Day 4153 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Matthew 23:34 NIV

smiles at our share of the suffering

Because we indeed come to indeed believe that “those who suffer in the body are done with sin.” So too that those who this world hates will suffer because, since being seen as not a willing participant within this world’s constant rebellion and that built and bound within an ever-growing delusion, the same are those who the masses will hate not because of who we are nor what we do but because we are His as do as He did.

Or at least as He calls us to.

And that is pretty much all it really takes to have taken away all the warmth and welcome that we once walked to win within what’s been a world in which we were considered a friend, a companion, a decent and upstanding citizen.

Or at least we were when we were found stood in the same chains as those who seek here only to delay their suffering.

But you see, such is the gravity of this gift we’ve been each given. Everyone with a life they’re living is to live it with some kind of misery to it. Now sure, I think it entirely obvious that we’d all obviously like that to be not the case. We’d all of us rather prefer never to waste within worry nor want. All of us would highly prefer never knowing anything of pain or loneliness or misery or suffering or shame or guilt or regret or rejection or any other such inward-inspiring inspections of our flaws, failures, points and purposes.

And yet the problem is that we all still struggle within the letting go of our will which has long waged a war against His Way who has came and has lain His life on the line by nailing it to the cross upon which He lost all that was His in exchange for all of us to find again all that we had lost in what were lives that were not ours, are not ours, will never be ours and thus are only seemingly ours because we are the ones living them.

Problem being that all of us have lived them in sin as has been pointed out by the many prophets and sages and teachers from Him who have come to us with what have long been prophecies and messages and lessons that were all collectively meant to accomplish in us a humbled willingness to have opened our eyes to seeing our lives for whatever it is that we’ve unfortunately made of them as is considered within all we’ve done in them, with them.

And this is where the suffering begins.

It starts in the hearts of they who are but few who do indeed desire to do only as He calls all of us to. And that is to lay down their lives through the starving of the flesh via the denying of the same so that the Name can increase in importance as our own is finally then allowed to surrender the crown, vacate the thrown, accept the truth that we’ve all always known and, in doing so, finally begin to come to terms with the fact that we are all sinners who then are truly in need of exactly such salvation as our Lord and Savior ironically offers.

Ironic because we’ve spent years living moronic to the mercy that offers to meet us where we are and how it could possibly mix with the audacity to ask that we not stay.

Because we’re a people who want to stay. We want to remain where we are doing whatever it is that we’re doing. We want so highly to change so little that we balk at anyone that even hints as to any such alterations being in any way potentially needed.

Why?

Because we’re living.

We’re doing okay. We’re making it. In fact, though we complain a lot, in truth we’d all have to agree that our lives as we’re living them are going pretty darn wonderfully.

They’re not perfect by any means. But thankfully most of us have given up on our pursuit of perfection as within this world we know that it doesn’t really exist.

And yet we can still imagine it.

Weird how that works.

Except that it isn’t. Much the same as how all of us can contemplate the idea that is eternity. It’s because God has placed the knowledge of eternity and the expectation of perfection inside every human heart so as to give us hope for which to start in what are lives that are lived in a world that’s falling only further apart.

Yes, He allows us to imagine, to believe, to consider things far bigger and much better and impossibly brighter than these lives we’ve chosen to live lighter and easier and so vastly filled with little danger because we think that danger is something we don’t deserve and should only ever endure should we have done something wrong.

Which we have, and that’s why Christ died. It was to help us see that we are indeed all sinners and that such is what all sinners shall receive.

But it was also to help turn us from the version of life that we’ve all come to live in which we’ve all come to love this idea of ease and peace and tranquility. Which are all in fact parts and pieces of what is His promise as it’s said that once we’re home with Him “there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain.” For by then this current order of things in which we all know we’ve all either experienced or will experience all of those things will have passed away.

And yet the point is to help us see that such things do exist, do happen to all of us, and that because we are so incredibly fallen that we did look upon the literal Son of Heaven as if a common criminal who somehow deserved what we’ve all somehow believed we didn’t.

And the problem continues to be one because most here still see it the same way.

Most here still consider Christ a theory at best, a thief at worst. And why? Because His call is for all to change our lives. In fact, His call is for all to lay down our lives. To deny our flesh. To literally go to war, speaking in terms of swords and divisions, with what is our known way of doing things. He literally, verbatim, told that one guy to go and sell all he had.

Was it because He was against his having things?

No.

It was because our having of anything else only opens our focus to focusing on something else. And, well, when this road proves as hard to hold as He knows it will, you know, having taken our cross and upon it dying our death, He too knows that we’ll often be found looking for other options. Because He knows that as we know of the idea of peace, of ease, of comfort and tranquility, and too the theory of perfection then at least plausibly offering all of them in unending quantities and unchallenged manner, then we’re probably going to turn back toward our flesh’s pursuit of them within the place in which we can see many others seemingly enjoying them just as soon as we aren’t.

Because we can see others seeming to enjoy them.

In fact we’re surrounded by those who are living some of the most amazing lives that any of us could ever imagine. I mean there are people here who literally have more money and power and pull than any of us would ever know what to do with. There are those who have here so much fun and so many friends and such fame that everyone knows their name and loves them the same. Indeed, there are those who sure seem to be winning the world!

We see them every single day on social media sharing their highlights for us lowlifes to look at.

And yet the issue is that rather than Jesus, a man of suffering and familiar with pain, we want instead to be like them who seem to know nothing of either.

And that because such things as the suffering and pain and misery and rejection that we see in His life are nothing that anyone else wants in their lives. Rather we’ve been sold this theory that within this world we could have peace, we could have success, we should chase comfort and praise and applause. And, having been heard by a flesh that wants only those enjoyments in life, we’ve all bought it. We’ve all believed it.

Most still do.

Which is why He came to do what He’s now done.

It was to show us that our enjoyment of life has managed to inspire us to forget our appreciation for the sanctity of the same. It was to help us see that our gods have grown inside of us and are made of such materials as a lust for money and a quest for comfort. It was to open our eyes to seeing our lives have come to be lived for the very things that will leave us so dead that we can’t stop the dying.

Definitely a hard message to get across to those who are living so amazing that they think never of dying or losing or suffering even.

No, around here we can buy, bargain or beg our way out of just about anything.

Or so we think.

Which is why we’re all called unto minds renewed.

It’s because someday soon He who’s left is going to come back but that this next time it won’t be to walk amongst mankind offering us all the help and healing that we want to make our lives even better than they already are. No, it will rather be to gather those who are His as have been living in what are lives changed unto becoming more like Him with every passing hour. To set finally free for all of forever those who have suffered from their suffering.

To test the fruit we’ve each been growing and reward unto each the reward we’re due for having lived to produce whatever such harvest we’ve lived planting.

It’s just that bad trees cannot bear good fruit, and, well, not only have we apples fallen quite far from His tree but the sad reality is that we’re the ones who stole the fruit from the tree and have lived our entire lives running as far away from Him as fast as we possibly could.

Indeed, there are now none who are good. There are none who do what is right. There are none who can live a good life, a decent life, an honorable, respectable, reasonable life.

Rather all have sinned and fallen short then of the glory of God.

And, well, seeing as how He doesn’t deserve to be refused glory, our having refused Him glory is what caused that scene so gory as was seen upon Calvary.

There is wrath to be won no matter how we live these lives!

It will either come from Him or from them who are still, for what are apparently billions of reasons at this point, against Him.

Yes, in this life we will find that our lives will be hard. We will hurt. We will suffer. We will be hated, rejected, inflicted with such maladies as shame and remorse and all the others like them.

Question is when will we experience them and how long then shall they last?

Problem with a question like that being asked of a people who prefer clearly to have the best of everything first is that we thus save the worst of everything for last. And the problem with that is that while these lives we live here are long, they end at some point.

Eternity doesn’t.

And so our seeking of our rewards, our pleasures, our comforts and crowns upon this ground means that upon this ground they will stay. And so if we do find our fun, make our friends, secure the funds and fame needed always to keep the both, and that inside this world, then so too inside this world will they stay. Because, at some point that we do not know, we won’t be here anymore. And so then everything we have here, know here, it will all stay behind because it cannot come with us.

Thus the message remains the same:

Go and get rid of everything you have because, well, one day you won’t be able to have it anymore anyway and so you may as well get used to the idea now so that you can learn to appreciate more deeply the hope that is everything that is still to come.

And that message just doesn’t go down well with those who are living quite well.

In fact, people nowadays don’t merely turn away unhappy as to the answer unto the question as is asked by all of us in regard to what we must do to live good lives.

No, these days people will straight up kill you if even they think you say something they don’t like the sound of.

Granted, that’s pretty much what they did to Jesus way back in the day.

But that just goes to show how far we’ve not come toward anything of everything that better then still remains.

Which is yet one more message that doesn’t go down all that smoothly. Because most people here are still pretty clearly convinced that they’re either living their best lives already or know right where to find them alongside a plan as to how and when they’re going to get there. Yeah, we’ve definitely got it all figured out don’t we? We do know everything and have all the fun and friends and fame and fortunes to prove it.

Never mind that one day all of those things will mean nothing.

Problem is found in telling people that they won’t.

Again, that’s why we killed Jesus. That’s why they killed John the Baptist. That’s why they killed literally all of the Disciples. That’s why Daniel was thrown into the lion’s den and Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego were tossed into the fire.

It’s because all of the above had the audacity to stand upon a truth that thus calls of us who’ve lived against it the liars that we thus in truth are.

And the issue now is that we’re all here to do the very same thing.

Anyone who is a follower of Christ is thus endowed by their Savior with the responsibility to live this life telling everyone we meet all about He who met us in our sins, amongst our shames, carrying our every weight of guilt and regret and saved us from all of it. We are here to be cities on hills. To be lights set on tables. To be but open windows to what is a world that is so unlike this one that it cannot fit here and we can’t get there until we leave here.

Yes, we are here to both believe in Heaven and to tell everyone else how we’re daily getting ready to finally find our leaving for there.

And those who think that all of life’s meaning or purpose or promise is to be found here, they’ll hate us for saying otherwise.

Why?

Because anymore we all take everything so personally that we consider someone else pointing to the possibility that we’re messing up royally as nothing but an unfair judgement, a blatant unkindness, perhaps even a declaration of war.

All because we’ve convinced ourselves that we can’t be wrong and thus that whoever says we are thus clearly is and must then be dealt with so that they don’t continue to bring that mess to us.

No, we have to get rid of them who hate us, who distract us from the fun we have, who warn against the things we want, who dare tell us that we will die.

Maybe if we kill them first then we won’t have to, right?

You see, that’s how our minds work. Granted, doesn’t mean it makes any sense. But the problem is that to us it does and that simply because we really, really, really want it to. And that because, if it does work, then maybe we’re not wrong. Maybe we haven’t messed up. Maybe we can avoid all these costs and consequences that our flesh doesn’t want to deal with.

But again, we’re all going to suffer something at some point somehow.

Why not then now?

Why not welcome the misery within this life we’re leaving behind one day? Why not embrace the path that brings us the hate here? Why not smile at the suffering, appreciate the persecution? After all, are not all these things the same kinds of things that were experienced by those who the Bible touts as being those who really did have it better figured out? Is not Daniel considered a hero in the Scriptures for his refusal to bend to the will of the world and chose rather to face the lions? Isn’t John highly revered because of his outlook in that Christ must increase as he himself decreased?

Is that not still the point?

That our wants, our will, our lives as lived for only those must shrink if He’s to shine? That we have to lay aside all that we’ve done in, to, with our lives if He’s to have the ability to make them better, to make us better?

Is it not amazing evidence that we’re on the right track when this same world that hated all those men hates us too?

That’s why the Disciples walked away that day rejoicing that they’d been beaten. It wasn’t because it was fun. Wasn’t because it felt awesome. Didn’t give them plans for a weekend spent beating each other again just because they enjoyed it so much.

No, it was rather because they understood that being hated by the world meant that they weren’t of the world anymore. It was because every sting of that whip, every blow of that hammer, every degree to which that furnace was heated hotter, it was all their opportunity to walk in the steps of Christ and that toward that life that is lived in that place in which nothing that is here is.

Friends, I understand our desire for peace and comfort and love and acceptance. Those are all amazing things that we should be chasing after. But the problem is that this world’s versions of them are eternally different than His. And so too what we have to do to get them.

And that’s the problem.

This world only loves those who love them, who agree with them, who go along with them. And we just can’t do that anymore. Because He’s called us to lives changed. And honestly there should be so much that changes so much that this world doesn’t recognize us anymore. This world should hate us because they hated the One we claim to be following.

The point is that our being persecuted is the proof that we really are His people.

We have to stop running away from the pain, the suffering, the misery and hatred and rejection and loneliness that this world will force and inflict upon us. Because the bottom line is that we’ve all been told that if we share in His suffering then so too shall we share in His overcoming it. That if we share in His misery then so too will we share in His reason for enduring it. That if we share in a death like His then we too will share in resurrection like His.

We’re talking everlasting life my friends!

That’s what His pain and persecution led to.

Why then run away from our sharing in them?

#LeaveNoSoulUntold