Day 4155 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Hebrews 11:37 NIV

aligns with the outside

And that, they of any line as has been drawn to divide what is, was, ought to be a single mankind as was made from one Man, one mind, one life in which we were all created alike. Alas we’ve devolved into a mass of mess and mystery each made even in regard to things clearly seen and commonly understood. Yes, we’ve come to become all that He chose to come and has now came to undo through a suffering undue Him but rather due unto us.

A message still lost upon most of us.

For instead most of us are still against most of what He said, unsure of what He did, unwilling to even look again into the story, seeking there a strange glory gained in going alone through what is a world in which we never have to as there are more than plenty of those who will prove more than friendly to those who do what they do, want what they want, have what they hope to. Indeed, this world paints daily a scene entirely welcoming unto those who welcome the world’s leading.

And that’s indeed something that all of us have done. That’s a prize that all of us have won. That warmth, that welcome, that love then has been something that all of us have known, and, well, have then no reason to want not any longer.

For why would we?

Why would any wish to hold this road lonely? Why would any choose to walk this way solely? Why would any want to be wanted by no one, be considered a nobody whenever everybody has so many somebodies to whom they can turn and upon whom they can rely and with whom they can live this life?

Why would any so decide to drift away from that life in which there’s had friends and fun and fortune and fame and the chance to make a name that others like the sound of thanks to our mouths and their messages saying what they like the sound of?

Well, because the difficulty of the truth is that it eventually finds those who believe it not merely unwilling but in fact unable to flee from it back to what it helps them to see was a life in which they’d lived only failing it.

And I think that that’s the place to which I’ve finally begun to finally arrive to finally begin to finally see my life do both the same:

Arrive and begin.

And indeed, I can fully understand how strange that may sound coming from a man of 38 in what is a place in which I’ve always been. For how is one to arrive in a place they already were? And too, how might anything begin when the reality is that it began nearly 40 years ago? How can such novelty and newness be found or figured within what’s been whatever it is for however long it has?

That doesn’t make any sense that.

Unless it does.

And I believe it does because I feel it every single day. I hear it within the way that the words of this world don’t seem to make much sense anymore. I see it inside the scenes I see showing me but only the entirety of a life I know that I too have lived and yet one that seems more foreign and strange all the time. I notice it within what have been at first rare moments in which something that once made sense didn’t add up all of the sudden or a word that I once used frequently became one that my mouth refused to let out.

I even see it in the mirror as even my reflections shows now someone that I used to want to be, a hope realized that’s since only left me hoping for even more and ever better.

Hence that I feel as if I’ve both arrived but also just begun.

It’s simply because I know where I’ve been, who I was, what I’ve done. I think in fact all the time about the life I’ve lived, both the good and the bad. And like most I obviously try to hold tighter the better and looser the losses. Alas it often feels as if I’ve not actually the option as it seems that God helps me to see whatever it is that He wants to show, oftentimes only things which inspire me to continue to go in what is this direction that I’ve so grown to delight to know as it’s so clearly aimed only away from everything I ever have.

Not that what I’ve had has been all that bad as in fact most of it’s been quite good.

It’s just that better is never where nor what we are but is rather better always a belief in something other that we can always still be.

And this explains then this dire discrepancy I feel anytime that I hear anyone talking anything about some best life that we’re apparently all supposed to be living down here. My mind is honestly losing the ability to even contemplate that idea. Which is again what does make this change so incredibly strange even to me. Because I have lived a good life. I’ve lived a great life. In fact I, all the time, think back and do as Solomon says we shouldn’t within a wonder as to why the old seemed so much better than the now.

A question unwise to ask because both we’re never going back, the past isn’t coming ahead, and, well, perhaps too the answer’s so obvious that asking the question is just stupid to begin with.

It’s all because no matter how great or gruesome something may be in the moment in which we meet it and it us, there’s still something else still to come. There’s still more to this story that is our lives that is unfolding. There’s more for us to find, to feel, to figure out or fail to understand and the same uphold.

There is an entire eternity left for us to know!

And yet so many here still choose only to hold to this idea that is this hope that within this hole there is somewhere a best life that both we can find but that we at first must define before we do.

And I just don’t understand how that’s supposed to work.

Because, well, what do we know? What have we known? Of all that we have known how much of it has been since proven wrong? Indeed, even within the ‘good ol’ days’ to which our fear of present problems and future failures so often inspire us to flee, how much of what was was only so wrong that we’ve wanted so badly to forget it that we have? How much of our collective past do we not think about anymore because of the sheer horror, the amount of gore?

I mean we’ve literally a period of history referred to as the Dark Ages!

Do we think it’s called that just because the sun didn’t shine quite so bright or because it was before the advent of the incandescent light? No, it’s called the Dark Ages because so much was so messed up and even more was yet still lacking and thus not yet advanced that life itself was nothing then of what it would come to become in the following ages marked of Renaissance and such advancement in such areas as science and technology that nobody wanted anything of the past to be anymore.

Kind of like that whole image that is Calvary.

Yeah, not a very bright moment for humanity!

In fact, I think it could be successfully argued that that day was the darkest of all days in the age of mankind. Why? Because we gathered together to brutally maim and torture a Man who’d done nothing but heal the sick and that while having the audacity to tell us all we were while we ironically set our hearts to finding some way to bring Him harm!

We have always been a people who prove the very depths of our own darkness whilst arguing with those who, hating those who dare to point out the darkness in the things we’re doing.

Just like those spoken of here.

It’s a verse talking about just some of the things that have come for those who’ve followed the Way. And no, it’s not a nice list of things anyone would be willing to consider potential hobbies or plans for a vacation sometime. In fact many of them sound as if they would lend only to what is that permanent vacation that most folks are trying still really hard to avoid even thinking about in what have come about to become but lives trying so hard to find the best version but only herein that to leave here would then undo every hope that almost everyone seems to have.

For if we’re not here anymore then our every hope and dream that’s been for something, someone, somewhere down here, it would all be left empty and unfulfilled.

And our goals and dreams and plans and things just always seem entirely too amazing for that to become the outcome.

No, we all want to experience the very best of this life we all live in this world. And yeah, makes sense. After all, why not have fun? Why not feel good? Why not make friends and have even more fun with them? Those are all things that make perfect sense. And that’s because, to us, they hold no obvious downside. There are no harmful side-effects that we can see. There doesn’t seem to be a single problem to ever be found or felt within having friends or fun.

But again, how many times within even our own lives have we already been proven wrong?

Of all the friends we’ve ever had, how many of them have managed to come along for the rest of the ride? Of all the fun we’ve had, how much of it is now something that we don’t want to look back upon having since learned that whatever it was that we did was only something bad? How many jokes have we told that we don’t tell anymore because they’re just not funny now? How many lies have we told that came back to bite us in the back as they hurt someone who then chose to want nothing to do with us anymore?

Friends, my point is that we all get plenty wrong every day.

And yet we do it seeming to not mind it because the risks seem entirely miniscule when compared to those considered here as having become the outcomes met by those who the Bible tells us tried to do right. In fact, Scripture doesn’t paint a very good picture for any of those who ever have chose to walk on the fringes of this world crying out for more to come out and find out that we’ve all been living without the Light that is the Life who has for us such love that He came on this earth and died for us.

Most folks still mock and make fun of those who believe in such a thing.

Some are even still clearly willing to kill those who believe in such a thing.

Why?

Because He who died both said He did it because we all deserved it and too did so whilst asking that we share.

And somewhere in between the both of what are two entirely simple messages is right where we find that this faith in Christ must be asinine as nobody in their right mind would die for anyone else, especially those who don’t deserve it, either side of it in fact as nearly none of us can comprehend how our lives could have already gone so wrong that we could actually deserve to die for how we’ve chosen to live our lives having all the fun and feeling all the pleasure that we have and nor can any of us find inside any willingness within us to even acknowledge those with whom we don’t agree.

And so how then could Jesus have died for you and me whenever I’ve not done anything all that wrong and you’ve potentially done things so very wrong that I think you do deserve to be punished?

That’s just how our minds work in this life in which we’ve found or forced a way that seems to work too.

In fact we’ve come up with so many rules trying to direct humanity toward something better, the rules apparently considered a necessity because we weren’t necessarily proving of any shadow of an ability to get to better on our own within the way we were going, that we now stand perpetually in judgement of someone else who chose to break a rule that we claim we’ve followed perfectly.

Most of them are actually just societal expectations that most of us agree to go along with as they do seem to make sense and keep us safe.

Problem is that some of this society’s expectations veer the other way should we fail them.

Again, it makes me think of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego who were told to bow before this golden idol that king Nebuchadnezzar had set up and decreed that everyone would worship. They refused to do so as they’d made their minds up to worship God alone, and so bowing before what was clearly a false idol would be breaking one of the Commandments. The very first of the 10 in fact as worshiping this statue would be seen as their having had another god before God.

So they refused.

They rejected this societal expectation and were sentenced to suffer because of it.

Did they end up suffering?

No.

But that’s because God rewards our faith in Him. But even those men said that even though they knew God would save them, that even if for whatever reason He chose not to, even then they’d not trade away their faith in Him for the pleasing of man as was expected of them by this king who asked them worship the idol he’d made.

Yep, said they’d rather suffer inside the flame than to deny the Name.

Can we say the same? Can we say we’d welcome the furnace? Can we say that we’d smile at being sentenced to death by stoning? Can we say that we’d mind not being put to death by the sword or enduring such a lovely sounding experience as being sawn in two? Do any of us want anything to do with what is a life lived in goatskins? Do any of us ever go out of our way to do anything that could lead to us being destitute and persecuted and mistreated?

Friends, we don’t even like being misunderstood!

And that because we still want others to think of us good. To feel always the warmth of our feeling always welcome here. To know that nobody around us hates us so very much as to maybe want permanently rid of us. Indeed, most of us do at least some of all we do trying really hard to prove that we’re not anything of a problem to anyone else. Most of us just want to fly below the radar so that we’re not shot out of the sky.

In fact, many of us have forgotten how to fly because the world told us that we couldn’t and needed to grow up, get jobs, start families, get fat, get lazy, stare at a screen which then keeps us from spending time with our families and then die anyway at the end of a long life filled with so much that’s so meaningless that we all look back and see only regret staring back at us.

Yeah, that sounds so much better than being sawn in two and getting to leave this world in pieces for the peace that He’s promised!

No, I’ll take the early exit. I’ll take the world’s hatred. I’ll welcome this world welcoming me to leave and helping me make it happen. Yes, kill me please! Hate me please! I don’t care anymore as nothing this world says or does means anything anymore. As I said yesterday, everything here anymore is just this sadness that I can’t shake off.

And so I’ll happily spend out the rest of my days shaking this world’s dust off my feet as I run, race, crawl if need be toward the very outskirts of every city and civilization as I find nothing civil about any of it. Rather this world is both filled with and fascinated by filth and violence and I’ve had my fill of it. Anymore He’s helping me to see so many things that simply shouldn’t be that I can’t find any reason to want to stay.

And I don’t want to stay.

In fact, I’m so ready to leave this place that I don’t care how it happens!

Bring on the stoning! Sew up the goatskins! Break out the saws my friends!

I don’t care anymore as I’ve lived long enough that version of life trying to please people hoping to find their agreement that I could stay here and feel good for however long I will.

I don’t want to feel good. I don’t want to have fun. I don’t want to make friends. I am more than perfectly content to spend the rest of this ride walking all alone, completely broken, sad, frustrated and angry. Why? Because this isn’t the best. This world is just a mess and it took a Messiah to save us from who we’ve become and what this world’s been forced to become because of it.

And if the One who died for me asks me to die for Him, well, there’s such a simple equity to that that I can understand it. It does make sense. It must be worth something for Him to have done what He did only to ask me to stop doing all those things that I can see now were wrong. That in fact makes so much sense that it’s stupid!

And so then is our continuing to refuse it. Especially whenever we do so only because this world says that they know that we should.

The very same world that smiled as they killed Jesus, laughed as they butchered His servants and still jeers as those who walk in the fear of God.

Friends, this world’s hatred is unequal to be measured by the love of our Lord. But that this world hates us, just as they hated and still hate Him, that is again only proof that we’re doing something right. It may not have to cost us our lives. We may never actually suffer all that much.

But we shouldn’t expect not to.

Because if we do then we may fall away whenever, if ever we’re asked to.

Our faith should be worth more to us than that.

After all, just look at what others thought it worth.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold