Day 4109 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

1 Peter 1:7 NIV

What is scarcity?

Is it something seen so seldomly that it’s all but almost scary whenever it is? Is it a matter of such mystery that in truth nobody really knows where it is, what it is and thus has little idea as to how it looks or of what it feels? Is it a feeling of something being so rare that even when we do see it, feel it, hear it there we feel still this still chill as the doubt inside demands we deny be it might? Is it something that indeed might not be seeing as how it is so rare to see and hard to hold? Is it even something many if any of us can know considering it’s something which itself may exist here all alone?

Is it a loan of what is a hope that hasn’t a price and thus can’t be bought nor then sold as none knows of what it’s worth as it may well be the only of its kind upon this earth?

Is it a matter meant to be measured by this earth and the many things which do exist within a plenty within this place, and that over against the immeasurably more which we don’t have here and thus doubt is there wherever there is that defines whatever it is?

Whatever it is I think it something that inspires a strange blend of curiosity and caution, and rightly so. I mean, after all, seeing as how all scarcity is something that is hard to know as there exists so little of it that it cannot be studied and thus none know anything of it with any real certainty, it is perhaps always best to approach it meekly if not in fact weakly. For again, not knowing what it might be nor then whatever it might do, it could prove a matter meant to make for harm for whomever ignores the alarm that is our heart that now knows so much doubt that even doing things is becoming something of a scarcity.

Indeed, who’d have thought that our fears and fragilities would accomplish for such a fallen and felon humanity this curious delusion designed inside how little we’re doing and how much we claim we’ve won within it? Doesn’t really make much sense, does it? That we’ve become so seemingly retired from nearly all matter and manner and even measure of trying in what then seem to be lives lived so loaded with all we’ve ever hoped to have that most here seem as if hope is something to be had?

Should hope exist inside such an excess as to be found, apparently, inside all the madness of man-made fondness?

Or it is that we’ve simply fondled and fumbled so much in life that we actually assume that such is what we’re meant to do? To just take everything either for granted or for rather an impossibility that elsewise opines that the matter or material isn’t even worth thinking about because, well, if we can’t see it then we can’t hold it and if we can’t hold it then we can’t know it and if we can’t know it then we won’t own it and if we’ll not prove able of owning it then we’re pretty much just not interested.

Because we’ve become all but completely consumed by this consumer’s mindset that’s sat us inside this lust for rust and a blind kind of easy trust placed inside the same.

Why?

Because it’s normal. It’s common. It’s known, and that by all, and thus so easily understood and endlessly repeatable that it seems a matter made of an importance unrepealable. Meaning it can’t be taken away, can’t truly fail, can’t then let us down as, well, even if it does then there’s another copy or perhaps even newer version right there on the shelf waiting for us to buy it with the easy version of belief that asks only that we see.

And indeed, seeing is believing to most in this house of ghosts who do in fact scurry about heaping up wealth without knowing whose it shall finally be. All because said wealth is something, again, easily seen and thus desired by all.

Maybe it’s just our animalistic sense of competition having reached its perfect blending with our strange willingness to relinquish all forms of wonder and curiosity, leaving us all but finally thinking that we either have found or can find all that we both want and need inside this life.

As if all that makes this life this life is to be printed in a catalog that everyone else relies upon and rechecks from time to time?

Granted, maybe it is. Maybe the sum of everything under the sun is truly all there is to have and hold and hope to know about what is this home that is our own that then demands we seek for all we can see whilst inside this place before we leave.

To where?

Don’t know yet as none have been there and come back.

Though some claim to have, but they’re too of such rarity that we all basically just think them at least a little off and thus not really worth listening to. After all, why listen to and thus risk learning from someone who most would think probably well may have at least one screw loose?

No, we’ve here too much to lose to ever dare invite that risk of our wondering as to what else might exist and where all it both may be and, for now, clearly isn’t.

Indeed, what all is what all isn’t? What isn’t to be found, at least for now, inside the sum of all that is? What are all the things that inside this world just can’t fit? Can even all of this world fit inside what is our mind? Or are our minds meant only to fit inside this world, seeking endlessly with them everything within this one place we’ve always been and thus can easily trust we may well always remain?

Always here being entirely figurative if not utterly fantastical seeing as how, well, we’re all leaving this life at some point and so our own personal always is then to be defined as decidedly different, as in either longer or shorter, than that of another.

Which ought to help us find at least some understanding of scarcity seeing as how we’re both the only ones to ever live our lives and we only get to do so for what could well be another day or two.

Time proving then so oddly scarce that it should scare us how we’re using it.

Because truth is we’re all just wasting it here wrapped inside a world lost in want and wish and that for always only more of what we can see.

Again, is that truly all there is? Is the true sum of all this just whatever proves able to fit within the same place we do and still try to? Or doesn’t our trying so hard to fit within this place in which we have only remove from us our own scarcity, our own rarity, our then every ability to be something different, something better, something bigger perhaps?

God exists outside of all time, space, matter, material, meaning even. And this is proven as easily as possible within the fact that none of us have seen Him, none of us then can measure Him, none of us truly know the full depth of His Word as we’re all still at best only studying it and that perpetually as it does seem to remain quite living and active, none then know the fullness of His will as, well, we’re all still living either in step with it or, and more commonly, in opposition toward it, and we then have no idea what He nor then anything else means because, well, if we don’t fully know He who created all this then we can’t possibly know what all of this is nor why.

We’re rather just students of life who are either trying to pass with flying colors so as to fly away when He returns, welcoming then every chance and change that allows us to grow in His grace or we’re the dropouts who’ve instead dropped below the radar in what have become lives lived as if He can’t see us and we needn’t then worry about our being found by Him as a part of them who know only to disappoint due to at best indifference if not at worst, and again more common, blatant disinterest.

So which is it?

Are we students of life trying still to find the sum of what it means that we have one or are we just too comfortable among those who think they’ve not one to lose that we too live as if we won’t?

I think the answer’s as easy to find as our own personal approach to life’s many challenges.

Do we welcome them? Do we appreciate them? Do we believe within them a measure of growth brought about by either rain or pain? Do we consider them able to heal but that only because they begin with harm? Do we consider them extensions of His arm as if reaching down to pull us out of what we are toward where we’re afraid to go? Do we think them able to offer us knowledge of something we don’t yet know, the better we were created to be perhaps?

Or do we hate them? Do we run away from them? Do we fear them as they prove always to fight us, to fail us, to flail us with the fact of our frailty and fragility and folly put on wide display for all to see that we cannot possibly be what all we’ve always tried so hard to prove we always were?

Do we even know what we are?

How can we when we so clearly know not whose we are?

And, well, how can we ever learn anything in regard to whose we are should we still think that we are ours?

Is this not the story we tell whenever life’s going well? That it’s all thanks to our abilities, our understandings, our successes and accomplishments successfully accomplishing any and all victories we happen to enjoy? And that at the same time as our always trying to find someone else to blame for whenever our lives are proving too plain and filled with pain to ever be anything we want anyone to actually wonder as if we might appreciate, if not maybe even enjoy?

For that would be a strange story to tell!

That we appreciate the struggles? That we enjoy the grinding? That we understand our need of this life beating us to a pulp?

No, that’s a story so scarce that it is in fact scary as, well, one couldn’t possibly be in their right mind should they find that this life is one which should be hard and they then ever thankful whenever it is.

Alas, I guess I find then that I’m somewhat scarce in that regard as, well, I do appreciate that which is hard. I do enjoy those things which push me, inspire me to try, ask that I ask my laziness and lust to die so that I can move on trying to find something far better than both. I do glory in the hope that there comes a day still up ahead, long after all of us are finally dead, in which we’ll hopefully some of us be there forever at rest from what is this test that is this life that needn’t then be anything of easy.

In fact, I find that I scare more easily whenever things are easy than when they’re hard. I worry when life goes too well. I fear those days in which I don’t see the ways I’ve failed as I can’t learn in them how not to. Yes, I am terrified every time that I fail to find something that I did wrong or didn’t get right.

Why?

Because how does it benefit my life, offer to make me better, stronger, healthier, more helpful then unto another whenever I’m allowed to think I’ve got something figured? How does it help me grow as a person, a brother, a son, a friend, a servant whenever I’m stood inside a life that doesn’t ask me to learn? What all have we all already missed or misunderstood thanks to our lives having gone close enough to well enough that we learned to leave well enough alone?

These are the thoughts that I truly like to think.

Not because they’re easy and I know they’re definitely not safe as they always seem to rather ask that I see myself as the villain, the hindrance, the hopeless thief whose always there only to get in the way of the better I can be as I still find that oftentimes I only wish for what I want rather than worrying of all I need to rid my life of so as to make room for those things so rare that, not seeing them here, I fear I may never know.

Indeed, I want to know the life I don’t. I want to hold the hope I haven’t. I want to see what I can be, and honestly, I don’t care that he exists on the other side of all the storms inside this life. Better means enough to me that I’m willing to endure anything to find it.

Until it comes in what seems and sounds a failure so fatal that I find myself again only worried and then teetering toward unwilling to move toward it.

Because that’s common. That’s normal. That’s always been our standard response to anything and everything that’s ever proven hard. We run. We hide. We beg for God to take it away from our life. We want only all that’s easy to find, safe to hold, normal to have.

So much so that we assume the same the only things which can have hope.

Friends, how do we know?

How do we have any idea what hope is or isn’t seeing in our pasts all the times that we’ve all run from it? Or do we not yet realize that such is pretty much all we’ve done in life?

Run from hope.

Run from home.

Run from Him who is our hope of a home in which all that’s hard and scary and so far from easy isn’t found or felt anymore.

Why don’t we want to know more of Him?

If not because He’s hard to understand, difficult to know, dangerous to follow? And this we do know because we do know the road that He did hold. We do know the hardships He faced. We do know the pain He felt, or at least some meager idea of it. We do know the outcome He met within this world. And, well, it’s honestly nothing any of us want to know anything of.

We’re here to live and that hopefully an easy, safe, comfortable life.

Why then give any time, interest, wonder unto a Savior who asks us out onto the water where the storms rage and the surface proves endlessly unable to hold us up?

Makes no sense.

Seems too hard.

Is too scary.

Because faith’s scarce.

Because faith isn’t anything ever to be proven in what we see nor how we feel nor even what we think. Rather faith is a willingness to trust in what we don’t see, in what we aren’t yet, in where we aren’t yet. Faith is the audacity to risk all we have and all we are in the hope of the better we can find and will be once we do. Faith is the courage to wager what we can’t afford to lose in order to find what we both know we can’t see and yet believe we can’t afford to miss.

Such as the reason for all the storms and struggles. The purpose for all the pains and troubles. The need for all the lessons we’ve learned and the life we can somehow agree we’ve messed up which have helped us to learn them. The meaning of His mercy meeting us always where we are but bringing with it a will that won’t let us stay.

The fulfillment of a better day in a better place where “there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”

Indeed, I don’t want to miss that, even though it is found on only the other side of His promise that in this life we will have trouble, we will face trial, we will feel pain.

So bring the rain!

Bring the suffering. Come on with the misery! Let it flood my life and utterly overwhelm me!

Why?

Because salvation is worth the suffering. Growth is worth the grinding. Faith is worth the finding and that being that we’re not good at finding it, feeling it, not good at anything but failing it.

Yes, let us fail! Let us fall short. Let us fall apart!

Because only inside all of those is there any hope of a brand new start taken with a brand new heart that finally knows how to hope and that, perhaps, only because it finally learns both what and where hope never was.

And that it’s not in us nor where we are nor what we go through nor how we so often resort to feeling about it all.

Rather hope is found only inside the furnace of affliction as only inside of failure and fear can we find any understanding of why we’re here and why He isn’t.

And that’s because He’s called us to follow Him out of this world toward where He is which is that place in which there is “no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”

That’s where I want to be, and since those things still exist, are still known, are so common, I know I’m not home yet. And because I’m not home yet then I yet have hope and I know it can and should only continue to grow as I continue to learn how to face this life with every fear it finds and failure I bring.

Because those things, fear and failure, they’re common and thus they don’t mean anything.

What means everything is that which is so rare that it cannot be measured and thus proves a treasure that is utterly priceless as none can afford to buy it.

Such is what salvation is. Such is what mercy is. Such is what forgiveness is.

Such is what Jesus is.

And that He sees still something inside of me that’s worth sending all the storms and sufferings through which I can grow, through which we all can grow, then so too must He know that there’s something priceless inside of us as He’s already proven, with His very own death, that He will do whatever He needs to in order to help us see what only He can.

Who cares then how it comes?

Friends, our better is worth the beating. Again, that’s a fact He’s already proven.

If it means that much to Him, why then should it mean anything less to us?

No, this life is the time in which we learn to trust in His plans, His will, His Way. Why? Because ours know only to run when things get hard, to hide when life proves scary, to find value in that which is easy and only doubt in everything that isn’t. Yet we’re told here that the trials and troubles and torments and torrents come only to refine us by helping find us finally so broken and beaten that we dare try kneeling as standing just doesn’t make any sense anymore.

After all, the quickest way to be again dropped to the floor is for our to think we’re something and stand up to let everyone know we do.

No, the fires come to help us lose that ego, all so we can know who we are, why we’re here, where we’re going and what all He went through to get us there.

Let us stop worrying so much about the struggles along the way and just embrace the fact that continues to say that they come only to help us see things inside of us that we couldn’t otherwise.

Things like faith, hope, trust, the growth in an understanding of why He laid down His life and how it had absolutely nothing to do with making this one easier.

It was to help make us better.

So let us face boldly, brazenly, fearfully if need be into the weather for once not worried about whether or not we’ll make it. Because the past has already proven we always have and that because there weren’t just three in the fire.

Rather there’s always been He who was and remains the fourth.

And so while this life may find us scared, scarred and scorched, so be it.

Because again, it simply doesn’t matter what we go through but rather only where we go to. And He alone knows the way as He alone is the Way. So set your fear aside and trust your life to He who gave it to you. After all, who better to know how to protect that which He created in love?

We can trust Him friends, maybe even most of all whenever life asks that we don’t.

All because maybe our trust, our faith, maybe it is so rare that He really won’t take it lightly whenever we do dare give it to Him. After all, He again went through a whole lot for us to find out just how much it’s worth, just how much we’re worth.

What if we stopped questioning that and just accepted it for the rarity it is, the rarity faith is, the rarity we then should be?

Who know what all we’d see?

#LeaveNoSoulUntold