Day 4082 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Psalm 73:14 NIV

What is affliction?

Is it is a symptom of some burden to be lifted that’s never taken away? Is it the weight of the way in which life never seems to go our own? Is it the wait through which we wade as we worry through weather and whether or not it’ll ever clear so we can see something better? Is it the knowledge that better is there but that we, for what seem a million reasons and regrets, just can’t ever seem to get closer to it? Is it the miseries we meet in this miniseries of a life laden with stories that tell only the tale of so many things that didn’t end well, didn’t go right? Is it the pain we find once we’ve found that there’s not much left to find on, in, of this ground?

What is pain?

Believe it or not there are things far worse that gnaw at a man than illness and injury, things he never lets anyone see and even fewer know, places that he's gone to which he prays he will never again have to go, things he's known that he wishes now he never did, a life he's lived that he even agrees is best left for dead. A death he’s known in the life he’s lived in which he’s loved and lost, looked and found, tried and failed, won and only then after wondered why as the for what gave him this what for that he was in no way looking for back when he started down what became a road so long that he looked up one day only to see just how fast life had gone by.

Yes, there are many afflictions in this life, most of which, in all honesty, we bring upon ourselves thanks to both the many mistakes we make and our amazing ability to both overlook the fact that we’ve made them and the common misunderstandings that always seems to always insist that it was still another’s fault. After all, we all want our lives to go well. We all want for things to work out. We all start out as kids dreaming for the stars and wanting more than anything to be the astronauts which walk amongst them.

But something else happens. And it happens as we get older. Dreams come slower as our bodies hurt more. Our sleep begins to become anything but sweet as our dreams themselves turn sour thanks to the hours in which we’ve tried so hard to make life go so well only to wake up every single day and see it all going to hell in the proverbial handcart that we ourselves bought on amazon and had delivered the very next day.

Because it was on sale and the shipping was free.

Indeed, there’ve been many such concessions made along the way to whatever, wherever, whoever we are today. Each of us have long had in front of us two paths spent through the same life, both of which seemed at first so similar that we’d have never imagined the vast differences in their particular destinations, nor that the one in which disaster was met along the way would end up being the one which led to the best of all better days.

Nor then that the one which ended in the worst disaster of all would look so lovely, feel so right, allow for that life of influence and affluence and the commonly sought, for whatever reason, arrogance which we all seem to know so well that we now show so well the workings of what are souls long since sold to the lowest of all bidders who sells in return for them this easy life lived inside all the things and thrones we could ever want within this world.

A path we’ve all taken and most continue along simply because we’ve come to believe that lesser resistance means faster reward.

And indeed it does.

This is why the world’s in such this hurry that always it is. It’s because most of us remain convinced that there is among us, around us, within us perhaps the very evidence of every substance of every prize and a life lived without punishment. And as a people now fully afraid of that narrower more harrowing way, well, the path of ease and success and pleasure and worldly tranquility, it looks unimaginably better than the weather into which the other is aimed.

After all, who prefers the rain?

Who seeks for the plain? Who among us insists upon the pain being the path met within this place in which, yes, we’ve all felt our share but so many seem anymore to breath this air of their being without such care as it so often feels as if we’ve ourselves been left to carry? Indeed, why is it that our lives seem to have this tendency toward our afflicted when it seems that nearly everyone else is daily gifted with what seems, in comparison, a little piece of Heaven given right here on earth?

Why are we the ones who hurt? Why is our life the one that’s hard? Why is our burden so clearly so heavy compared to the carefree existence of those many around us who dance and sing through days of sun, all while doing things which shouldn’t be done under the same? Indeed, why do those who do wrong have lives that go right while those who do right know more wrong as remembered in sleepless nights which are even sometimes chosen because we’ve become terrified of the things we might see in the dreams we might have?

How did it all get so bad and why is it that it seems so insistent to stay that way?

Where did everything better go, that every single hope that ever we’ve had for a life that just continues to go bad as we watch those who do bad live the life we wish we had?

As the Psalmist says in the verse just prior to this, yes, surely we’ve searched for purity in vain as doing so’s still brought the rain, the pain, the plane of the plain and boring right to our beds to meet us there, every one every morning. Yes, it’s seemed so often that our best efforts given always toward something better were only met with only the weather that continues to meet our trying with skies crying out this insistence that we stop. “Just give up!” the clouds say.

Get off this way. Take rather the one walked by those who do whatever they want and get whatever the same. For it’s a sight daily plain that those who walk without a care as to the coming King parting the air have here all they could ever wish for. Reward upon reward given in chalices of gold and chances so guaranteed that winning is all they know, victory, pleasure and glory always theirs to hold.

And they hold it high!

Indeed, we’ve all spent countless days and sleepless nights scrolling for decades through the many delights and delicacies of those depending upon darkness to conceal their devilish existence. We’ve watched on as those who have are given more while those who’ve not much left in this place are instead left to face down what is a life in which they’re at this point, we’re at this point right down to our last dime and not a dream left to spend it upon.

Why the difference?

Why the discrepancy?

Why do those who try for a life decently seem to be the same as find only distress, disaster, disappointment and dismay while those who walk in the arrogant way find continually every worldly glory and gain they could ever wish to have and get to hold and hope to keep?

Indeed, why is it that those who do wrong enjoy a life that they’d obviously want to keep forever while those who at try to do right in life often end up finding within it only themselves the victims of what is an existence that even they can’t wait to be rid of?

Why are the wicked rewarded in this world?

And why then does it seem as if those who continue to try not to lie, not to curse, not to hurt are themselves the ones lied to and led to what feels a life in which nothing goes right as it all instead feels a curse as every single day just continues to go worse than the hurts held inside the yesterday just now gone?

Where does it all go?

What’s the meaning of all this?

Again, why do the wicked win the world as the redeemed lose the same?

Because God is kind.

Because He’s both loving enough to give each of us the hope of something to enjoy and merciful and patient enough to let that hope grow wherever it’s meant to.

It’s that for a few of us our hope isn’t meant to grow here.

It’s that for us our reward isn’t here.

It’s that for us this life we live here isn’t the one in which our best is supposed to be met as rather, in His mercy, He’s reserved for us our best for all eternity. And yes, it hurts to wait as we watch on as so many others don’t have to. It’s hard to sit here with a life going so wrong that it we’re more than ready to lose whilst so many around us sing and dance and enjoy that life that makes ours look even more miserable than we already know it to be.

It’s hardest of all to think back on all those times that we ourselves tried so hard to see their life as the needed exemplar of our own, a mindset that inspired us to do as they did and try what they tried and say what they said and want what they won. Victories that we ourselves have instead never known.

Some of which, many I hope, we don’t care to anymore.

And why is that?

Because deep down we know it’s not been in vain that we’ve walked away from the party in search of the pain. We know that we’ve not chosen to chase this life left to waste in a land the same. We know that we’ve had no say in our feeling this need to just keep walking away from anyone and everything that was willing to settle or ask us to do the same as rather we do have that hope of a life that will go well someday.

We just know that it can’t be here in a world in which, yeah, the wicked win and the sinful succeed.

Such a place is not the place for us to be.

Doesn’t mean that we don’t get tripped up looking upon all their triumphs and wondering what it must be like to not have to wait to enjoy the better part of life. Doesn’t mean that we don’t sometimes stay up late at night trying to find some loophole through which we can crawl toward what is a life in which we have it all, the best both here and forever. Doesn’t mean that we don’t slip up and accidentally enjoy things from time to time or even have a dream, a day every now and then that does turn out right.

Because we do.

Indeed, all of us have far more good days than any of us deserve. Truly, even our ability to believe in something better is itself a blessing entirely too good for a people so low.

And I can say that with all humble certainty as I do certainly know just how low I’ve been.

Again, there are things far worse that gnaw at a man than illness and injury, things he never lets anyone see and even fewer know, places that he's gone to which he prays he will never again have to go, things he's known that he wishes he never did, a life he's lived that he even agrees needs to be left for dead.

For every man has lived a past in which he pursued that which only left him poisoned by pleasure and tarnished with triumph. For every man here has indeed lived that life filled with gluttony, flooded with greed, stained in idolatry. Every single one of us have had our fun and found our freedom to think fun such a careless enterprise. Yes, all of us have lived enjoyable lives in which we’ve met so much pleasure and amassed so much treasure that anymore I only worry whenever I do.

Why?

Because as my life grows thin thanks to time growing the same, I’m finally finding that frame in which I fully know that here I have no place. That I just don’t belong in all the places I’ve been, nor then as the person I used to be within them. That pleasure here is but a misplaced opportunity to seek for it elsewhere. That holding our hope as if a hostage on this side of the horizon is the worst of all afflictions to inflict upon it.

Why?

Because better isn’t here. Joy is packing his bag and getting ready to leave. Love is already at the airport waiting for boarding to start. Peace left this place years ago.

They all left already so that they could beat us home.

For they’re all the treasures that we ought to seek. Because, well, they’re all things that anymore here feel fleeting and foreign more often than not.

And there couldn’t be a greater blessing given to a people standing where still we are.

Because, yeah, we all do still allow our eyes to look fondly upon the victories of those around us, wondering each of us what each of them must be like. We do still long for that life enjoyed by those who know their treasures to be within their reach within this place in which they seek for them. We do sometimes lust for the things that we know will turn to dust or be soon covered in rust.

Why?

Because we all still have that same lie inside that was told to them back in the Garden. That we too could be here as gods. The same lie told to Christ in which the adversary offered Him all the kingdoms of the world. The same offer still offered every single day in every corner of this place: That here exists the very sum of everything a man could ever hope to have.

And as we watch so many choose to have it all, and that with little in the way of misery or suffering or affliction or pain, yeah, we wonder what it might be like to live this life that way.

And then we remember those times in which we did.

Or at least I do.

I remember so many things I’ve said and done trying to find that version of life that I wanted so badly to live because it just seemed so much better than mine. I remember all the pleasure I managed to feel, all the success I managed to find. I remember a bank account that would surely help out with a lot right now. I remember a kid who dreamed of being a teacher. I remember one so seemingly popular that everyone knew his name, and that his name was mine.

Yes, I remember that life in which I was winning the world!

And now I just long to leave the same.

Waiting inside of every day for Him to part the clouds and finally say I can.

Because I’ve long since lost most of all I once had, and alongside that I also chose long ago then to not seek for it replaced in this place. Because I’ll not give any more of my life anymore to trying to find that version in which I win more of what I’ve learned we can lose. I’ll not keep trying to amass what a single day can take away. I will not give any more of my time to trying to find some way to make this world make sense when still the sinful win and so few seem to know we have.

For indeed, anymore all it seems that I seem to see is only the deepening of the darkness, the depth of the depravity. And I’m tired of the stories of those who do wrong getting the glory. I’m tired of hearing about those who opt to work wickedness winning better rewards than the rest of us who still see trying for better as sometimes a vanity. I’m tired of trying to find a way to make this world work the way righteousness and hope knows it should.

I’m just tired of trying to find something good in a world that seems to enjoy more all that’s bad.

For in this too does His kindness flow.

Sure, it flows unto those who know in this life their reward. For yes, He allows everyone a time of peace, joy, enjoyment of both. But yet He retains always this hope that we’ll all come to know that no life here, no matter how fun or successful or amazing, can ever compete or compare to what He has in store for those who store up their treasures elsewhere.

And so thus His kindness extends to us inside such things as affliction and misery and every memory made of our saying, doing, thinking something that we’ve since learned we never should have tried. Yes, His kindness is shown to us inside a life that waxes more miserable by the day. It’s to help us see, physically feel the very gravity of the unholiness we’ve known and see swelling still all around.

He allows us to suffer, to endure persecution, to feel pain and meet it every single day so that we’ve, in every single day, a simple reminder that our reward isn’t here.

All so that we can continue to be inspired to keep moving, however slow and however stumbling, toward the promise of His coming to collect us who’ve here collected only reasons to be ever ready to leave.

Yes, He allows us stress, suffering, misery and it pouring in buckets so that we can become constantly prepared to bail whenever He comes back and says we can.

This life is either one of fun or just a fight. Now sure, it’s obvious which of those two we’d like. But friends, every affliction, every misery, every single pain and all of this place’s mundanity and immorality, it’s all a reminder that our better must be somewhere else.

Because it is.

Because, no, Heaven isn’t a place on earth. Heaven is rather a release from all that this earth has become.

That’s why He comes again. It’s to take home those who aren’t the same here. For those who don’t feel at home here can’t because here they know only the fight.

But the good thing about war is that it’s retired from when the battles are over.

And one day they all will be.

And every day that we still feel pain, well, it’s but proof that we’re not there yet and every reason then that we could ever need to keep going.

So let us keep going until we’re through this that is the worst of it.

For He’s promised that everything better will indeed come to those few who have here finally stopped looking for it.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold