Day 4108 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

1 Peter 4:12 NIV

What is ubiquity?

Is it not a circumstance of such common familiarity that it is in fact a clear commonality? Is it, being such a common commonality, is it still something that comes sometimes by surprise? Is it, because of its tendency to prove still surprising despite its obvious commonality, something that we should still welcome a fear of and thus hesitancy toward? Is it always bad to be surprised, even though certain things shouldn’t be at all surprising? Is it any surprise that we all act always surprised whenever there does come something in life that we do not elsewise even pretend to enjoy?

Is it common to seek for only our enjoyment of everything despite most everything proving decidedly far from enjoyable?

Is it wise to see still all but all of life through these rose-tinted lies that have us convinced that all of life’s contents should consider our opinions and their pretense?

Indeed, why are we so always tense in what are lives that are in fact quite intense and that because of their contents? I mean we can all agree that not everything has ever gone our way despite that desire having been made clear along the way. And so we could all seem to say that, since things haven’t always gone our way but have rather proven at times well-surprising, then perhaps yes, maybe we do have some reason to continue all this whining in what still remain lives focused on all the wining and dining we pursue as it shows that we’re winning.

But then there’s that.

What are we winning when life apparently has become something so filled with so much that keeps us whining? What is this then foolish pursuit of some best life which suits our various fancies when it’s made so clear, and that inside every single day anymore, that the vast majority of what we do see is only everything we wish not to? Can a best life be found upon the same ground atop which we groan? Having grown to know so much of what it is to groan, to moan, to mourn the many plans we’ve had that haven’t had their shot at life, can we then continue to pretend we have any idea what life is or why?

Seriously, why are we here? Why do things go the way they do? Why are so many days so much harder than any of us would ever care they be? Why do we seem to always see the sum of so many things seemingly sat always against us, and that alongside this curious audacity to continue running straight for them as if we actually believe we can overcome them? Having overcome some trials and temptations in the past, why then are we now so surprised both when they come and too when we fail?

After all, does not success come with failure? Is not making a mistake the best way to bake a better cake? Isn’t falling down the single best encouragement to get back up? Having fallen down, and that because we’ve fallen for lies that have left us perpetually surprised at every fiery ordeal that’s ever blown our way, only to have gotten back up, why then are we still so shocked then we find our socks knocked off?

And that by either something which goes better than we bargained or, and yes more commonly, something that’s gone far worse than we feared?

Why do we know still so much of such fear as found when faced with things in life that look hard or seem scary or ask that we actually then try to survive them? Oh, the humanity of it all! That we’re asked to try! That we’re commanded to move! That God sends us things that inspire us to do the both inside the hope that we might finally find what hope has always been!

And that it’s not something we should so seek to confine within this life as lived within this world in which, yeah, we do get hurt sometimes and yes, some folks are born blind and yeah, others choose to become so for whatever reason and that mostly only spiritually or emotionally as, well, it seems that such a choice is rather conducive to our conclusion that this life can be the best life we ever live.

Indeed, though we should have hope here, the hope we have here shouldn’t be here.

And yeah, that’s as confusing a proposition as any which have ever been proposed.

Because yes, hope is something we all want close. We want to see it, to taste it, to touch it and trust it to not let us down, which we could know it won’t so long as it is something that we can hold, can see, can believe in that easy kind of belief that we believe is the best kind there is. Which is, again, seeing. Indeed, we’re a people vastly gone inside this idea that sings this song that seeing is believing, leaving us then believing only for what we’re seeing.

But what do we see entirely more often than we’d care to believe a life would bring?

Struggle. Hardship. Misery. Disappointment. Danger. Disaster. Destruction. Division. Darkness. Anger. Resentment. Frustration. Fear. Failure. Foolishness. Faithlessness. Fellowship but alas that only with our fellow felons and fiends.

Where then are we expecting always to find excitement, hope, joy, peace, purpose, meaning?

Indeed, what does any of it mean when all we continue to see is the scene of a world spinning sideways? How are we to be expected to keep our feet on the ground when the ground’s become the wall and the wall’s now the ceiling?

Why do we build so many walls that do become the ceilings below which we sentence our hopes and joys and expectations to reside?

If not only because we feel it safer because in life we continue to find that, well, no, nothing ever really goes exactly as we plan and far more even comes along for which we have no plan nor then any measure of expectation and nor then any form or even fragment of readiness? After all, how might we ever prove ready for what we don’t know is coming?

And yet why do we still contend that we know not the coming of struggle in this life?

We were all told it would come, and that from the mouth of Christ!

“I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”

What things?

“A time is coming and in fact has come when you will be scattered, each to your own home. You will leave me all alone. Yet I am not alone, for my Father is with me.”

That we’d fracture. That we’d fall away. That some in fact would fall apart. He even told Peter that for him He’d prayed so that, after he’d strayed, he would turn back and teach the others how to better avoid doing the same. Yes, Christ has told us that the time is coming and in fact has come in which we’ll all run, we’ll all fall, we’ll all fail, we’ll all fear and sadly that not Him but rather those lies which distract and divide from Him.

What lies?

Those of a best life that billions are seeking for, saving for, struggling for. Or that of some easy path as is supposedly paved in only success and accomplishment. Or that of love being a matter measured always in only mere agreement or appeasement. Or that of people being good and thus deserving the same. Or that of us being good despite all the bad we see and feel and hear. Or that of this world holding or housing all for which we should hope. Or that we’re not to reach the end of our rope because if we should then folks would see that we’re not good and that either people or thus at living this life.

No, don’t let anyone see you struggle. Don’t let anyone know you’re hurt. Don’t admit ever that you are truly scared. Don’t agree to let anyone see, not even yourself, the truth which cries that you need some help. Because that makes you look weak. That makes you look small. That makes you look as if you’re about to lose it all, everything you’ve ever had and that which everyone else still wants.

Rather play the part, repeat the lines, tell the lies and pretend you’re fine so that everyone else who’s also lying to themselves doesn’t have to see anyone walking in the freedom of honesty because we honestly know we’re slaves of suffering and shame and yet rather than doing anything about it we just continue to whine our way through it, staying then the same.

Even though such complaints never manage to change anything.

At least they’ve become ubiquitous too.

And in doing so they give us then something to do which the world will understand, will agree with, will perhaps even appreciate as our lives become reminders that they’re not alone in what’s become the only place in which anyone seeks for anything of both hope and home.

A commonality that’s utterly deprived of reason or rationality seeing as how, again, pretty sure we’d all agree that this life can be, and that far more common than not, defined by our struggling, suffering, stumbling and running from the humble audacity to admit we do.

Why?

Because it’s a path to choose that’s being always walked by others and we’ve become almost perfectly convinced that having company is better than having sense. Because we seem still to seriously believe that if everyone else is doing it then surely it can’t be wrong. Because we know that so long as we agree to go along then we’ll at worst only suffer a share of the consequences as opposed to shouldering the whole load should we dare go ever alone. Because we’re so afraid of being alone that we know nothing of the opportunity to sit beside only Jesus and our thoughts, and thus don’t know who would have won all the fights they should have fought.

No, we know only to think as we’ve always thought. And that’s led to a life all but defined by our making plans and expecting them always to go smoothly. A life in which we insist that we be successful within every step and at every stop in the journey. A life in which we journey toward nothing because we know that anything different is everything harder. A life in which we surrender our every chance at being better because we’ve learned to see suffering as a sacrifice of the life that we’ve come to live that we’ve come to love.

And we just can’t bring ourselves to so lay down what we sometimes hate.

Why?

Because we still have some good days. Because we’ve learned some things that have allowed us to have some things that have become for us those things that we feel we can trust because their dust proves they won’t leave or let us down but will rather always be around. Because we’ve gathered around a horde of those more than happy to pat us on the back and tell us always how well we’re doing, hinting then that we needn’t ever dare go changing anything.

Which just so happens to be exactly what we want to go on hearing!

Because it frees us from feeling as if we should perhaps be trying, both more than we have and that for more than we are. Which is what we want to go on hearing because trying is hard, it is scary, it is surely the very best way to fall back into failing. After all, you can’t mess up what’s become so normal that you do actually know what you’re doing.

Never mind that it’s clear we have no idea what it’s all doing to us.

For that’s a consideration entirely uncommon as it’s one clearly unbecoming what we’ve become, which is sadly only everything we seem well-intent to continue staying.

Why is it so common to not wonder what we’re missing? Why are we so easily amazed by the things we have or those which others hold? Why do we seem to think it better to live only in the past through memories told than to dare adventure toward the making of new? Why are we so willing to continue to do whatever we’ve always done when there’s still nothing new under the sun and thus everyone still hurts, still worries, still feels fear and finds failure to improve because of it?

Why are we afraid to move, to grow, to learn, to lose?

If not because those are all common too?

You see, we’ve become a society of such physical, spiritual, emotional stagnancy that we think it now reasonable to be the same. That we should always avoid all signs or semblances of struggle. That we should always run and hide whenever life gets hard. That we should embrace this strange reliance on filters and fillers to show the world something we’re not, all so that they don’t have to admit they’re living a lie themselves.

Indeed, dishonesty and deception have sadly become so very common that we’re seemingly even further away from our ability to find the audacity to say that we don’t care what happens in life nor then the number of difficulties that come our way.

A distance deepened because of our having gone communally off the deep end into believing that bad things happen to good people and we’re all good people.

And sure, maybe they do but I’m pretty sure we’re not.

After all, what’s so good about worry or fear or our societal failure to find faith as being anything but foolish, and that despite all the foolish stuff we continue to do that we all seem to know is foolish? What’s so good about our thinking it funny whenever someone else fails or feels pain but find ourselves entirely unable to laugh it off whenever we do? Why is it that we can take things lightly but at the same time so fearfully that we, again, end up just staying right where we are as who we’ve always been?

If not because, again, stagnancy is so ubiquitous as it is because, knowing well the predatory nature of such worries as failure and fear, we’ve learned it best to not move and never make a sound.

Because I think that deep down we all know that, indeed, our adversary does prowl around seeking someone he can devour, destroy, distract. And so we know it to be safer stuck warmly inside the pack who says they have our back whilst lying to our faces about all the joys and changes that we haven’t found and refuse to make all because we’ve all become so half-baked and lukewarm that we know only to feel alarmed should anything even pretend to cause us harm or promise us hardship.

We want nothing to do with them nor their like because we’ve become commonly convinced that life is supposed to be only about what we like, how things look, how we look to those who like to think that this life is supposed to be always safe only ever easy.

It isn’t.

Rather this life is a contest whose content is that of a current which washes over us in both failure and fear, both of which are supposed to suck so that we can find inside that we ourselves haven’t the ability nor the audacity to stand up, and that so that we can learn to finally seek for He who can. Indeed my friends, this life is a crucible in which we’re supposed to be burned, melted, mangled beyond any and all recognition.

Why?

So that we can recognize that this world cannot possibly hold or house our best life as rather it’s the one place which only promises our death, our suffering, our struggling, our stumbling and that both through lies and over the lives of those who continue to agree to commonly succumb to them.

Why fall down with them?

Not that we’ll not all stumble and fall.

But why agree to stay?

Friends, my point, as almost always, is that it shouldn’t be this way. We shouldn’t all know always how to say all the things that everyone else continues to speak. We shouldn’t know so well how to freak whenever life gets hard, to worry whenever we feel lonely, to assume we’re doing something wrong because life’s gone wrong too. It happens.

It’s supposed to!

Not because misery or hardship are fun to go through but because going through them helps us refine our faith in what we hope to find whenever we get to wherever it is that we’re going to.

We’ve just all become so afraid of the journey that we’ve settled in alongside those not taking one anymore. Rather we now exist storing up for ourselves treasures where we are made of things we can see from where we sit.

And we tell one another that we’re supposed to be good with it, not because it is good, but rather simply because it is safer and easier and thus less harmful and harrowing than that rare way of life spent trying to keep searching for what we all know we can’t find here.

Indeed, who does that? Who in their right mind wastes this life trying to find what cannot be found upon the ground atop which we’re at present living it?

Nobody!

Which is maybe why we should consider it. Because nobody’s doing it. Because everyone thinks it’s foolish, stupid, utterly asinine.

Friends, everyone also thinks that this world remains a fine place to find their treasure, to house their hope, to build their home and plant their lives. And that despite this world being the same place where we all live a life that is hard, that is scary, that is often so entirely impossible to carry that we buckle under the weight and worry as we’re asked to wait because we see everyone around us enjoying themselves.

Enjoyment never was and will never be the point of this journey!

Rather the point of this journey is to aim us toward Jesus as there’s still no other Name given under Heaven by which we must be saved. And, well, what better to help us come to terms with the fact that we do need to be saved than our having to endure all those things that come in this life that remind us all that life here does suck? That life here is hard? That life here is scary and lonely and absolutely nothing of pretty much anything all of us have ever hoped it might become?

Friends, what I’m trying to say is that this isn’t supposed to be easy, but that just because it isn’t doesn’t mean we’re actually the only ones who know it isn’t. There are plenty of people who are struggling, who are afraid, who are legitimately worried about so many things that the entirety of their days are spent unable to bear the weight. We’re not alone in the misery of it all!

Why then continue to pretend that we’re somehow better off by living a lie that makes those losing their minds trying to find some fantastical ‘best life’ think that we’re doing the same? And that in the same place?

We’re not meant to find anything here but Jesus and our need for Him to save us. And no, that’s by no means a common thing as rather most folks continue along inside this hope that they can do this all on their own. I wish them well. I truly do.

But if you’re more interested in the truth than in their nonsense, then just know that you’re not alone. There are some here, plenty perhaps not, but still some who do understand that this life isn’t where we’re supposed to stand but rather only the place in which we learn to kneel and that before He who is our Savior. And, well, He’s shown us what a life spent following Him will probably look like. Even told us how it would go.

Basically tells us so right here in which we read inside His Word of these fiery ordeals that will come upon us. Told us so that we’d not be surprised, but also so that we’d not be afraid.

And that because we do not walk alone even if nobody else is walking here with us. And indeed, whenever we continue to veer toward the fire and fear, we’ll find most won’t. But that’s okay because we’re not here to be like most nor be liked by most.

We’re here to be like Jesus, at least as best we can.

And even when we can’t because we don’t know how, we can at least trust Him to lead even when it seems that His path knows only the misery.

After all, it shouldn’t really matter because He also told us that everything we see and most of what we’ll feel inside this place is only temporary.

So let us be on our way then, and let that way be His.

No matter how hard it gets.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold