Day 4086 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Jeremiah 33:3 NIV

What is understanding?

Is it something always seen from where we’re standing at the moment in which we think we’ve found it? Is it something found only when we stop trying to see it from where we are? Is it something meant to move us toward wherever it is, whatever it does? Is it something that’s supposed to just come to us, seek us down and surprise us with whatever it is? Is it the simple veracity of the facts we know, deeper then should we happen to know more of them? Is it something based in knowledge and thus proven at least possible in light of what we know?

Is it knowing that no matter what we know there’s simply always more that we don’t?

Is it learning that the humility hidden inside our admitting all that we don’t know is the only place in which to find hope?

Throughout my life I’ve always been one who seeks to understand the things that are happening around me, to me, in me, through me. I’ve wanted to not only undertake but to personally partake in the understanding of as much of this gift that is this life that I possibly could. And that’s because there’s always been this impossibly interesting intersection between that which is bad (the hard, the heavy, the sad) and that which is good (the hope, the joy, the meaning we’re meeting or wish only we might meet more of). And I’ve just always found such a curiosity as to the unique measurings of all the above given in what are lives so unique from another’s that even today we’re seeming to forget that we are all sisters and brothers.

For our current understanding, a confusion found in whatever this is that defines where we’re standing and what so many are standing for while they’re here, it’s accomplishing only more of those things that are hard to hear, heavy to know, truly just sad to see.

Indeed, these days the bad seems to so often outweigh the good, at least in terms of typicality. And, well, try as I always have in my ongoing search to understand this life we live, I find myself only failing more and more to understand why things are the way they are. Because, honestly, it just doesn’t fit anymore. Rather it seems that most days find most things unraveling at the seams of what was once a life sewn inside a row of hope sown to show the way to go toward the more, the better that we all used to hope to be.

And I just don’t understand why we’ve all seemingly agreed that we like it this way instead.

An understanding made even harder to find seeing as how most folks here don’t seem at all happy with this way of life and how things are going within it.

For it seems that we’re all stood almost completely still inside this fear felt in knowing that things are getting worse without even the first idea as to why they are, how they have, how much longer we have before things get so bad that everyone just agrees to finally give up hope.

Just seems as if that day’s closer than we know.

And I think that’s because we all do know the way things are and that they’re not right. In fact, I think that deep down we all know that we’re not right. I think we all know that we’ve not made the best of life. I think we all know that we’re in fact so far away from that which is our best that we should be ashamed to even call this life, well, life. For tell me, if we’re not improving inside that moving from where we are toward the better that I pray we can all still understand that we can still be, well then what are we doing?

Because it sure ain’t living.

And, as always, I say this as more of a personal indictment than anything. And that’s because, having only ever lived my life, well then I can only really speak for my life. And, even though I’ve long thought I was trying otherwise, recent events have opened my eyes to a life that I never lived thanks to the one life that I did. And it’s left me caught up inside such a blend of curiosity and confusion that it seems that from where I’m standing I see yet again only another crossroads that He who held the cross knows I would one day come to.

And though it broke me to tears night before last, it has been the best week I’ve had in quite some time.

Because there’s come a realness that I’ve finally been able to find. It’s an understanding as to the reality of where I’m standing and how, though I, as we all do, have long thought it to be the very best place for me, there are simply things that I couldn’t see from where I stand. Things I couldn’t be because of who I’ve been. Things I will never have the chance to do because of the things I chose to do instead.

Things that define a life that I, for some otherworldly reason, have once again this bold but shy ability to believe in.

Problem then is that nobody can believe in what they know for sure or already have, already are.

Or at the very least we shouldn’t be so quick as we so typically are to settle for where we are, what we have, what we know, and how we seem to think we know that we somehow understand it all.

In fact I think our average measurement of nearly all of understanding is sadly nothing more than a strangely selfish coping mechanism which seeks to assuage the guilt we have over the life we’re not living thanks to the regret we have over the life we have been living.

Something we don’t ever come to consider because it’s only considered inside the humility that mostly remains hidden inside our admitting all that we don’t know remains the only place in which to find hope, an admittance unto which we never admit ourselves as if it’s the one place we simply don’t belong.

Why?

Because we know the truth we’ll find inside.

And that is that as good as this is, this life we’ve chosen and these people we’ve become because of our fealty there toward, it cannot possibly prove undeniably better than the sum of everything we’ve never known.

Because there have been the choices we’ve made for what we always thought were the right reasons as were measured hoping always for the best possible outcome. But unfortunately every single choice we’ve ever chosen has brought with it the inescapable consequence of the life we could have lived inside the options we didn’t choose, the paths we didn’t take, the questions we didn’t ask, the words we didn’t say.

And as for me, I’m tired of thinking I always know what to say, what to do, that I somehow have something in this life that I can’t afford to lose upon the risk that is that path I didn’t choose but somehow have now the ability to at least imagine again.

And I think that our ability to imagine is where our opportunity to understand finally begins.

Because I believe that understanding is meant to always be something bigger than us. In fact, I believe that understanding only ever starts at the very end of us. I believe that we have to go through all the things that we do, learn all the things that we have, carry all the weights and worries of a life mostly spent always waiting for something better to just come out of nowhere and land right in our laps in order for us to get up off our rumps and finally get back in the pursuit of life.

And yet we’ve become so prone to complacency thanks to our preference for comfortable things that we now hate the very gifts meant to guide us further into the understanding of life itself as is held inside the learning of things such as why we have one and what we’re meant to do with it.

I mean, do people even ask those kinds of questions anymore?

For it does seem as if there was a time, one now fading if not utterly faded, in which folks dared at least seldomly toward the more existential side of things. Why am I here? What am I meant to do with the fact that I am? What do I want to do while I am? What have I done for so long as I have been?

Where do we go from here?

Where is here and why have we stayed for as long as we have?

Is it because we truly understand that whoever, whatever, wherever we already are is truly the best that any of the above could ever possibly be?

Or is it maybe because we do understand the gravity, the grating, the grinding we’d start finding, feeling inside a life spent regretting what we’ve settled for inside a childlike hope that there’s still more to all this than we’ve settled to know?

Don’t know but I sure do hope that we all do know that we’ve not yet arrived at the very purpose of our lives.

I hope we do all know that we’ve not but barely scratched the surface of that question asking why it is that we’re here.

I pray that we all find that day in which we open our eyes, see our lives for what we’ve done to them, admit we’ve made a mess of them, and there and then hit our knees and ask Him to at first forgive us for what we’ve done and to lead us onward unto the more we could have started doing, seeing, being, becoming long ago.

Because it seems that the more of life that I try to understand, and thus the more understanding of life I come to think I have, all I really have are questions that seem like they’ve been needing to be asked for years, decades even. And yet they’re always the questions we never even admit are there because we’ve done a really good job at convincing ourselves that we’re good with who we are, where we are, doing whatever it is that we’re doing simply because we have some baser understanding of all the above.

None of it may actually be the best that any of it could actually be.

But unfortunately it does seem as if we do understand the hard work, the heaviness, the horror that’s to be met inside our letting go of what we know for what we understand we still don’t.

And, well, there’s simply too much risk in that.

In fact we loathe such unknowns as, well, everything we don’t know. Such as that which makes up the life/lives we’ve not lived. Or the sum of those things that we could have chosen down that path we didn’t, choices, chances, changes that we may never have any idea of simply because we’ve become so adamant that we’re getting everything right as it is.

And sure, maybe we are.

Maybe we are living our best life. Maybe those things in our life that do go right are proof that we too are then living right. Maybe the vast quantity of good we’ve found testifies to our apparent understanding that we’re both good at whatever it is that we’re doing and thus doing anything else would be a bad choice to make. Maybe we do have too much to lose in looking for more.

Maybe there isn’t more to find in life, of life.

Yeah, maybe we have arrived at the very best possible outcome of life, for life.

But looking around at all that’s happening and the past that I’m still holding, at least memories of, I for one can’t understand that as being the case. Because I can’t even begin to wrap my mind around the suggestion that the best is already behind or beside us. I can’t seem to even beg myself to agree unto imagining that where I am, who I’ve been are both all there is.

I don’t even want to waste my time with that understanding that so many seem so able to find that has them believing that their best is the one they’ve already lived or are now living.

Friends, does something so hopeful as that which is best truly agree to a finish line upon which we can actually arrive? Can we actually manage to find the completion of excitement? Is there really a place toward which hope can go that, once there, it proves forever unable to go any further?

Are we really at that place in our lives, with our lives in which we’ve run out of things for which to hope?

I hope not!

See what I did?

Truly, I honestly hope that this day today isn’t the same end-of-the-line destination that we’ve treated so many of its predecessors like. For such has been our life. It’s been but this time in which I fear we’ll find still the same lies and losses we’ve already both left behind but for some reason chosen to bring along with us. Maybe we just like them that much. Maybe our lives have meant so much, gone so well that we can’t bear to imagine anything better.

Again, I hope not.

Because, as good as our lives have been thanks to the untold number of blessings given us within them, we’re fools if we honestly think that all there is to all of this is simply all there has been already. Truly, we are undermining the very gift that is life should we go on living it as if we’ve already tapped all the good out of the very best for which He designed it. Because should we not always want more for it? Don’t we all seem to understand that way of life in which we always want more for us?

Why then are we always seemingly so scared to want more from us? To expect for from us?

To inspect all of us in terms of the personal terms of who we are, where we’ve been, what we’ve done and why we did it all the way we did?

Because surely we don’t actually believe that we’ve actually achieved that most arrogant of all estimations as to the very fullness of life and the gravity of what it means to be actually living one, which is that we’ve come to such an understanding of everything that we thus know everything too.

For to understand something does ask that we know not only of it, not only about it, but in fact so much about it that there’s left nothing more of it to learn. To understand demands that we plumb the deepest depths of a matter until there’s nothing more to measure. To understand asks that we ask every possible question that we could ever possibly ask about whatever it is that means that much to us to sit with all such worry and wonder trying to ensure that we leave no room for error.

Does anything even mean that much to us anymore?

Have we anything in our lives that still sparks such a curiosity inside that we’re not only willing but in fact excited to seek for the end of us so that we can find more of it?

Sadly I don’t know that many do because it seems rather that most here are pretty well convinced that they’ve too much to lose in what they see then as the unlikely chance that they could find something better.

That’s why the rich guy went away from Christ all sad like.

It was because, to him, he had already searched and long since found what he felt was the very purpose and meaning of life. And, well, he’d managed to find so much of his measure that when faced with the challenge of letting it all go for what he didn’t yet know, it was a bridge too far.

But friends, how can we know for sure?

I mean, sure, what we’ve found and that it’s apparently felt so amazing that it’s for this long had us staying right where we are, it must in fact be so amazing that we’d have to be crazy to give it up and walk away into the unknowns of wherever it is that understanding goes.

But aren’t you at all curious as to all you’re missing? Do you not ever wonder as to the things you’ve never seen? What about the sounds you’ve never heard, people you’ve never met, the answers to those questions you didn’t ask or the meaning to the answers you got from the ones you finally dared to?

Don’t you want to know at least a little more of the fullness of why it is that we’re here?

Aren’t you able to wonder as to where we’ll go from here?

Or are we all just really scared by the whole “unsearchable” nature of those things potentially too great for us to greet inside wherever this is that we’ve planted our feet in what seems then an understanding that has us convinced that where we stand as who we are doing whatever we allow ourselves still to try is the very best, perhaps in fact only way to live this life?

I’ve known that fear for finding out that I’ve been only wrong all along. I know the worry that’s always waiting for us to turn around toward the wonder as to where our younger years could have gone had they not gone where we allowed them to. I know the regret met in meeting the feeling that we’ve missed it, lost our chance, gave away the very sum of everything that probably won’t come around again.

Friends, why is it that we treat such things as knowledge, growth, health, hope as if Hailey’s Comet?

Do we truly have but one chance to find it, feel it, see it, be it?

For the truth is that we have but one life in this world.

Are you absolutely certain that you’re living it the best way you possibly can?

Or, and stick with me here, could there maybe be something more waiting just beyond the scope of everything you see, everything you know, the very understanding in which you’re standing right now?

Could there be more to all this than we can see, more than we even know how to be?

I hope there is.

Because if all there is is but the sum of everything we can know, can find, can be or do in life as we live it so often by ourselves and on our own, then this just became the saddest story ever told.

Because I don’t want to spend my life still just trying to find the things I know I can. I want to seek for those things which I know I can’t. I want to go to those places that I don’t know how to find. I want to ask the questions that terrify me in life. I want to know what all this is, why it is whatever it is.

I want to understand this.

Even though understanding is something that isn’t actually ours to have.

Rather “to God belong wisdom and power; counsel and understanding are his.”

And it’s because of this that for our to understand understanding asks that we always retain that audacious humility which dares to believe that there’s always something more to learn, something more to find, something more for us to be in this life.

And that’s because God alone is the Beginning and the Ending. And so I hope we all understand that we’ll not understand anything until we’re once more found standing before He who already got us started.

But only at the end of whatever we dare to do with all He’s given us along the way toward wherever all this ends.

Just please don’t agree that the end be here nor wherever your fear, your arrogance, your selfishness asks you to stop along the way.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold