Day 4118 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Jonah 2:8 NIV

What have we missed?

As I get older I find myself more and more convinced of some of the sheer nonsense that we’ve come up with seeking to assure ourselves that our mistakes, our wrong choices, our past fears and present worries aren’t wasting for us opportunities that we may well never have again. Such ideas as this common adage you see tossed around from time to time that tells us that “we’re not strong enough to ruin God’s plans for us.” It’s a most hopeful outlook to be sure and indeed one in which I do believe as I do believe that His will will be done and there’s not a single thing anyone can do to change it.

But again, as life goes on and we continue getting plenty of things quite willfully wrong within it, well, seems I’m pretty certain that while we may not be strong enough to ruin God’s plans for us, time will prove that we are well stupid enough to spend a good portion of our lives running away from them.

And in truth this is something we’ve all chosen, again willfully, to do more times than we could ever remember we have or consider we might. And that’s because we’ve all bought into this life in which we’re convinced that life itself needs to always go just right, feel just right, look just right and that only to our eyes and still too those of those who are walking beside us and thus with the best vantage upon our every word, deed, dream and disaster.

And indeed, we’ve sadly come to become such the performative creatures that we do in truth seek often the visual or audial pleasure of they whom shall see inside our lives either the substance of treasure or trash. And it’s easy to understand which one we want them to look at as none of us wish for our lives to look worthless, foolish, failed or forsaken. Rather we all want our every day to show forth this person who knows the way and too an ability to know it so very well that walk it well we do.

But friends, we don’t.

We neither know the way in which we’re supposed to go nor how then to go it well as even Scripture testifies that “a person’s steps are directed by the LORD.” A verse which ends in it’s asking then “how then can anyone understand their own way?” For indeed, “in their hearts humans plan their course, but the LORD establishes their steps.” And yeah, that sure does seem to align with that line that tells us that no matter what happens, nor even what we ourselves may do to cause it, yeah, it’ll all work out as it should.

And in the end it will.

Problem is that we’ve all a life to live along the way to the end at which all things will work out as they’re promised to.

My issue is seemingly this then unrelenting realization that we’re all missing so much along the way and that at our own doing.

Because the fact is that in this life we all do as warned against here. We all cling to worthless idols. We all have foolish ideas. We all chase down the dumbest of personal ideals and we do all the above thinking it the right thing to do. And in many ways that’s because it does feel right all along. I was literally just talking with God about this idea last night at what was the end of a long day spent both mowing grass out in the heat and that whilst walking down memory lane too.

And oh the shadows I met of the ghosts I’ve kept from living the life we were meant to live!

For it’s true that hindsight is 20-20, but that truth only covers a part of the honesty. Because honestly, the truth is that we can never see anything perfectly that wasn’t there. We can’t know the fullness of the picture we didn’t take, the portrait we didn’t paint, the path we failed to make through what is the life that we didn’t live in light of the one we did. All we can do is look back and guess as to what all might have been.

And yeah, there’s always that off-chance that what could have been may still be as God is a God of surpassing mercy that continues to prove of the willingness and ability to open doors we’ve slammed closed a hundred times or more.

But friends, eventually He’s going to leave those doors closed.

And thus we find the life we didn’t know.

It’s that one we missed because of our having been focused on the life we lived instead. It’s the life we left to die thanks to all the time that we poured ourselves into the plans we’d made for the paths we’d take thanks to the dreams we’ve chased that at best have come true. And indeed, I hope they have, hope they do. But friends, what I’m getting at is that even our dreams for all these incredible things that we want so badly for our lives to have or hold or come to know, they all come at a cost that we simply cannot know.

And I just don’t know that there’s a deeper misery than wondering what might have been.

Because, again, we’ll probably never know. Because the truth is that what might have been waited for us all that time that we lived our lives doing with them whatever we did in them instead. What might have been is something of a stranded kid waiting at the bus stop for their parents to pick them up only to have sat there for so long that the kid grew up and realized their parents weren’t coming and so they just gathered their things and walked away.

To where?

That’s what we can probably never know.

We don’t know all the places we could have gone in that life we didn’t live. We don’t know all the memories we didn’t make of moments that never happened because we were busy making other memories of things that did. We don’t know the person we could have been that was only there at the expense of all the choices we’d have had to make differently than we did.

Indeed, we can’t know the answers to questions we never asked. Can’t know the promises and prizes that waited for us to find them along the paths we didn’t take.

We can’t know what we’ve missed thanks to what all we found instead.

And if that truth doesn’t mess you up then I don’t know what to say.

Truly, I’ve been trying to find my way around it, through it, over it, under it for days, weeks, years. And yeah, maybe it’s not wise to wonder unto the lives we didn’t live as, well, there’s now nothing at all we can do about it.

But maybe the misery that’s won within the wonder can help us do better now.

Maybe the understanding of the fact that where we’re standing could well be a million miles and memories from where we could be would be what we need to help us learn to stop taking so many things in this life so lightly. Maybe we need the sheer brutality of staring in the face of a chance we didn’t take. Because maybe that brutality will prove just agonizing enough to inspire inside of us a willingness to dare for better a bit more than we have before.

I think of the fish that brought Jonah back to his senses. That’s literally where he was when he uttered this prayer from which this verse is pulled. See, Jonah had been called by God to do something that he just didn’t see any point in doing.

Why?

Because he knew that God would do as God had intended to do no matter what he did or didn’t do along the way.

Jonah believed that he “wasn’t strong enough to ruin God’s plans.”

Indeed, in Jonah 4:2 we read that “he prayed to the LORD, ‘Isn’t this what I said, LORD, when I was still at home? That is what I tried to forestall by fleeing to Tarshish. I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity.’”

He knew that God’s good will would be done even if he didn’t take this trip to this town that he also knew wouldn’t like what all God had asked him to tell them.

That’s why Jonah ran away from what God had called him to do.

And true, to him his reasonings seemed, well, reasonable because, well, they always do do they not?

Indeed, Jonah knew there was danger to be risked in going to another place just to tell them about all they were doing wrong seeing as how humanity has never taken that sort of thing lightly. He knew there was time that he’d have to spend both getting there and getting back. It would cost money maybe to afford the trip. It would take his focus and attention off of his other intentions and ideas. It would, at least momentarily, upend his life as he was living it all comfortable and cozy like at his home doing whatever it was that he was doing that he thus has plenty of reasons and desires to be doing.

Most of all he again knew that God would do what He’d chosen to do and thus didn’t need to be involved in it being done.

It seemed to him as unnecessary, unneeded, a veritable waste of time, energy and resources to play such a miniscule role in what God would do whether he played his part or not.

So he ran away and ended up hiding in the hold of a ship, a seemingly safe place well hidden from the eyes of God and man. Until, that is, a storm blew up out of nowhere and the ship found itself and its crew in real risk of being wrecked and ruined at which point the people thereon got together to try and figure the reason for the weather. And they learned that Jonah had run away and hidden from God because he didn’t want to do what God had asked him to.

Long story short they make a deal to throw Jonah overboard into the sea, the storm immediately ceased and, as for Jonah, well, the whale comes along that offers him a few days to rethink some things.

Problem is that we’ve not had a whale.

Nor then has it taken mere days for us to realize, with or without help, that we too need to rethink some things. In fact, for some of us it takes years to even realize there were things we should have rethought. In some cases it takes an entire lifetime for us to find all the guilts and regrets we didn’t know we should have had. And, well, given enough time not second guessing much if anything will only leave us forever stuck to the path we’ve chosen within the choices we’ve made, carrying then perpetually the cost of every single one.

And that cost?

It’s the life we didn’t live.

It’s the unknowns we’ll probably never know of the story we never knew. It’s the wonder won within the wander which didn’t win at the time in which we had to make a decision. It’s the direction(s) we didn’t take and thus didn’t travel toward what are then destinations we never arrived to. It’s the sum of everything we could have done, would have seen, should have become.

All of it missed because we were focused on doing what we did instead that has left us having become whoever we’ve been instead.

And no, maybe it’s not all that much different.

Maybe nothing would gone all that differently had we made all those choices differently. Maybe our lives would have gone entirely the same no matter what we chose, what we did, what we didn’t.

But maybe they would have. Maybe they’d have been better. Maybe we’d have been better. Maybe we’d have found more of the dreams we’ve had fulfilled rather than failed and forgotten. Maybe we’d have had more of those better kinds of memories had we not done the things that have left us with so many of the not quite so good ones. Maybe we’d have had daughters and sons and a wife we loved in a house that we’ve instead never called home that we didn’t need thanks to the family we didn’t have either.

See what I’m saying?

It’s that in life we so often get so focused on doing whatever it is that we think we should be that so often we don’t see anything else. For that’s the danger of idolatry. Again, here in Jonah we read that those who “cling to worthless idols” only accomplish their too forsaking “God’s love for them.” And indeed, elsewhere in Scripture we read that God does work out all things for the good of those who love Him, seemingly proving that whole idea that tells us that no, “we’re not strong enough to ruin God’s plans for us.”

Problem is that, again, we are stupid enough to spend a good deal of time inside our lives not loving God!

Because the simple truth is that we’ve all spent entirely too much time running away from God, refusing to listen to God, rejecting even every hint that there might actually be a God.

We’ve learned so well how to hold so near so many false gods that we’ve learned, almost perfectly, how to discount everything that the One and only true God has called us to do.

And again, we don’t have the luxury of fish swallowing us for a few days so that we can sit in the dank stink of their bellies and get our act together.

Rather what we have is a life we live via the choices we make, which sadly, are often made without any consideration as to the possible cost or consequence. Instead we just do things. We just blurt out words not worrying about the message they may convey. We wake up and just throw it all to fate to sort out assuming always that it’ll all work out.

And yeah, it has and it does and it will.

But friends, what all have we missed thanks to how things have worked out?

Does this not bother anyone else?

Granted, maybe it’s another one of those problems that isn’t worth our wonder or worry, kind of like how Ecclesiastes tells us that it’s not wise to ask why the old days are better than these days we’re living now. Kind of like how Luke tells us to reflect back on a lesson learned way back in Genesis when he asks us to “remember Lot’s wife.” Yeah, maybe we shouldn’t look back. Maybe we shouldn’t wonder what if. Maybe it’s foolish to ask ourselves questions that we literally cannot answer.

But maybe asking ourselves those questions could serve to inspire us to do better.

Maybe those questions could help us to not miss so many opportunities going forward. Maybe asking those questions could quell our tendency to run away from God. Maybe asking those questions and realizing we cannot possibly know the answers would get us to ask more questions to which we could have the answers.

Rather than just ambling aimlessly through life as if nothing we do really means enough that it could perhaps cause us to miss the moments and memories that we’ll one day look back and realize we never got to have.

I think that perhaps the problem with a truth like this one is that we’ve come to think of idols as little golden statues that we sit on shelves inside our homes. That they’re these physical things that we can touch and hold and lift high for all to see this shiny cool thing that we’ve come to believe might really matter. Idols are materials that people buy and spend their time cherishing, right?

Yeah.

But so too are they ideas that we spend our lives working to bring to fruition. So too are they ideals that we give untold amounts of time and effort to making sure come to pass. So too are they dreams that we fight to make come true. They’re plans we make for the things we alone want to do. They’re choices we choose for what are reasons that themselves may well be idols too.

Because we idolize everything!

And yet every idol is worthless. Indeed, reading through Job last night and this one stopped me cold:

“Let him not deceive himself by trusting what is worthless, for he will get nothing in return.”

“Those who cling to worthless idols turn away from God’s love for them.”

My point is that yes, God’s plans will be done and His every promise then fulfilled. All things will indeed work together for the good of those who love Him and have been called according to His plans, His purpose, His promise. But friends, problem is that we’ve learned really well how to let that call go to voicemail as we instead spend our lives doing those things that we want do, making the choices we want to choose, chasing the idols, ideas, ideals that we alone think matter most.

All of us have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God in what have then been lives in which we sought the glory and gain of who know how many other things. And, well, anything that takes God’s place in our hearts, minds, lives, it’s an idol. And if it’s an idol then it’s something we come to serve in what is a way that leads us only away from His plans and paths and promises and purposes.

That’s why hell exists.

It’s the place reserved for those who spend their lives choosing only to refuse God every chance they get.

And I contend that such things as guilt and regret, those known best in hindsight helping us see that we simply cannot see anything of everything that might have been, could have been, should have been, I think that’s a misery near enough the vicinity of hell that it may well inspire us to run from the flame toward the Fire.

A journey every such prodigal need make as all of us have come to become.

Indeed, I believe we cannot even begin to realize or understand all our hands and hearts have cost us as they reached after so many mistakes over the years. We have no idea how many blessings we’ve run from, improvements we’ve rejected, rewards we’ve left to rot and opportunities that we’ve just plain lost. And perhaps we never will because hindsight only helps us see what all we got wrong.

Don’t show us what would have been had we gotten those mistakes right instead.

Maybe this is all just another worthless thought of a tired man wondering what wasn’t thanks to what was. I just know I’m tired because of a life spent running away from God’s love and all the memories and miracles that I could have known but never did.

Makes me want to do things differently with whatever time and opportunity I may have left.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold