Day 4105 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

1 Peter 1:6 NIV

What is sufferance?

Is it something of a suffering made so personal that it becomes our expected normal? Is it a growing tolerance of those things in life we grow to tolerate simply because we haven’t really any other choice? Is it a concession chosen unto the chaos of life causing life to remain chaotic without our continuing to seek aimlessly for ways around it? Is it the facing down of failure and fear with a smile where hung the frown we’d usually wear? Is it perhaps even our wanting to be worn, weary, worried and that both by this war and too that it might end before we’re ready?

Is it determining to be never ready to quit but rather always interested in staying invested no matter the investment?

Is it investing our comfort as what becomes a willing sacrifice offered unto the reality that this life isn’t supposed to go right, a humbled appreciation for the truth of this emplacement?

For the truth is that we’ve all been placed here in what remains a place where we all find and feel more struggle than success and more suffering than the rest. Or at least so it seems unto us who are the only ones who’ve known the troubles we’ve seen. (Enjoy singing that song for a while!) But truly, the gravity of this journey is that despite however many we’ve around and however much they may care or at least kindly pretend to, we’re the only ones going through whatever we’re going through.

And the weight of even just knowing that is most days more than enough to convince us that we’ve got it bad without even having to face anything else hard in any given day.

Just knowing that we’re vastly alone, sometimes even with company, is enough to remind all of us the precariousness of this path we’re on. And indeed, even that is a fact so filled with ignorance, and uncertainty because of it, that it only adds to the overall difficulty we’re basically promised to face. In fact, it’s even still deeper than that because we are in fact promised to have trouble in this world and thus inside the lives we’re living inside of it.

Because this place isn’t perfect, proves it in plenty of ways and that every single day. If anything this world is veritable minefield packed with preferences and pride each ready and waiting to explode at even the whisper of a word heard wrong. Truly, we’re all settled into such this hurry seeking to get through quickly all that’s hard that we’ve lost our patient endurance of even listening to one another.

Could be argued that we don’t even listen to ourselves anymore.

And that’s because, again, we’ve simply not the time. Rather there’s always so much so miserable inside our lives that we feel as if we need to live them as fast and careless as possible because, well, maybe finding ways to indeed care less would help offload some stress and leave us then better able to please, to impress they for whom we still live and love to perform.

Who you ask?

Who knows I answer!

Because the answer changes most days by the hour. There’s always some new audience for which we’re aiming to win the applause. Always some new cause for which we become concerned. Some new concern that causes pause in seeking always to please and that always usually ourselves. But then the pause breaks as the applause roars and we find ourselves stuck right back in that old familiar fear of it failing to be our praise we hear as we’ve accidentally taken a second to stop and notice there are actually roses to smell and, in doing so, now fell a step behind those who pay them no mind.

All because to most the roses don’t matter.

Nor do the stars or the tiny little flashing versions that dance on the evening breeze as we stay cooped up inside reworking our plans and rewriting our lives to make sure that tomorrow we’ll find all we failed to feel or face today, with hopefully a bettered boldness willing to deny ourselves more of what makes life feel alive in perpetual exchange for more of what amounts to mere pocket change dropped by those who themselves are rushing about heaping up wealth without knowing whose it will finally be.

Because surely it won’t be ours for ours is rather the bars we’ve built of this prison we’ve made of the pension we’ve chased in that job we hate with the boss we please in what are ways of which we’re sometimes ashamed and that for reasons we don’t know because we honestly don’t care as the paycheck is literally the only reason we’re there and so we’re fine kissing some behind and working a bit of overtime so that we can find the bottom line a litter higher than last month.

For such is the life we’ve been sold.

It’s this process to which we hold both ourselves and our hopes expecting always for them to house something to hold that proves worthy of our hope and ourselves.

A focus we serve as we seem to observe what is a world in which doing so often proves the best way to at best maybe overcome some of the more trivial torments that remain always in the forecast. Indeed, in this life it seems it never stops raining and the pain never stops training and that over our lives as are lived just trying always to shield our head from as much hardship and hatred as we possibly can.

Of everything except our jobs and the weather that is, for truth is that those two offer us what is a commonly held disagreement as is held by the entirety of everyone else who too loves to complain about how the weather’s a little too hot and the rain doesn’t stop and how their boss is a jerk and yet they don’t really mind the work and the pay’s not bad and so they stay always working away for what is a job they hate for a boss who’s rude.

Least it gives them something to do inside when the weather’s bad!

And it just goes on and on like that. Life here’s become an actively-sought series of distractions and confusions sought only for their ability to turn our attention away from the fact that life’s hard and there’s not a darn thing we can do about it.

Other than complain and that basically every day because, let’s face it, the world alone gives us plenty to gripe against thanks to all the foolishness found in those running around us like both chickens with their heads cut off and for some reason still thinking that that’s good enough to allow them to drive cars like they never learned how to just go straight and how the right is the gas and the left is the brake and whenever the light turns green you lean on the one on the right and when said light turns yellow you take your foot off that fellow and place it gently upon its neighbor to the left.

No, you don’t actually have to speed up when the light turns red.

That’s actually what you’re not supposed to do.

But this isn’t driving school, because I don’t even think that’s a thing anymore as we’ve rather resorted to just making self-driving cars so that technology can handle the part that can prove deadly while we sit idly in the backseat doom scrolling on phones that have become little windows to a world that isn’t here as is lived by those who aren’t us, something we all apparently want because we all hate it here and that living as whoever we are and yet we do nothing about either except blame everybody else.

God being our favorite target in this scenario.

And that’s because, yeah, life sucks sometimes. It’s this seemingly always arduous journey spent through trial and torment, pain and portent, rain and raiment that’s littered with logos and that of the most random of stuff like tacos. Seriously, who wants a t-shirt covered in tacos?

Well, apparently enough folks for them to actually exist. And why do they exist? Because tacos distract us from spending even more time talking about how hard life is and how bad it’s all becoming and how bitter we feel toward, well, everything at this point. Indeed, we’ve opted for a path daily embittered and that because every day here is indeed a battle and, in truth, one we lose far more than we win and that because we’re now so distracted trying to find our version of perfect that many are literally losing touch with reality and just resorting to creating their own.

Because reality hurts to touch. Reality in fact seems, at least sometimes, to hate us! Because, yeah, we do struggle. We do suffer. We do stumble and manage to look stupid far more often than we ever come close to looking calm, cool and collected. In fact, rather than even trying to look collected anymore most folks just focus on collecting and that literally everything. For my grandpa it was pens. For me it was sports stuff until I found out that I hate sports. For some folks it’s ducks on a dashboard. For others it’s plans on a clipboard. For still some, for some new reason all the time, it’s anger scribbled on poster board.

Because we’re bored of it all. We’re tired of the trials and always ticked off thanks to the torment of the torrent that just never agrees to leave us alone to sit by ourselves and lick our wounds that were left from the last storm that blew through and threw our plans in our face and laughed as it did.

Indeed, it gets old living like this in what’s become a life in which being numb to it all it both the best thing we can be and yet something we never seem at all willing to become.

And that because we can’t numb to the pain, the struggle, the strain.

Rather our miseries are there to meet us every morning. They’re with us every minute of the day. They remain in our minds when we’re in bed trying to find not the answer for a moment but rather just the ability to go to sleep so that we can at least hopefully dream of a life that’s not quite so hard or miserable as ours always is.

Because it always is and we don’t understand why.

And that because we’ve forgotten there’s a God above the sky who sees our lives and knows we were created for far more than we’re living for because He’s the One who created us and yet has had to watch us unravel for centuries.

Each thread coming apart because we’ve become of this heart that houses this hope that for some reason still seems to insist that this life shouldn’t be hard or heavy, never stressful, never scary.

Friends, what if it were always easy?

What if life was always comfortable? What if everything did go our way?

Where we would be? Where does our way go? What hope do our plans hold? What future can our faith know? What growth is there to find in the contentment inspired by comfort asking always to stay right where we are so as to not risk losing said comfort? What potential is waiting to be proven inside those things that we can do all by ourselves? How can we learn all we don’t know about everything that we’re not if never we’re asked into those places in which our very best just isn’t enough?

What can we even know of our very best if never we’re asked to give it?

And how then can we ever learn that it really isn’t enough until we’ve found it and realized how weak and puny and trivial and lazy it really is?

For that’s who and what we really are!

We’re all willfully stuck inside this version of life spent willingly lost inside ourselves seeking for all these reasons to be both happy should we be pleased and yet then absolutely fuming whenever we’re not. And, well, most of the time we’re not. And that’s because life doesn’t have a setting that caters to us. We’re not the only ones who matter. Our comfort, our success, our pleasure and satisfaction, they all mean nothing.

I’ll let you sit with all that for a moment as I’m sure it might be hard to wrap your mind around.

And that’s because all we’ve become is nothing but convinced that life should be free from struggle, free from stress, free from suffering and void of mess. We’ve allowed ourselves to spend so much time tinkering away at our ideals that the same have become our idols that we serve inside literally everything we do. And we’ve so many of these idol ideals that anytime anything goes wrong in life, we blow up. We lose our minds because our minds then find that something else in life is just refusing to let us have it our way.

Again friends, what is our way?

Where does our way go? What can our way know? What little must our way hold when all it knows is only that it goes always right back to our being ever comfortable right where we are?

God’s not good with that!

We may be and in fact most seemingly are. But can’t you see, that’s the entire point of the promise of eternity! Truly, Heaven is defined as being so amazing because, well, life here isn’t! Heaven wouldn’t offer peace if we could find it elsewhere. It wouldn’t promise rest if we weren’t likely to get tired on the way. The joy it holds wouldn’t hold so much hope if joy were as easy to find inside this life as we’d all clearly like it to be.

And it isn’t found inside a life in which there have been those in the past who could write something like this!

That we can imagine rejoicing in our struggles and coming to appreciate our miseries only seems to prove that struggle and misery are here to be ongoing companions that we have to have some kind of relationship with if not at least cognizance of. And, well, there’s really only two options to choose from. One is decidedly more common and that’s to hate them, to fear them, to whine and complain and throw every fit we can fit inside the hours of a day whenever we find them.

The other option is to seek for reason in them. To wonder as to why they come so often as they do. To allow ourselves the humility that allows us the ability to peruse the possible point they’re trying to prove.

What do hardship and danger and disaster and difficulty and hatred and heat and rain and pain and that in feet that get sore and heads that ache and backs that break and hearts that do too, what does it all mean?

Why is it all so common that literally all of us have felt them?

I thought God was good and His plans for us were too!

Indeed, He is and, yeah, they are!!

For those who love God. Romans 8:28. “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.”

But don’t you see the problem?

God works for the good in all things for those who love Him, and, who have been called according to His purpose. This proves all sorts of problems in that few if any here really know what it means to love God as, let’s be honest, we’ve all learned to love literally everything else, and, because of this, we’ve become a people who only answer the call that is our own personal preference as is always paved in plans for our own personal success as is always wanted this very moment because we’ve become entirely impatient and absolutely unwilling to wait for anything we want, let alone actually wade through anything we don’t in order to get it.

No, the issue is that we’ve become the only gods in our lives and this is proven in that we love ourselves so very much that we only listen to any lie that tells us what we want to hear, you know, kind of like that one that says this life should be always easy and endlessly comfortable?

Yeah, we’d all obviously prefer it that way.

But again, what would we benefit if it were?

Friends, comfort and ease and tranquility and pleasure and success and health and wealth and happiness, they all do nothing but inspire us to stay put. To seek always for more of them right where we found them. To thus remain, for literally as long as humanly possible, right where we thus are.

But that’s not good enough. And that’s because we’re not good enough. And that’s because there’s both no other Name given unto mankind by which, through which we must be saved and that because we’re all sinners who’ve fallen horrifically short of the glory of God finding rather glory in everything that isn’t Him.

EVEN US!

Yes, we’ve become a people who even seem to honestly believe that glory is something we can have. My friends, how is that? Don’t we understand that vain glory literally gets us nowhere? All it knows how to do is convince us that we’re enough as we are.

Again, we’re not.

Because what we are is sinners, enemies thus of He who is above. So if we stop now, well, that’s all we’ll ever be because we know not how to seek for anything better whenever everything’s fine.

Hence the trials, troubles, torments and struggles in life!

They’re all proof that God’s got more in store for us than we’ve come to seek to store up for ourselves. We’ve become a people vastly willing to quit, seeking always for ways and reasons to agree to it. But friends, if we stop here and now than all we can ever be is whatever we already are. But what we are, thanks to our sins, is just a people a million miles and a billion mistakes away from Him and outside of home.

Why stay here?

Again, here is where we do feel pain, where we do fall down, where we do fail to find the hope and happiness and peace and love and comfort that we’re all looking for.

Friends, those things aren’t here for a reason!

And that’s to teach us a resolve unwilling to stop fighting until we find them.

Yes, this life is a fight. It’s an endless struggle, and honestly, seemingly only growing in that. Things are getting harder and it does seem as if most days this night we’re in is getting darker and the world around us deepening both despair and depravity and dishonesty and danger.

Maybe that just means we’re getting closer.

And that maybe because the world’s drifting further away from Him and all that He is.

Do we go with it? That’s the question in all this. Do we do as the world always has, whining when things are bad and getting mad when things are hard? Or do we, in humility, learn to welcome such hardships knowing that, well, they’re coming our way no matter what and we can then either fight against them and thus probably continue to miss entirely the entire point of them or we can turn and face them and perhaps then find within them the reason they keep hunting us down.

And maybe, in that audacity, the reality they’re all sent by God to lead us to our knees in what becomes a broken mess of a person who has literally nothing left but a broken prayer and that whispered from a faith so feeble and failing that we’re almost willing to face Him knowing that He might well destroy us.

For even that would be better than continuing to endure whatever this life’s become.

This isn’t supposed to be easy. Rather it’s all meant to inspire us to seek faith’s simplicity.

And that’s found only in our trusting in the finished work of Christ on Calvary, not our finding of some easy life lived along the way to the nowhere and nothing that exists without Him.

Let the miseries lead you to know Him, because, well, He knows them too.

He knows them too.

But so too what waits just beyond the patient endurance of hardship and pain, the embracing of struggle and suffering. Yes, He knows the point and purpose of this life’s ability to teach sufferance.

That’s why He calls us to embrace and endure it too!

#LeaveNoSoulUntold