Day 4114 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Luke 22:44 NIV

What is earnestly?

Is it to undertake something within the understanding of the severity thereof? Is it the ability to see such a seriousness to something that there’s an unavoidable sobriety demanded? Is it a person’s personal perspective having purchased such an awareness of what either they or even another is up against that they find themselves willing to give of themselves whatever it may take to alleviate this danger they see? Is it the ability to even in fact discount danger in what is a moment of such divine anger that sorrow is allowed to override selfishness and its having programmed us to seek first always our own safety?

Is it a solemnity that finds one willing finally to face down that which could prove fatality but that with a faith that finds them unafraid to lose what they know is in the hope of what they know could be but only because they do what they feel they have to in order to resolve this issue that is in fact one defined best as between life and death?

Is it welcoming death if that’s what it takes to break free from what isn’t a life worth living anymore anyway?

Yes, to do something earnestly is something undertaken with every such form of seriousness and sincerity because that which is earnest is perhaps the very closest that any of us can ever get to true honesty. It’s a truth so powerful and thus personally moving that it won’t allow us to stand by and do the very same nothing that’s all but defined our entire existence. It’s the substance of something so fragile, so terrifying, so life-altering that the life involved finally agrees to just be altered, to be changed, to be broken, to be lost if that’s the case.

Why?

Because being afraid isn’t being alive as fear rather most often finds what we usually feel are reasons to run and hide. Indeed, being a people born with the instinctual reaction of either fight or flight, well, truth is that we know well how to fly! For we’ve done it nearly every time that anything that even seemed like it could be hard or heavy came our way and offered to ruin our day or alter our way or steal from us this arrogance that actually finds us feeling still as if we have a say.

We don’t.

No, contrary to our obvious personal preference, truth is that we can control all but nothing in life. Can’t control what happens, when it does, why it might. Can’t change things that have already happened nor why we did them nor why we didn’t. Can’t change the worries and wars waiting to be won or lost within God’s will for us. Can’t change whatever another determines to do, even if what they do means that we lose. Can’t change the minds of those around us who live as if they’ve not the time to even realize that we’re here too.

All we can do, all we can choose is how we respond to the reality of whatever it is that whatever is.

And no, there’s nothing all that hopeful to be found hidden in that as, well, we’ve sadly become a society who hold all hope hostage inside these haughty opinions which seek always similar outcomes. We’ve seemingly come to believe that hope is something to be proven only whenever whatever is is proven to be whatever we wanted it to be. As if good is then still something to be defined by we who do far more of its contrarian, and that in fact so commonly that it’s amazing any of us still seem to see anything at all that’s in any way even close to good.

I truly don’t know how we do, other than true hope itself.

For true hope is something actually held inside of belief. It’s something that demands we believe in what we cannot see seeing as how what all we can see sure seems to often be only everything we wish wasn’t whatever it in fact sadly still is. In fact that’s life! It’s the substance of everything from storm to struggle and us here always in the middle trying our best to safeguard this bubble that is our belief that we need always some relief from what God’s sent to made us resilient.

We’re running away from our own personal improvement!

And why?

Because improving is a hard life. And that because improvement asks that everything that’s in need of being so bettered is all but left for dead. That’s the fear we all find and feel within any and every suggestion of change. It’s the realization that change means only the loss of everything that is in exchange for what can only really ever be but a hope placed in something else being something better. A trade we cannot be ever absolutely certain of because we can only ever be absolutely certain of whatever is.

But that’s just it!

What if the reality is that whatever is isn’t anything we need it to be? What if what is isn’t anything we want it to be? What if what is is only everything that’s hindering everything from hope to even simple happiness?

Should happiness honestly be so simple as our society seems to have made it?

Should hope be held inside something on a shelf destined for a box in the basement?

Should life itself be relegated to our refusing always that which seems hard in preference for all that promises always to be easy?

Can that which is easy ever be done earnestly seeing as how ease knows nothing of severity, of solemnity, of the sobriety then needed to ensure that our eyes and minds remain sober enough to see, however much we can and however far we might, up ahead unto that life in which there’s that light that just won’t leave us alone here inside our hole that we call hope?

Indeed, what is it that we can hope for by our always seeking to stay put where we are living as we are doing whatever we are? Again, is what we are, who we are as is basically only defined by what we do and what more we don’t, is it really all there is to know, to see, to be?

Are we indeed as far as we want to go inside what is a life with such an endless capacity for all of everything to grow, even hope but yes also horror?

What all are we missing inside our being always so afraid of something that we just seek endlessly all the excuses and seemingly valid reasonings to avoid it? In fact, what all can we never see, will we never be so long as we go on ahead into all that isn’t yet seeking only for all we want it all to be?

For since when did we actually accomplish the learning, experiencing, knowing and understanding of everything?

Truth is we haven’t. And, well, that same truth all but promises we never will, at least not here in what remains a life lived within a world in which everything changes while we strive always to stay the same. And it’s because of our lack of affinity for change thanks to the fear felt within every opportunity to welcome it that defines us as being so unable to learn, to experience, to thus know or ever then even pretend to understand even something so simple as what life is.

And how what it is isn’t much of what He desired for it to be.

And we can know with divine certainty that life as we know it isn’t much of what He intended for it to be because of this scene showing our Savior struggling ahead of His coming suffering.

Because He knew what was coming. He knew how hard it would be to hurt as much as He would. He knew the misery, the agony, the intensity that He was going to see and hear and feel, and that it wasn’t only the flesh that would feel it. But so too the Spirit. He knew the wounds would run far deeper than the blood they’d spill and the bones they’d break.

He knew He had more to lose than the life they’d take.

And yet He’d promised that He’d not lose one of us who were given Him by the Father.

So He knew He was going to suffer.

And in the hours just prior we see Him here in the garden at Gethsemane praying, as it’s said here, earnestly and that because He honestly believed so deeply in the severity of what this time meant that, despite His being now human and having then to deal with every human emotion such as worry and fear and anger and disappointment as was being proven in a friend proving a stranger as said ‘friend’ had sold Him to this danger He was now to endure, He faced it all anyway.

Because it meant enough to Him the outcome that He invited the pain of the path which led unto it. He welcomed the agony of even those moments spent praying that there might come suddenly, as did for Abraham, some other way to accomplish what needed done without the death of a son. He embraced the misery as was made already so personal that He hit His knees and prayed so hard that His sweat began to bleed.

What do any of us know of taking anything in life that seriously?

What has ever come unto us that was of such solemnity that we stole away from everyone and everything because we knew we could do nothing to avoid it, to change it, to fix it or even understand it and just then needed to spend some time with the only One who both could but perhaps wouldn’t? Indeed, what have we any of us ever experienced that found us willing to welcome it with the same sort of violent humility we see in Jesus in that garden at Gethsemane?

“Yet not my will, but yours be done.”

Make no mistake, we all know that part of that prayer that He prayed just prior to that, that whole, “Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me.” That part where we ask Him to change His plans for us. That part where we beg Him remove His storms from us. That part in which we hit our knees and beg through tears that He let us try something else, do anything else other than whatever it is that we have to. That part in which we ask that He bend to our will so that we needn’t experience the weight that is His.

Something we’ve all asked because we know we can’t bear even a fraction of what we still can’t either admit we deserve.

And that despite all He did.

And again, why is it then that we still fail to take our faith more seriously than we do? Why is prayer still something most often relegated to our asking God for rewards and recognition and a lack of personal responsibility even? Why is worship something considered of songs we sing but not the lives we live? Why is praise something offered only on Sunday morning but never Friday night? Why is it that we continue giving our lives to only all that continues taking them away from Him, taking us away from Him?

Why are we so willing to let go of Him if not because we see inside of Him nothing worth our fighting, our fearing, our feeling of frustration over our many failures to do better in that regard?

Indeed, why is it that still we hold Him in such low regard that we treat Him who took our salvation so very seriously that He prayed before it so earnestly that His sweat bled, trying to find some strength to face down what He knew He couldn’t avoid, what He wouldn’t avoid, what He in fact chose to do?

Why is it that we find it still so hard to choose Him who chose us?

If not because we see not the severity of the choice?

Nor realize that we’re making it every single day within every word we say and all the ones we don’t?

What haven’t we said? Who haven’t we been? What haven’t we done to alter the both in order to become who He created us to be, who our mistakes prove we could be, who our failures should make us terrified of our never becoming?

Again, what is it about whatever this is, whoever we are that is so unworthy of our wanting something more, something better so very badly that we’re willing to risk the very sum of everything we have and all that we are upon the hope that perhaps only pain can provide?

Can’t we see that until we’re willing to bleed, to suffer, to struggle so badly that we risk dying from mere exhaustion, that we can nor then know anything of life?

After all, what can life mean if we’ll never know of anything worth losing it?

What are we willing to risk our lives for? What are we willing to change our lives for? What have we in terms of hopes or dreams or goals that we’re willing to fight for?

What of any fight have we in us anymore?

Because the sad truth is that all that this life is anymore is just a bunch of people going daily to work and running errands to the store and trying our very best to avoid all the rest of everything else that we don’t know enough about as to face it down and welcome the fears and failures and lessons and improvements that could be made far more easily than anyone could imagine.

Truly, we haven’t any idea just how close everything better has always been.

Because, if we did, we’d not be in the shape we’re in.

And yet here we are. We’re still a people torn between two opposing outcomes as if there’s actually some sort of reasoning to be found within the both. As if death is something that we can dabble with a while longer. As if sin is something of so little importance that it’s no big deal that foulness continues to pour effortlessly unchecked from our mouths. As if allowing into our hearts all manner of haughtiness and hostility is something to be taken so very lightly.

As if our looking with approval upon whatever it is that another claims merely makes them happy isn’t our signing our names to their passport to hell.

As if we’ve not signed our own ourselves.

All because what we’ve become is a people who take nothing seriously. Rather everything here anymore is a joke. It’s a punchline. It’s all just this most lighthearted of adventure that requires nothing from us but our seeking only comfort and pleasure and success while we’re here. Don’t even take seriously the promise that one day we won’t be.

Because we don’t care to consider such realities. We don’t want to carry the weight of worry. We hate having to hate that which is wrong. So we do everything we can to avoid that feeling that we should.

Indeed, we don’t even hate the death that is all sin enough to stand against it. Rather we continue to fall for it every chance we get, which often comes in changes we don’t make. And we don’t make them because we’ve become so convinced that we don’t have to that our not changing is all that we know anything of doing something earnestly. We resist change as if our lives depend on it!

And in fact they do, just from the other way around.

Because in truth, if we don’t change, we will die. And granted, if we do change we’ll still die. For at this point death is just a part of life. Only difference is that defined by how we define life.

And we see this most sovereign of difference here inside Christ’s facing down what He refused to run from, a choice made to be well changed because He couldn’t, wouldn’t change His mind about what He knew had to be done if it meant that even just one wouldn’t then have to lose what He chose to do it all for.

And that’s eternal life.

And He made that choice because He knew that in Adam all die for from Adam all’ve learned to sin. And because all have sinned and fallen short then of the glory of God, none then are welcomed unto the same because God has no tolerance for sin but rather is the One who defines it as the death that His Word says it is.

Thus we all will die.

Only question we actually get to answer is whether or not we ever come to live a life that’s worth being given a second chance after we have.

That’s what Jesus did all He did for us to have. That chance to change and find in doing so something new to say, chiefly the Name which is now above all names having been raised the same and then raised again from the grave in which He was laid after the first.

We’re still running from the first.

Why?

Because, yeah, it hurts. Yes, it’s scary. Sure, it’s hard and that cross impossibly heavy! I mean honestly, can you imagine having to carry the very machine that was meant to bring you such misery?

Truth is that no we can’t and that because we’ve spent our lives running from it and trying to hide.

Friends, we can’t hide anymore. We’ve run out of room to run away. We’re out of time, have at best but a few more days. How do we want to spend them? Still taking everything so lightly that nothing then means anything and everything rather means nothing? Laughing as if it’s all just one big joke? Giving away our every hope to the very sum of nothing more than our being happy and feeling good?

What does that matter if neither will last?

That’s what He knew that we’ve all still to learn. That everything here is temporary, even all the pain and agony. Problem is that even momentarily those things are so adversarial to our common understanding of what a life should be that within them still we see no need for our to endure them.

But friends, how else can we grow if we’ll never welcome the struggle that all growth is?

Again I’ll ask, what have you in our life, in your heart, in your hope that’s worth suffering for, that you take so very seriously that you will not even consider compromising on it? Do you have anything like that? And, if not, why not?

I understand the difficulty of such things as discipline and determination as they’re definitely things that ask often more than we’re prepared or perhaps even able to offer.

But truth is that if we’re never asked beyond our measure then we’ll only ever know who we already are.

And if leaving us as we were was considered worse than what Jesus knew He had to do, why should we go on taking it so lightly as to think it arguably our best option?

It obviously isn’t, but we’re so scared of changing it that many simply never will.

Yet if Christ took our eternal life so seriously as to pray before He took the cross so very earnestly that He shed blood before the nails were hammered in, again, how can we continue to live as if His doing so means so little as our doing nothing differently than we’ve always done?

Not a response He shall welcome my friends.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold