite up to our standards of pleasure or success is nothing but a monster, a misery, a mystery that needn’t even be addressed.

Rather it’s all just stuff that we both reject and yet somehow also manage to always keep just close enough to grow within us this strange sense of self-pity that’s quite easily, and thus often, placated in its being matched by the world’s willingness to feel sorry for us.

And we love this!

We adore this idea that allows us to feel bad for ourselves whenever life isn’t going exactly the way we want, and too that walking around all down in the dumps achieves for us these looks of compassion and caring from those daring enough to acknowledge our presence just long enough to see the frowns on our faces and the farrows they’re leaving in our foreheads.

Indeed, life here has long been this pathetic pity party in which the only favors we feel we need to find are either fun or plenty of those friends who are always there to agree with us as to just how bad things are going.

Ain’t then no wonder that nothing much is going all that good anymore.

It’s because we’ve become of this mindset that finds an almost sickening benefit in walking around as if we’ve just come from being beaten. As if we awake every single morning only to open our door and be punched in the face. It’s like we’ve adopted this perception of life in which, since not everything is going right, well then everything’s going wrong.

Truly, it’s like this metaphor I heard a long time ago: If you had 100 one-dollar bills and one of them got torn or dirty or elsewise messed up, would you throw away the other 99?

Sadly, yeah, that’s pretty much what we do in life these days! Seriously, it’s as if all it takes is for one little thing to go even kind of wrong and we just chalk up the rest of the day as a complete loss not worth our trying anymore. Get cut off in traffic? May as well go back home and try ‘er again tomorrow. Accidentally burn your lunch? Should probably let it bother you to and through dinner. Stub your toe? Perhaps consider cutting your foot off so the toe don’t hurt no more.

Do you see the insanity?

It’s not that we actually do any of those things, but it’s increasingly evident that we’re increasingly adamant that everything in life always go right. And that in a world in which we’ve all already lived a life in which we should just simply know better. Honestly friends, we’ve all gone through enough trial, enough hassle, enough hardship to have grasped by now the understanding that this life isn’t ever going to be our version of perfect.

Seriously, even if every day we had left went so amazingly well that we never again found anything to feel upset about or angry over, we’d still each have memories of those times in which life didn’t work out that way.

And then that would be enough to accomplish in us a dissatisfaction with the whole ordeal.

Guess His warning us that a little leaven leavens the whole batch applies in more ways to more things that just pride and its always thinking it knows everything.

But oddly enough, that kinda matches up too.

Because, well, we all still like to think we do. In fact, I woke up again this morning wrestling with this feeling of my having for some time been struggling with this general stagnancy in my life really needing to be sorted out. And, though I’ve not yet thought much about it today, as these posts always come first if I have anything to say about it, I have arrived at this realization that I’ve so backed myself into a corner that I have no idea how to get out of it.

And that because for so long now I’ve stood staunch upon this certain approach to life, all while life was perhaps slowly changing in ways that I couldn’t notice or feel along the way.

Almost as if life has been trying to say that my staying the same isn’t the point.

Even if all I’ve been trying has been working.

Because, well, what if something else would have worked better?

That’s the kind of question that should haunt us as it has an answer we simply can’t give as our lives and how they’re lived are often so one-dimensional that our every choice becomes so intentional that we eventually end up so intense and delusional that we find only this fear of doing anything at all because, like Rocky in his breakdown in Rocky III I believe, we’re just afraid to lose what we’ve got.

Because we think we’ve got something to lose. In what’s then a life in which we’ve apparently gained something that brought with it this fear of our losing it. Which then seems to say that maybe whatever it is that we’ve gained wasn’t as gainful as we personally wanted to believe.

After all, if you can in fact lose whatever it is that you have, then do you really have it at all?

How’s that for an entirely stress-laden and seriously heavy question on this fine Sunday morning?

Yeah, I’ll leave us all to stew on that one as we now go throughout our day probably wondering through some pretty weird thoughts!

Anyway, back to the point.

And that is that what we’ve been is a people so insistent upon life proving of the content that we prefer it have that whenever it ends up only having something we don’t like, we freak. We cry and complain and don’t even try and contain the either as we know that should anyone see us suffering so, they’ll immediately come not to our rescue but rather to our side.

Yes, this is why we all complain so much in life. It’s not necessarily that life is always as miserable as we for some reason seem to enjoy making it seem. No, sometimes, and perhaps even more often than not, we just enjoy the attention. We enjoy those apologetic looks upon the faces of those who see us and, for compassion’s sake, decide to come alongside us and try to make us feel better. We love it more than we’d ever admit!

Why?

Because we’ve become so weak in life that we’re afraid of the same.

That one kind of hit rather hard out of nowhere, didn’t it? Indeed, that’s one of the most enjoyable aspects of writing these posts like this. I literally just sit here with a verse or passage in mind and let Him use my fingers to find whatever it is that I pray needs to be said about it. And, well, I even find myself sometimes surprised by what all comes out as I truly don’t know where any of it comes from anyway!

It’s quite the ride and I’d highly encourage everyone to try it sometime.

Because the fact is that it continues to change my life in what are all these questions that I ask that I then ask myself as I do or statements that I make that make me think too. Like that one I just shared above. For that is something that I dare imagine none of us have ever had any reason to consider as we rather see ourselves as strong, resilient, robust even. Yes, we’re each stalwarts in our stories, unable to be moved no matter what comes against us.

Superman get out of our way!

Except that it’s said he’s faster than a speeding bullet and thus able to catch the same. We on the other hand crumble into again choosing to complain whenever we break a nail.

Proving we’re perfectly unready for whatever comes next.

Why?

Because we always cast aside the renewal aspect. We overlook the resets and our need for them. We refuse to lose our hold on the bad news we got as we know that it can still get us some pitiful glances from those we’ve come to appreciate looking at us as if our dog just ran away and that because our girlfriend broke up with us and that because we lost our job and even got pulled over as we pulled out of the parking lot.

Truly, we can take any minute, insignificant misery and turn it into this vast monstrosity that is everything a good, kind-hearted, always upstanding individual like we are should never have to endure.

Not quite sure where we got it in our minds that we’re good, kind-hearted or anything even remotely close to upstanding, but hey, maybe we are.

Doesn’t seem to have ever managed to change the fact that sometimes life sucks. Nor that, even more often, we suck at living it. Which, if we were to ever be honest is probably the impressively most common reason as to why life does suck. We like to blame it anything and everyone, but I’m kind of worried that it’s our fault more often than not.

Why?

Because so often we get so caught up focused on, worried about, crying over whatever it is that we’re going through and however it is that it has us feeling that we’re found so reeling that we’re suddenly a million misunderstandings away from even being able to start contemplating why it’s unfolding the way it is. No, we are a people of such short-sightedness that all we ever seem to see is just that which is right in front of us and all these reasons as to why we just don’t like it being there.

Don’t care why. Don’t wonder as to what it might be trying to tell us or how it could in theory even perhaps be there to help us.

No, if it’s hard or scary or painful then it’s an immediately unwelcome intrusion upon our story and how we’re trying really hard to write it so as to ensure that everything always goes right within it.

Or at least our version of what right is supposed to be.

But friends, what about His version? What about His definition? What about His design for our lives? Have we truly become so short-sighted that we just can’t see anymore the hope toward which everything we go through is aiming? Have we lost so much of our ability to hope that we just don’t know what hope is anymore? Have we honestly forgotten that everything that’s seen is temporary, even the storms we face and the struggles they find, and too then that all we don’t see is permanent?

Such as the promise of peace in Heaven?

Indeed, in response to my post yesterday or maybe the day before, my mom mentioned something that I think falls perfectly in the vicinity of this idea here in this verse:

“Without the bad we do not recognize the good.”

Because, well, how could we? How could we know what comfort is if we’ve never been uncomfortable? How can we understand the depths of joy without having known at least some depth of despair? How can we appreciate safety if never we’ve faced any danger? How can any know they’re at peace unless they’ve been at war?

How can any grasp the gravity of this gift of life if not having tasted what it is to die?

And yet the sad truth is that we’re so concerned about appearances and this ongoing fascination with making our faces look all downtrodden and thus us in need of a hug and some ice cream that we see nothing of the reasons why for our struggles in life. No, we just always want our lives to look great to those who think that life here can be perfect.

Thus leaving us vastly more concerned with the opening part of this verse than we’ve ever been able to then focus in on the latter part of the matter.

For yeah, there are many days in this place in which this life finds that everything we know and all we’ve tried to be is left but wasting away, and that perhaps for all eyes to see. And this reality scares us silly because, well, we’re so very petty that we worry almost only about how we look and making sure that our lives always look just right so that the rest of those deluded don’t have to endure their being made to realize that life here isn’t supposed to be perfect.

Rather life here needs to be miserable. It needs to be scary. It needs to be hard. It needs some things to go bad!

Why?

Because “without the bad we do not recognize the good.”

And I fear we’ve so lost our ability to recognize the good that we still, like they did then, we still don’t recognize Christ when He comes into our walk as He often comes pointing to the cross and reminding us of His call to take ours up and insist death upon all that’s dead in us, in our lives, in our plans, in our goals, in our dreams. Yes, Jesus asks us all to lay down our lives, even going so far as to tell us that whoever hates their life here will keep life forever, but so too that whosoever loves their life now will have taken away that little they have.

For if only in this life have we hope in Christ then yeah, we are of all people those most to be pitied because His promises are meant for eternity, not just some comfort found or felt momentarily.

No friends, He has far more in store for us than anything that this world’s best could ever possibly offer. And He’s also endured the worst this world could ever dish out so that we could, and that soon, find out just how perfect His promises have always been.

The challenge is that we’ve still a war to go through if we’re to ever know His version of peace. We’ve still worries to carry if we’re ever to feel them washed away at Heaven’s gates. We’ve still a life to lose if we’re ever to find His gift of eternal life given in its place.

And yes, we’ve still a self that needs to waste away if we’re ever to find the Way that is the Truth that says this life is the one in which we will have trouble but that, despite that, we can, as is repeated here, take heart.

Why?

Because He’s overcome the world and all the weight, worry, war and wounding won within it.

All then that’s left for us is to just let go of this idea that we need this part to be the easy part, the safe part, the comfy part.

No friends, we need this life here to become so miserable outwardly that it turns us inward whereby we can finally seek for the Christ in that one place that He died to live:

In our hearts and that to lead us home.

So yes, embrace a life spent wasting away in worry, in hardship, in the heaviness of it all. Not because it’s fun but because it’s not supposed to be. No, life here should have never become so worried about what we see or how we look. For all that we see and however we feel, it’s all temporary. What matters far more is what’s being accomplished within us.

Is it a spiritual renewal or just a continued rehearsal of all the anger and disappointment we’ve learned to carry with us?

He gave His life make us new, and that every single day.

If only we could learn to focus on the outcome more than the process we just might finally find that it’s okay for life here to be hard.

After all, it’s starting to seem as if squeezing us through the eye of a needle is exponentially harder than the camel’s attempts as, well, we’ve apparently just got far to lose than a camel ever could.

Maybe we should take Him up on His help to renew us day by day, and that by His removing of those things that we don’t need.

Such as this life to be easy.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold