Day 4136 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Romans 6:6 NIV

reaches the road’s end

And there finds this strange elation as to the conversation had with what’s by then a past that, though once found as a friend, suddenly there seems something different then. For along this journey what we stand to find is that as our lives as were lived in sin begin to die, we ourselves begin to lose the rather natural instinct to try and keep them alive. And that is in every way a truly strange thing to feel as, well, one of the main goals and thus common pursuits, one justifiable in every way possible, is to keep oneself alive and well.

It’s just that whole “well” part of that equation is the part that endures some changing.

And that simply because, when come unto the well, we find there that we’re not. We may have thought we were along the way and within the walk that led us there. We may be surrounded by people and possessions that have possessed for us this measure of trust for which they’ve had in us, perhaps even our trusting deeply in ourselves. For again, such is perhaps the commonest of all lives that sells. We all have no reason to ever think another, let alone ourselves, would seek to do anything other than survive.

In fact, seems all of us are pretty adamant to both survive and to thrive as we do!

But what we’re all to be inevitably shown to is that substance upon which we’ve sought our survival and whether or not it’s as conducive to such an accomplishment and outcome as we’ve long hoped it would and wanted it to or if it’s rather quite the contrary. And sadly, the truth is that the Word says that most here will find the obviously more horrendous of the outcomes offered us. And that simply because they, for however many reasons of the endless we’ve come up with to make sin seem reasonable, they found amongst the mix no reason to accept the offer of alteration.

Probably because, well, it does seem to us that most things are going mostly well. Is there always some room for improvement? Yeah. Do we ourselves sometimes even seek for such improvements as the growth in knowledge and understanding? Sure. Is not such an outcome as comfort and accomplishment something that we all look for, want for, wish for more than just about anything?

Absolutely.

But you see, such is the problem directly.

It’s that such concessions have become our chief cathedrals into which we’ve stolen seeking to hide ourselves behind these lies that sell of lives that tell that we’re, again, doing rather well. We measure this kind of outcome in everything from money in the bank to power in the hand. Everything we do is anymore so often done only to please and/or impress they who are but another lost here under the sun.

And that because we’ve come to place so much trust and hope in man, ourselves mostly, that we now only know to do that exactly.

Indeed, we spend our days, and every hour within them, looking unto them from whom we wish to glean the gain of glory given the way we wish to receive it. Which is, again, basically all aimed at ensuring that the lie we’re living holds up well within the court of public opinion as is done via fans, friends, followers and thus the flow of dollars and adoration from all the same. Indeed, so long as there’s but one other who will agree to say that they like the way we’re doing something, chances are we’ll then change nothing.

Because why would we?

I mean we seem to have all but perfectly bought into this life in which living it right is as easy as being successful as is measured in so many ways anymore that there’s really no way that we can’t uphold the lax requirements of at least one or two. I mean, shoot, even something as being comfortable or our having fun, that’s anymore just about all it takes to convince someone that we’ve won. That we know what we’re doing, and too, that we’re thus doing it so well that we must be quite well ourselves.

Never mind that our society’s basic understanding of something such as health seems to have taken entirely too many turns for the worse.

Doesn’t matter. Why? Because there remain those around us who will always be there to flatter us in what is their hope to glean from us their share of our story that seems to them to be the one that they too would like to live.

Probably mostly because they like the looks of the stuff we own and the fun we have.

Because, again, we’re all worried about things like that.

And we have been for so long now that, again, when we reach the end of that road we stand to find one of two very different feelings being felt. It’ll either be that of the rich young man who had done everything he could be convinced was easy enough to do, leaving but one thing left undone which was, as said of the Son, to go and sell all He’d won and give to the poor whatever He made from said sale of said life and then to, having been then freed to, come and follow Him.

Or

It’ll be that odd elation I mentioned at today’s start in which we look upon a life we then realize was always falling apart as we find that we’re entirely thankful to wave goodbye to what was, in many ways, a pretty decent life.

A decision we made because He made something in us so very new that we wanted everything else about us and before to be new too.

A reality that can only come to be so long as we humbly agree unto the getting rid of everything asked of the rich man who instead walked away unhappy as to the Lord’s answer, back into a life lived seeking only more of the success and pleasure that he found of more worth than the freedom offered him in letting it all go.

I’m just at the point in my life in which I want that freedom to know.

I want to feel that strange joy felt only in a journey spent finally away from everything I’ve thus far wasted a life upon. I want to know that odd gratitude that’s felt in a shifted attitude that seeks no longer for what’s kept me so lost that I thought I’d found life’s very meaning in material and memory but rather realizes that as I’ve been found at the cost of innocent blood lost, I too must lose the lust for every past trust that cost Him such torture.

Indeed, I want to be freed from everything that insisted He bleed.

Maybe even most of all all those things that I’ve loved most.

Why?

Because I just wonder now what all else I might find.

I wonder now as to the roads I’ve never taken thanks to choices I never made. I wonder about the person I can still become, who can’t then be whoever I already am. I wonder as to the more He has in store, even if it can only take the place of the enough I thought I already had. I wonder about the hope I don’t have because of truths I don’t know because of lies I still believe.

Indeed, I wonder as to what all I might still profit in losing.

A strange thought to be thinking!

And yet one that somehow only makes more sense as more days come only to go wherever it is that they’ve all gone. A fact as defined of a past that was in many ways quite enjoyable. In truth, I find that I was decidedly happier in the past. That most things made more sense back then. That the good old days are defined as good days because they did seem pretty good!

Arguably better than whatever this is that we’re walking through today.

And yet, as wonderful as my life has been and despite the many amazing memories I’ve made within it (all of them I do hope to keep for however long we might need their help to keep alive our hope of better days still to come), I also understand if they too need to come undone so that I can be set free unto the finding of those better days still to come.

Truly, I’m finally finding that I feel strangely willing to walk away from anything if the doing so means I get to know something of peace again. Or hope. Or happiness even.

Because, well, I’m kind of tired of this life in which it’s always so hard to find them as so too is it one in which we think them inside of things that, once we have them, only prove to have but, at best, feigned a fragment of them. In other words, I’m just tired of chasing after all these things, thoughts and theories that I assume will make my life better, happier, able to feel more whole only to get them, find them, have them close and feel still the same hole.

Seems to say that everything here is just a bandaid to a broken heart.

And, well, that’s even more useless than using one on a broken bone!

Why?

Because the heart longs for home. All of us want for that place in which we find peace. We want to know that life in which life is there for us to know.

Again, it just makes sense.

That’s why we all turn a blind eye to anything and everything that someone claims they enjoy. Who are we to bash their dreams? Who are we to speak to the danger of their delights? Who are we to snuff out the happiness they believe they’ve found in life?

We all know this life is hard as the place in which we live it is increasingly miserable to live it in.

So we don’t want to speak unto the reality of the death we’re all living in.

Because we know!

That’s why we do all the stupid stuff we do! It’s because it distracts us from how bad all this is. Having fun takes our mind off the pain we feel. Watching the bank account grow keeps us from thinking about how our number of days is doing the opposite. Coming up with all these plans and goals and ideals, it allows us to ignore the fact that life itself has become less than even acceptable thanks to the prevalence of such things as hatred and delusion.

We just want out of the misery.

Problem is that we won’t just leave it and walk away.

Rather we spend still our every single day doing only the easy things such as having fun or staying comfortable. We tell the stories we know by heart, allowing then our hearts to never learn another. We listen to the lies of the lives being lived around us and allow them to become inspiration within us that sends us off chasing after yet again something that another already has.

And we’re good with that.

Why?

Because it’s good enough.

It distracts enough. It looks impressive enough. It accomplishes enough of whatever it is that we’ve all come to want that we feel satisfied for once.

But with what?

Friends, should something such as satisfaction or success or the meaning they should both mean, should it be something so easy to find as to think we’ve already found it? And if we have in fact found it, then why are we all still looking?

Is nobody else tired of the looking?

I mean I’m 38 and I’ve at this point lived what feel at least twenty very different lives in what feels at least two very different worlds. And that’s become both I and the world around me has changed as time’s gone wherever it is now. I in fact cannot begin to explain all that changed. At times it honestly feels as if my memories are storylines from some movie made in the same fiction as every other movie they make. Things have changed so much that even the colors seem different.

What then am I supposed to keep trying so hard to hold onto?

If everything in life, of life is so apt to change, to shift, to drift from what did, at least sometimes, seem better, then why hold so tight to what I feel is so great right now?

No.

No, I‘ve found this strange hope that I hold inside this idea that inspires me to hold all that I know so very loosely that I won’t know when it’s finally gone missing. To keep such a loose grip on everything in my life, my life itself included, that I won’t realize when I’ve lost it. To basically go ahead and bid everything adieu. To wave goodbye to every day inside this life. To just keep walking away from anything and everything knowing that one day I’ll lose the both anyway.

Why?

Because I know slaves don’t have that opportunity. They can’t walk away. They can’t move on. They can’t understand the liberty of letting go as they’re rather held in place, locked in chains that define their lives and the confines within which they live them.

And I know this because I’ve been one.

For years I was a slave to lust. I would spend hours, entire nights looking at and watching things, learning things that I wish now I had never known. I was chained to this thing that always lured me back and caused me to lose track of who I was and the life I should have been living instead. And now, looking back, I see only a wasted life that was lived in the place of the one that I would have vastly preferred to have lived instead.

And trust me, the idea of being dead isn’t anywhere near as bad as looking back and realizing that you probably missed out on some amazing things in life.

No, anymore I want only to take up my cross daily, in whatever way I might, and to there upon kill this guy who I know now would do such things as I now know I’ve done. Because I hate him. I hate who I’ve been. I hate what I’ve done. I hate myself so viciously at times that I seek for misery in life. Feel I deserve it. I want to endure it. I want this life to become so grating that I can’t wait to give it away.

I want to know the inside of the grave so that I can say for certain that I’ve been saved from my having so well earned staying forever inside the same.

Why?

Because I know Jesus didn’t stay in it either. Rather I believe that He died in my place, was then placed in my grave, and, rather than what I seem to have learned so well to do, He walked out and then forever away from that place in which lay the sinful flesh that I still give entirely too much time and opportunity to. Yes, still I sin. Still I fall short.

Still I fail Him!

And that’s what needs to end. That’s what I want to end.

It’s this road I’ve given my life to walking that led me only away from all that He is and all that He did to help me stop doing what only kept me dying.

Yes, I’m tired of dying to everything better that He created me to be.

And so I will happily take Him up on every opportunity that He sees fit to give me to walk away from something that is only keeping me held in chains of fear that’s afraid of change.

Friends, all our unwillingness to change accomplishes for us is our staying the same. And maybe that’s good enough for you. Maybe you have found your best life. Maybe there’s not a thing you’d change. And if that’s the case, then congratulations on figuring it out!

But as for me, no. No I can’t help but feel in my bones that there’s something else out there, something immeasurably better in fact. What is it? Where’s it at? I have no idea as of right now.

But therein lies the excitement. Therein lies the wonder. Therein we can lose the worry as if we don’t know where nor what it is then we can be sure that we’ve not missed it, lost it, left it behind on accident. No I believe that since we can believe in something so much better as anything made better, better then must be there wherever it’s always been that we’ve then never been before.

And I’m gonna find it.

Don’t know when but thankfully I do know now how.

And that’s by letting go of everything that is. And that because I believe that everything that is is only a disappointment compared that all that isn’t yet. And how do I know this? Because Jesus died to leave behind all that still is to go and make ready our place in that place that we’re not yet.

Why give up along the way? Why settle so far short as to make ourselves still at home inside a life that the grave promises we’re all going to lose?

Why not fight for what can’t be lost?

He did.

And because He did then we can trust that we can too because He did it for us. He died to sin so that we could share in doing the same so that we could have a share in the outcome He found in doing so.

And that’s eternal life.

And there’s simply nothing in this life in this place that’s worth that trade. And I know that because I’ve made that trade entirely too many times before. And I know that I’ve gotten nothing from ever having done so.

I want to know something different now. I want to know that kind of life that doesn’t disappoint. I want the feeling of joy and happiness that doesn’t fade. I want to know that place where there is no more weeping or crying or pain.

I want it because He said I could have it. And though it cost me everything, if that everything is truly only everything less, then I just don’t see how it couldn’t be worth it.

We can spend our lives focused all but entirely upon everything we’ll one day lose and have to leave behind. Or we can hurry up the same process, leave it all behind now, learn so well to let all that’s here go that when we get to go home, we’ve nothing left that we feel sorry saying goodbye to.

Because yeah, goodbyes are hard. Especially those kind such as He calls us to bid unto the way of life we’ve lived. So get the hard part over with. Say goodbye to the old you now. Do it today.

Not because it’ll be easy or even make sense.

But simply because doing so clears the way for you to hope in everything that’s still to come rather than holding tight to all that can’t come with us whenever we go wherever we will.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold