Day 4092 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Job 30:27 NKJV

What is affliction?

Is it a lesson, one taught in misery bought not by us but rather by He who knows the better we can be as is measured against the better we’re not on this side of misery sought? Is it something we seek at all, seeing often no reason at all to do so? Is it something seeking us, something of a monster maybe, a mischief of sorts seeking to distort our lives so vastly that maybe the sum of everything we knew or hoped to know is just gone and not coming back? Is it losing everything we had, comfort the first tragedy? Is it maybe something of an inspection, a test of our flexion seeking for the point of our breaking?

Is it maybe something sent to aid in our making what is that life that we’d not have the understanding to live otherwise?

Is it something to which we should close our eyes and always wish it away?

For that’s usually what it seems we resort to. We always seek for these bargainings in which we offer up something in exchange for our either having something or, and more commonly, missing something or having something removed. It’s truly a quite strange thing we do as it’s done in what are two diametrically opposing views, one seeking to gain but only all that we want and the other seeking to lose, miss, skip, avoid all the more that we don’t.

And the affliction part is the part that continues to prove that we don’t get to choose what we win but rather only when we lose.

And that only our ego.

What makes doing so so miserable is that we never seem as if we’re all that willing to choose to lose much of anything in what is a life in which we’re all of the mind that’s made rather sternly upon our wanting and having as opposed to our having what we so clearly want not. Such as pain. Trial. Torment. The veritable torrent that is trouble that just seems as if it keeps coming again and again and again.

And then yet again.

It just never stops. Rather every day seems at best to bring only a fragile hope that instantly pops at the very first drop of a heart upon or into a situation or circumstance that demands a stance of patience, of humility, of willingness to get our hands dirty and admit our hearts are often the same. Yes, affliction is a pain, a truly grievous one. But the most miserable part is that it’s a pain we bring on ourselves.

A truth that never sells the story we’re trying to write of our glory being all we gain.

For rain and pain and a life washed plain upon the plane of pain and rain isn’t anything anyone wants to read, see, hear about.

For we’re all down here stuck inside our own downpour and needn’t within it the weight of watching on as others suffer too without a thing we can do to help.

Can’t even help ourselves it seems.

No, again I think we’d all agree that the vast sum of life’s majority has proven rather painful, miserable, afflicting then. Yes, it’s many days seemed as if our existence were only infected with this infliction of what feels an inspection that seeks endlessly to find our ending, our suffering, our succumbing even to the gravity of all we’ve done and all we thus deserve.

Something we simply don’t know how to deal with as we’ve rather long been the excited curators of this life lived as if always on exhibition in some kind of museum of us in which we show forth this image of trust in rust and ruin but completely unaware of how and why.

For to us it’s just our life and we’re living and so it’s must be going right.

Except that it isn’t.

At least not most days.

Rather inside most days we seem always of the ability to find something to feel bad about, to feel guilty for having done, to feel ashamed of having not even tried. And yet, despite all of these being choices made inside the very same free will that we so often misuse to do all those things we do want to do seeking to win all those things we have come to want, still we seem entirely unable to see that our suffering is then a choice brought to us by too us.

Probably because in our present circumstance we cannot seem to understand still the reality of consequence and how it’s something to be proven in everything we do.

Even coming within those better ideas we think we have and all the fun things we choose to do seeking to uphold them.

Indeed, so much of life’s misery, mundanity, monotony, it all boils down to a simple lack of introspection. We’ve become a people so against such personal investigation that we leave all manner of study and worry firmly off the table as we rather just keep the pedal to the metal and assume that nothing bad can happen whenever we hit the wall that I think we all know is coming.

And I think we all know it is because we’ve hit it before.

And that so many times that I’m really not sure how it is that we still don’t get any of this.

Because friends, fact is that our afflictions are not the sum of bad things that happen to these good people we still somehow manage to always think we are. No, they’re the cost of our continuing to think so highly of ourselves. They’re the outcome of our having come to see ourselves as honestly deserving of something, actually deserving that something always be good or beneficial. They’re the result of our pride writing checks that reality refuses to cash.

Why?

Because God’s not there to cater to our will as He rather has His own which is so clearly for our benefit that He sent His one and only Son to die in order to prove it.

And we think we’ve got it bad?

No, friends we know nothing of bad. Hard? Yeah. Scary? Sometimes. Sad? Sure.

But in truth, we know so little of pain, of misery, of suffering, of affliction as rather, according to the Word, we considered Him afflicted. We thought Jesus the villain. We believed Him to be the bad guy in the story because, well, we sure couldn’t be! No, this is our story of our glory, right? This is our life and it’s always supposed to go only however we want it to, right?

Well then why hasn’t it?

Honestly! If we’re so amazing at everything we do and too everything we want is always supposed to prove amazing too, then why has so much gone so wrong? Indeed, if we’re as in control of everything, and understand of the same, then how is it that life has continued to consist of what seems a consist unwilling to listen as we insist that it all goes a certain way?

If we have so much say inside our lives, then why are our lives so hard sometimes?

Could it be that maybe we don’t see the fullness of reality but rather some decidedly skewed version showing only this personal delusion designed inside a mind that we dare still call our own though it be daily on loan to whatever lie we want so badly to believe?

Can we not see that God sends the storms to blow away all those ways in which we continue to fail and fall short of His glory in what has been a story spent seeking our own?

Again my friends, what can we do with glory?

What does it profit us if we’re proven perfect? How do we benefit by making others believe that we’re both better than we are and thus deserving of nothing but the good they don’t even have? What good can come from living a life like that? Always thinking that we’re deserving of something? Always expecting only the best and the being utterly upset whenever whatever we thought the best to be just doesn’t prove the outcome we see?

Don’t we see that the higher the expectation the deeper the despair?

We’ve spent a life building ourselves up into these little angels who take always the right angles and yet can’t seem to comprehend that such has backed us into a corner.

A corner we’ve chosen for ourselves!

A corner painted in this belief that pain is unneeded and filled with shelves upon which we’ve sat all these lies we’ve bought that always manage to go along with that.

All because all we’re willing to believe it seems is that we deserve only to see, only to feel, always to hear only that which pats us on the back and gives us the rewards we think we deserve, the life we feel we’re due.

For doing what friends?

What have we done in, with, to life that has us of this mind that thinks all the time about all we deserve, all we dream to have, all we don’t dream anymore that we can still be?

How can we not be afflicted considering the fact that we’ve basically given up?

Sure, a rolling stone may gather no moss but a standing bust of us is seemingly what we’ve sought instead as, again, we continue to approach this life as if we’ve already made it to the very sum of everything good we could ever become and exist now just regaling the world with stories of our many exploits in which we prove always the hero who then deserves zero suffering or shame.

Lies then proving the moss we’ve gathered it seems.

Lies we tell mostly ourselves as, well, we’re the ones who still have to live this life and, yet, somehow still manage to be of this assumption that, despite however long we’ve already been here and however hard the journey here’s proven to be, still seem as if we believe that we can find our way to a life in which nothing goes wrong and we always feel just right.

I’m telling you, we’re delusional!

Because we should know by now that this part cannot be the best part. Not after what we’ve done to it! No, this world is but the victim of our venom poured from hearts so soured upon selfishness that we continue to assume all affliction entirely undeserved.

How is that?

And too, considering the verse at hand, how is it that we’re not more upset over what we’ve done and who it’s all caused us to become? How can we still be of the mind that still believes this life is one in which we deserve something of peace, of rest, of hope even?

In fact, what happened to hope?

Where did it go along the way to this here day in which we think ourselves so perfected already that we’ve left then nothing better to hope in?

What can happen to hope when we do so seem to know the very best outcomes in life?

What there is left of surprise, of reward, of opportunity?

Friends, don’t we know that hope is the hope of hardship? That peace is proven only after a lack of itself? That joy is gained only best whenever we’ve endured the mess we’ve made and been made to see inside the same the Name that came to save us from all we’d done to us?

That life is ours to lose if ever we’re to find the kind of life we can’t?

That suffering seeks salvation in ways no amount of comfort could ever even begin to believe we need?

That affliction and the pain and struggle that it insists upon has consisted all along of all the better that we could never become were we never so cold, so tired, so lonely that we’d become numb to the reality of where we are, and there and then finally able to at last begin the journey aimed elsewhere?

For who in their right mind would wish to stay inside that place in which the rain continues to drown their face, mixing with the tears poured in trial and torment?

Yes, affliction is meant to move us like the prod to a cattle. It’s something of an electric jolt aimed at bringing us back to life so that we can seek again for that life in which affliction isn’t.

How can we do that, however might we get there if our life here were so amazing, so successful, so very unstressful that we couldn’t think of anything better?

Is that really the reality we’re living in? One in which everything is always going so very well that we honestly feel as if we may as well just make ourselves at home?

Or is it rather a time in which life still isn’t going right, we’re still messing up and not doing right?

Considering the amount of affliction still found and felt and that seemingly by all, I think the answer’s pretty clear.

What isn’t clear then is why we continue to resort mostly only to complaining all the time. After all, what have our words every really proven? Again, I seriously hope we’re not all so deluded that we honestly believe that our lives have gone perfectly well and we’re ourselves then pretty much perfect at living them. Surely we can’t believe that!

And, well, if they haven’t and we aren’t, and that despite all the words and worries we’ve given unto ensuring the endless pleasure and constant success of this journey, what then makes us think we can change anything by using the same words in varied order?

If our words haven’t forced life to go right, what makes us think they’ll somehow help change it for the better whenever it doesn’t?

And yet we spend every single day complaining all about how all our hopes and dreams and all these plans for all these better things just aren’t working out like we expected them to. We spend our nights screaming at God because He won’t just do all we’ve asked Him to. We keep coming back to Christ, not to confess our sins and repent thereof, but to, once there, ask if He’d mind hoping back up onto that cross so that we can cross the line one more time in one more attempt to find the fun we’d found back in a life drown in so many lies that we really did think we were living life right.

And that still despite plenty going wrong!

You see, that’s the problem with nostalgia. It’s that it cherry-picks the very best parts whilst leaving out then all those passages in which not much was near as close to anything we’d care to consider as being best.

It’s something of a past’s highlight reel. And sure, makes us feel good to look back on all the amazing things we’ve gotten to experience inside the cherished memories we’ve made along the way.

Still doesn’t change the fact that sometimes life’s still bad and we’re the only ones who have to find some way of getting through it.

Granted, some of our favorite options anymore are doom scrolling, binge watching, binge eating, binge drinking still a favorite as well.

All because they all numb us to what we’ve become and come to accept because of it.

And, well, guess numbness is decidedly more comfortable than life’s many afflictions.

Still doesn’t change the fact that we can’t actually avoid them as they’re rather sent from God to help remind us that this time’s not for us to find our best but rather to repent of our worst so that we can be found toward that which is His best when we’ve finally managed to reach our rest from what then must have been a life in which we had none.

After all, you can’t rest from rest. Can’t retire from not working. Can never know anything of peace unless you’ve at first endured an obvious lack thereof, such as that seen inside every war ever fought.

Indeed, we can’t know anything of life until we’ve finally lost the one lived lost inside that most pitiable of all estimations that has so many still so certain that a belief in Christ is supposed to start paying off in this life.

And that despite how it was Him who told us that in this life we’d have trouble, troubles we’ve since continually sought to avoid or escape having to endure.

What sense does that make? Running always away from the very things that He promised us would come? Apparently then unaware of that other part in which He said that those who endured to the end would be the same as were saved? And too that those who undergo a life of testing will receive a crown of victory when they’ve proven themselves willing to actually share in the fullness of Him.

That being not only where He’s gone but too what He had to go through to get there?

Indeed, it’s just as we read in 1 Peter 4. “Therefore, since Christ suffered in his body, arm yourselves also with the same attitude, because whoever suffers in the body is done with sin. As a result, they do not live the rest of their earthly lives for evil human desires, but rather for the will of God.”

Get that?

It’s all about accomplishing the will of God, not whatever it is that our will wants for the day.

Because, well, our will has always been only concerned about the day. About this day. About making sure this day here today goes only always our way as is defined by us and only whatever it is that we want. Which is usually to only feel good, look good, seem good to those who can’t see good as is seen in the lack of good still found in this place in which we all waste our time, our effort, our lives trying to find some best life that we can live without Him.

That’s why we’re afflicted.

It’s because we’ve forgotten God and forsaken Christ and chosen instead to live as if we ourselves know best.

In what’s been a life in which so little has ever gone right despite our long contending that we’ve been in control.

No, affliction is there to remind us that neither are we in control and nor has God then relinquished it. Every pain, every sorrow, every sadness and all shame, they’re all there to help us see plain that we’ve settled for ignoring Him who’ll not be ignored. No, we will all know God be it His way or the other.

And while His way may prove hard, scary, painful even, His will leads us to Heaven.

Our will only keeps us lost assuming that Heaven is a place on earth, which continues to prove the same place where we all get hurt, feel pain, know worry and carry so much regret that we’re now filled with so much unrest and disquiet that we’re afraid of peace.

Yes, we are afraid of peace in what are lives in which we’re simply unsure if we even want to be healed.

And that because we still don’t seem to understand that we’re not well.

Friends, that’s why the rain never stops and the pain continues to come. It’s because, yes, they do break us down and tear us apart. But that only because He knows that we need such the new start that everything we are has to be the first thing to go. And so He sends what He knows will wash it all away, take it all away, kill it all away.

All so that we can finally begin to believe in what will prove the very best of days for some, but sadly the very worst for most.

Why?

Because on that day there’ll be no more denying Him. And the only deciding factor which determines eternity’s outcome is whether or not we ever took up the practice of acknowledging Him, confessing Him, confessing our sins and failures before Him.

This is what affliction helps us do. It’s there to help us lose this sense of superiority we’ve all sought to have so that we can finally have some room for hope to grow.

Because hope knows only to hope in everything better.

Can’t then know anything of hope if better is truly where, what, who we already are.

Let us then be thankful that He sends us so many afflictions to help remind us that better is nothing we know already.

But that better is rather everything still waiting for us to simply embrace the arduous road by which it’s found.

A road called affliction.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold