Day 4084 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Psalm 119:71 NIV

What is learning?

Is it a line leant unto little lessons which bring with them minor improvements? Is it a lane led into lessons lived seeking proven progress paved in progressive progressions? Is it a life lived straying from what we know toward always what we don’t? Is it a matter made solely of what we know already? Is it looking for the more we can knowing that the only way there is to be taken by people we aren’t yet? Is it appreciating who we are for the lessons we’ve already learned, many learned the hard way? Is it an opportunity to be hardened unto the battle still to come? Is it merely a person trying to prove they aren’t so dumb as their past tries to prove?

Is it an opportunity meant to be taken so lightly as we do?

Is it an affliction meant to be taken more gratefully than we have?

Is it always good? Is it never bad?

Well, I guess that depends on what it is that we learn and the process through which we do. But it seems that for a long time we’ve been of this mind that has believed this lie that we can only grow in good times. That we need things to be easy and progress slowly so as to ensure we know what we’re doing so that we can ensure we know where we’re going so that we have the confidence we crave that assures that we’ll be who we want to be once we get wherever it is that we’re headed.

Problem is that anymore, as always before, we’re a people so entirely hard-headed and heavy-handed and hate-hearted that we know only to balk and back away from any lessons aimed in any way that we’re not really interested in going inside the moment in which they’re made ready. Why? Because rarely are we. Rather mostly we are entirely unready to do, well, just about anything. Instead we’ve become a people of such pride in who, what, where we are that we don’t really know any real inspiration to be anyone, anywhere else.

No, we prove time and again day after day that we’re so set in our own way that we can’t even seem to see that in our own way is all we know to be.

It’s truly as if we just decided to become the proverbial pillars of salt all by ourselves inside what are lives spent looking fondly back upon the memories made of lessons learned in a past that we enjoyed enough that still it measures up to our ongoing ability to imagine that there’s probably not much left to learn or know or see or be or even dare become.

Indeed, it would seem that all of us, as we age, we begin to numb to the idea of learning as instead we arrive at this place in which we think we’ve got it all figured out and understood as, well, our lives settle down into what they’re allowed to remain as we agree to pass away inside our every new day as if it less a gift given and more a grief taken.

Because, well, yeah, learning is hard. Growing does hurt. Our pride most definitely doesn’t like this whole idea that we don’t actually know everything nor then that perhaps even some of what we think we know or know we think may not be quite so right as we like to imagine it might. Because were we to actually be wrong about what we thought we knew for sure, then where is assurance left? Where might we find the confidence we have in who we think we are if we eventually come to learn that who we are is but a fraction, a figment, a failure flung in the face of who we had always the chance to be?

This is indeed a hard thing to see. And that’s indeed why so very many just simply never look. It’s because we all know what it’s like to learn. We all know the stress that comes with studying for tests upon which our advancement in proven progress continues to rest as we haven’t seemingly the same opportunity as rest during stress only ever allows the stress to remain. Doesn’t it? Does not a body in motion stay in motion whilst one without said movement doesn’t just find it without some help from an outside object who must thus object to the lack of movement it sees inside the body which stays at rest?

And must not this outside object object to such restfulness only because it knows of something else, somewhere else, someone else that we can be if only we too could see whatever it is that is only seen from where the other is?

Is this not the purpose of the entire process that is sanctification which is began by repentance and then grows to beget personal advancement away from all the things from which we need repent?

Indeed, is this not the very premise of His promise?

That those who love their life will lose it whereas those who learn to hate their lives, as we never seem to ever really start there, will both find it and save it and thus keep it for all of forever?

Is not forever the lesson that He’s calling us to move toward, a movement made of lessons learned as to the lack of life, at least that kind that’s meant to be lived forever, that’s found where we are for the moment?

Can we still not see that it’s not one moment that makes us who we eventually come to be but rather a collective of the many in which we live, the many in which we flee then from what isn’t the life we were created to live?

Is this not why He breathed His Word for our benefit? Was it not indeed to benefit us? And tell me, what is of more benefit than His doing with it the work of sanctification through which the Spirit guides us unto an ever-deepening understanding of who He is, what He did, what that means we then need to? Indeed, can there be a better benefit than our growth into that hope spent unto that home that is not here where we already are?

Are there not probably millions of ways in which we might be bettered thanks to the weather that pours in the rain of lessons learned that hard way?

After all if life itself isn’t easy then why should we ever expect improvement to be?

Or is it rather that improvements made inside a life already strained only stress us more than we already were, something of a doubling down upon the disaster that is our self’s denial of all the better we can be simply because we’re afraid of what all it might take or take away for us to find that better day in which we do live a better way as they who are, by then and only then, better people too?

Is this not why we do what we do in these lives in which we seek the lies that please the ears? Because they’re always the ones which tell us how well we’re doing already? Because they seem always so friendly as they pat us on the back in what is an encouragement to stay just right where we are seeing as how we’re so awesome as it is? That our lives are going just fine as they are and needn’t then any change as we’ve within them no chance to improve?

Is that really what we want to hear?

That who, what, wherever it is that we already are is truly all that any of the above can ever hope to be?

Again, who in their right mind hopes for what they can see or wishes never to be anything more than whatever they already are?

Sadly all of us have and many still do.

This is why we’ve now this life to lose.

It’s because we’ve all so brazenly spent it inside this version of bravery in which it’s somehow seen best for us to think that best is whatever we already are. That better is just a matter of minor tweaks made to the triumphs we’ve already achieved, seeking only the small ways to maybe improve some things, if ever we happen upon any which need to be so improved. Which we never really do. Because, well, we’ve just learned that we don’t have to.

That’s why so many have been swept away from salvation’s work inside the coddling of that half an invitation that’s been used for so long to make outsiders feel welcome.

Come as you are!

Yes, you are welcome to come as whoever you may be. You needn’t change anything because God loves you right now and thus as whoever it is that you’ve become. Just embrace the grace that took your place and apparently doesn’t ask you to move from a place that was in need of such a grace that endured the grave to wash it away.

No, we’re not children of a God who would ever ask we change.

Because He knows everything and thus must understand that change is hard and thus learning too.

So they must both be things that He’d never ask we do.

After all, He loves us as we are, proven in that He invites us the same.

Friends, are we really so plain in the brain that we honestly believe that this life is supposed to be that easy that we never even need to do anything else? That we have no possible chance to be anything better? That the weather we face in trials we’ve already known, and thus should know we’re likely to meet again, they’re there to help us to become what their difficulty inspires us to be?

Is this not the sole benefit for which His Word was breathed?

A growth in hope that is only ever known once we’ve learned how little we’ve had? Of hope. Of life. Of improvements made to both inside the life we have lived in which everything better was always everything we were either too afraid or too lazy or too prideful or too complacent to be.

Is that who we truly want to be?

Never anything more, anyone else than whatever this is that we already are?

Is your life as it is, and you then as the one living it, are they everything you really wish them to be?

I suppose that may be the case for some but not for me. Because I for some reason continue to see so many ways in which my life and the ways in which I live it and this world in which I live to lose it just aren’t what any of the above really ought to be. Not that I know for sure as I know that I can’t possibly seeing as how I’ve never been wherever it is that we’re going.

None of us have.

This is in fact the first time that anyone has ever experienced what is the 29th day of April in the year 2026.

And it’s also the last time anyone ever will.

What are we supposed to do with that knowledge? What are we to make of this new day we’ve been given? What are we to do with all the chances we’ll have within it? Shall we do with them what we’ve learned to inside every day we’ve had before? Balk and back away? Run and hide when today again proves that life is moving while perhaps we aren’t? Embrace the fear or feel the shame of lives that stay the same but that because we’re afraid to change?

Indeed, why are we so afraid of better? Why are we so hesitant to learn? What is it about all we know, or at least think we might, that has us so unwilling to chase down that chance at a better life?

Have we truly learned all we care to know, gone as far as we care to go?

Is this life as it sits truly the best that this life can get?

Again, for some that may be the case and indeed all of us have seemingly held that hope that there’d come a day in which we’d be done growing, done learning, done improving and could rather just spend out the rest of our days basking in all the ways that our lives were everything we ever hoped them to be.

But again, looking around and even judging within in regard to the ways in which I live my life and the things I’m trying to do, be, become within the same, that’s just not something that I can see.

And that despite my, like you, trying so hard for so long to.

I’ve spent years chasing down such growths as learning how to exercise and eat right and even starting up a small business from scratch. I’ve given decades to combing through so much information and interest within it inside this feeling that within it was some secret to my life and it’s finding that benefit of being better than whatever it was, whatever it is. Indeed, no matter the things I’ve seen nor the lessons they’ve left, many of which I have tried to learn, it seems still that I’ve as much to learn now as ever before.

Because no matter the improvements already made nor the obvious measures of better met already within them, I find that I’m still here for a reason.

And still unsatisfied too.

And unsettled as a result.

And unsure as to why most days. Because, again, I’ve done so many things that have indeed bettered my life in so many ways that I should be content with me by now. And yet instead I find still inside that little kid lost in wonder as to what more there might be for me to be. I still feel that aching to keep asking questions, many of which I either know the answers to or fear what they might be. I still find that small voice asking me questions I’m afraid to answer as are asked on the other side of doors I’m terrified to open.

Because I worry that I might lose what I already have or misplace who I already am.

As if I’ve not learned already that that’s not always a bad thing.

For again, I’ve learned new things, done new things, tried new things, thus changed old things in the doing of all the above on my way to what is this today in which I sit here again just overwhelmed by the mystery that is again sat before me. For inside every new day is the sum of an entire life we’ve never known made up of hopes we’ve never held believed in by minds and souls which dare to know what all we don’t yet about all that is still yet to come.

Indeed, as of today we are all entirely dumb as to what tomorrow might bring, or even where we might be by then.

Sure, life thus far has left us pretty sure that we’ll still be here as, well, we always have been. And again, maybe where you are and who you are is truly all you ever hope to be. And if so, good for you.

But try as I have, I’ve just never found that same feeling of finality to much of anything.

Rather there’s always been within me this deep-seated longing to find the more that I dare imagine I might still become.

Maybe I’m dumb, been there before.

But friends, looking around and seeing all I see, knowing all I am already, you cannot convince me that all that is is everything it’s meant to be.

For if it were then what point would anything have? If we already knew all there was to know we’d have nowhere else to go, nothing more to be. If life were indeed always as easy as we always want for it to be, then we’d never grow beyond where we are, never have more than we hold. If God wanted for us to come unto Him as only the sum of all we’ve been, then this must be Heaven because most of us are still mostly who we already were.

And He isn’t slow in keeping His promises.

Thus if His purposes were never for anything more than our knowing whatever we already do, then we have reached the finish line and this life is then our reward.

And not to seem ungrateful, but that’s just hard for me to imagine.

Because still we have the ability to imagine, to wonder, to worry even. We all have still a capacity for learning, for growing, for coming unto a life spent knowing that we’re still trying even if we don’t know the fullness of the what for. We all are given every day so many lessons to learn which continues to say that He isn’t done with us yet.

Do we, like Job, sometimes wish He were because His lessons are sometimes hard, something noted in this verse discussing the beneficial nature of His afflictions sent us so as to help us learn His ways?

Sure.

But, well, how else could we benefit if not by lessons which inspire us move, if even by shame or pain? After all, He’s told us plain that His ways are higher than ours and thus better too. And yeah, that’s quite the hard lesson to learn as it’s learned in that we’ve now an entire way of life to lose.

And yes, that’s just about as scary as it gets as, to us, we’re doing okay as it is.

I mean we’ve got jobs and degrees and plans and savings accounts and stuff.

Why risk all that on something that comes so heavy as to ask us to humbly accept His ongoing invitation to walk away from all that is into the sum of everything that isn’t yet?

That’s why we’re all so afraid of learning, even seeing it still as an affliction more than an opportunity. It’s because all learning is done only when we at first admit that we don’t know everything. And, well, that’s simply terrifying as we’ve all spent an entire life lying to ourselves inside this idea that we kind of did know everything.

Which is why it’s good that we’re afflicted, harmed, hurt even.

Because those things teach us things that we’d never learn without them, you know, being this prideful and complacent people we’ve become and tend to clearly not really mind remaining.

Indeed, that’s His whole point proven inside of every single one of life’s hardships. It’s that remaining who we are where we are doing only whatever it is that we’re already doing, that choice only keeps us losing out on everything more that He knows we can be.

And thankfully He’s never been so quick to give up on us as we have been.

And I know we’d see that if ever we dared look beyond our fear of learning. Because the fact that He’s still trying to teach us something only proves that He still has something more for us to see, to know, to become.

Why be afraid of that? Wouldn’t it be rather more terrifying if all of the sudden we stopped learning, stopped growing, was then forced to live out the rest of these lives only knowing whatever it is that we already do?

Friends, I know we all feel as if we have a lot to lose, but I’m finding that one of faith’s greater lessons is that when all is lost, all’s then left to gain.

But that’s a lesson we’ll never learn if not for the rain which promises to wash everything that is away.

Let Him!

After all, He knows far better than we do what He’s doing.

Something perhaps proven best in that so often we don’t.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold