Day 4158 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Hebrews 11:13 NIV

realizes the reason

Simply because to all things there must be one. Everything has to have a reason as to why it happens, when it happens, why we feel the way we do whenever it does whatever it does whenever it does. There has to be a purpose, a point, a promise or punishment to all things as nothing can exist without there being a need for it. All things must do something and have too then a reason for being created to do whatever it is that they’re here to do.

Because God’s not just going around coming up with all this stuff just to have stuff to come up with.

Granted, He is the Creator and so it would seem reasonable that as a creator our Creator just enjoys creating. But still, even His own Word reads to everything there is a time and a season. And so why then would such times and seasons be given unto all things if not because all things have only a season in which they mean something and a time in which to mean it? In fact, does not the brevity of all things lend only to the importance thereof?

If everything lasted forever where then would be our worry over missing the moment?

Why would we feel this need inside our bones to seek for homes in which to feel at ease, rest, safety? Indeed, what could even those things be or mean if anything of everything else wasn’t strange or difficult? Truly, what could rest mean if hadn’t we experience that which wears us down? What would safety be able to offer if nothing around us was a threat or risk to us? What might be easy if nothing were challenging?

How could we grow if there wasn’t more to know even about trees or the bees which pollinate them?

Indeed, what all don’t we know about what is already? They say that even our oceans are 95% unexplored and thus that which covers 70% of this planet is still mostly unknown and thus potentially filled with untold discoveries of new things and realizations.

And yet why is the ocean so vastly unknown if not because we weren’t created with the ability to explore it fully, and thus have not the ability to know it?

After all, contrary to what some still claim, there is no way that we could survive for any meaningful length of time at the bottom of the ocean as, no friends, we didn’t come from a bunch of tadpoles or whatever other fishy things that some may claim. Granted, those things have their purpose. Same with the apes and monkeys that many have pointed to as being close enough to us that maybe we descended from them.

Not too impressed with our existence I guess if we’re seriously excited that we descended from a bunch of chimps, who are still with us by the way.

Don’t know how that’s supposed to work.

Yet, in irony, that’s kind of my point for today. It’s that, well, not much really does. Despite everything having had some purpose for being whatever it is as God is a God of intentionality and reason and order rather than chaos and confusion and simply doing things just to do things, what we seem to see and many of us are starting to feel is that everything just doesn’t add up. That there are gaps in our understandings, uncertainties about our existence, a general curiosity as to that which we’ve not seen and never heard before.

That’s why so many, myself included, are fascinated by such things as cryptozoology and the wonder as to whether something like Yeti or Nessie might really be out there.

Because, well, why not? Why couldn’t they exist? Why is it that we think that all that can exist is only all that we’ve already proven does?

Are we really so high on ourselves that everything has to be literally shown to us before we’ll believe it?

And if we are, as it seems we are, then where does that leave any room for hope or learning or wonder in life?

Or is that maybe the reason that those things seem to us so foolish and fantastical? Because we’ve become adults who have to adult all the time inside what is a life in which we all walk and talk in step and word with those who do the same exact things that we too have agreed to? That’s kind of what we talked about a bit yesterday. It’s all of these normalcies and commonalities to which most of us have agreed. It’s all of these expectations and outlines that we’ve accepted into our hearts, our minds, from there leading our lives.

But the truth is that following along with whatever this world or anyone in it may say is right or wrong only then leaves us following along behind someone who may well believe in nothing.

For it sadly seems as if many just don’t care to.

Rather most here have opted for this approach to life in which having it all figured out all the time is the best thing we can do. Not that we can as there is, again, 95% of the ocean that we know nothing about and so we cannot actually claim that we have figured everything out. But still, what we don’t know has clearly never really stopped us from pretending we do, or can, or have, or will.

No, most folks still walk around with this sense of confidence in themselves that sells this idea that they’re doing well and thus must know enough to believe they are.

But there it is!

Even if we do honestly think we have everything figured out and understood, even that idea hinges entirely upon a belief in that theory.

For everything in life that we don’t actually know and cannot at this moment prove in the ways in which humanity all but demands everything proven, it’s all a belief. It’s an idea, a theory, a hypothesis that we honestly probably will not test because one thing we do know is that we really do hate being wrong. And thus we’ll venture never anywhere near anything that may in any way make us look as if we don’t know something, aren’t good at something, even have flaws and weaknesses that we typically keep well hidden.

And why do we hide them? Why do such things as makeup and counseling exist? Are they and their like not only there because we sometimes don’t like what we see or how we feel?

Or is that just those who don’t have it all figured out that need those kinds of help?

Indeed, what is help if it something all of us know of but yet very few ever reach for? What is knowledge if we know everything already? What more are we able to learn if there’s nothing left we need to know? How are we supposed to grow if we know all there is to?

How can we know all we need to know when none of us have been this far before?

Again, as I said the other day I’ve found that this faith brings only more questions than anything. And, oddly enough, not even just questions about faith and belief and the Bible and prayer and Heaven and sorrow and sin. No, I have those questions too as I am genuinely trying to learn the truth and that because I have already seen and felt a tremendous growth in me because of such curiosity. But it seems mostly that more than anything I find myself asking questions more aligned with why my life doesn’t feel alright.

Why do I feel so increasingly out of place in what is the only place I’ve ever been? Why do my thoughts and thinking not really line up with what seems are the thoughts that everyone else seems to be thinking? Why are my priorities so very different from those shared by most? Why is it that even driving into town sometimes leaves me feeling like a victim who’s been forced to witness what is heartache in real-time?

Yes, why do I see so many things, hear arguably even more, that just disturb my peace?

Indeed, what is peace if it’s something that we’ve all, at best, only barely experienced and that in moments so rare that we find them only whenever we’ve broken away from literally everything normal for a moment?

You see, I’ve come to believe that God gives us all these abilities to at least grapple with the existence of, the idea of such things as peace, as love, as hope, as home because they’re all matters which are meant to move us toward whatever they are. In fact I believe that all of them are in truth such big things that we cannot here know their fullness.

Why?

Because every life here ends.

And, well, I can’t understand why we could have the ability to consider such things as hope and eternity if all there is to all of this is just a hole in the dirt waiting for us to fill it with ourselves and all we’ve had, all we’ve known, all we’ve learned, all we’ve loved, all we’ve lost, our every mistake, misunderstanding and mercy either given or withheld.

I can’t understand that.

And yet, I know without question that we walk alongside plenty, as the Scripture contends a majority, who do indeed believe that this life we live within this world is all there it to all of this.

And so it seems reasonable then that those who believe that would believe then that things here matter so much as so many seem to assume they might. It would make it reasonable to spend our Sundays and Monday nights watching football with such fervent fandom that we get tattoos of our favorite team on our forearms and fly their flags from the windows of our Fords. It would seem reasonable to find such enjoyment in common entertainment that you would look past all the questionable stuff being portrayed in most movies anymore.

It would seem reasonable to eat like kids whose parents have left them alone for the weekend. It would seem reasonable to get no exercise as it’s sometimes really hot outside or entirely too cold to go for a walk. It would seem reasonable to worry so much about our jobs as so many do, inviting daily such levels of stress that it’s having some very real and very physical ramifications. It would make sense to allow loneliness to inspire us to settle for the fakery of fornication and internet filth.

It would make sense to speak in foul language as if it’s funny or shows forth some kind of power or assurance that insists we’re nobody to contend with. It would be understandable to never clean up after ourselves as if we wanted to pass along a healthy planet to those who might come after us. It might even be arguable to consider ending one’s own life whenever should the stress and worry and heaviness of it all just become too much to bear.

But friends, as common and popular and widely accepted as all those things are, I can’t personally make any sense of any of them. And that having partaken in or of plenty of them.

Indeed, I’ve done many of the things that this world says we can and thus should. I’ve enjoyed plenty of what many still find enjoyable. I’ve had the fun and felt the pleasure. I’ve made the money and bought some treasure. I’ve graduated high school with honors and went right into college because that was what we were told we were supposed to do.

I’ve done everything this world has told me I needed to if I was to live a good life, a meaningful life, a valuable life.

I have tried my hardest to be a good, productive, upstanding citizen of this place where I am.

And yet nothing I’ve done, nothing I’ve accomplished, nobody that I’ve met, not any of it has ever managed to help me feel anything other than that I just don’t belong.

No matter what I’ve had nor how proud I’ve felt of having had it, I find I still have this emptiness inside. No matter where I’ve gone or how long I got to stay, I still feel a million miles away from where I want to be. No matter who I’ve known or how many friends I thought I had, I feel mostly only lonely. No matter how many changes I make, things I learn, mistakes I manage to notice and resolve to never ever make again, still I feel as if I’m getting nowhere closer to everything better that I can still believe that I always can be.

And indeed, what is better if we’re already whatever, whoever, wherever that can be proven the best we can be?

Again, I just don’t understand how that can be the case.

Because I just can’t seem to shake this realization that everything here is fading.

Maybe I’m crazy. Maybe I’m losing it. After all, this entire weeks-long stretch of these posts was started quite some time ago with my realizing that to many it would probably seem that my journey into faith is nothing but a descent into madness as it’s made me change so much, learn so much, lose so much and love the idea of both learning and letting go of even more that, to those who live the normal way of life that this world says we should, my life probably doesn’t seem to be going all that good.

People probably wouldn’t understand much of why I do most of what I do. I literally have people tell me quite frequently that they couldn’t do what I do, and that just in regard to how and what I eat as I don’t eat until around 6pm everyday and that literally the very same lunch every single day followed by what is one of only three or four dinners that I enjoy making.

Same people have looked at me and asked why I work out so much, why I go so hard when I do. Just last Saturday I finally got a day off having gotten everything all caught up and I spent a portion of it in our garage sweating like crazy working out yet again after a week spent working a job in the heat.

Something that to most wouldn’t make any sense as to most a day off is meant to be spent sitting in a chair and taking a nap.

I’m just not built like that and that’s simply not the life that I feel I’m here to build.

No, I can’t accept what most consider acceptable. I can’t agree with an increasing amount of what people go along with. I can’t watch movies anymore, don’t listen to new music on the radio, I’m truly content watching reruns of MASH and Andy Griffith and I’ve literally listened to only 6 different albums whilst I’ve been out mowing what is hundreds of yards so far this season.

All of them from one single band.

And that because I am boring. I am dull. I am different.

And I am indefinably thankful for it.

Why?

Because God has opened my eyes and with them daily I see what is a life that, while common and normal and even profitable, it just doesn’t make any sense to me. I see so many things that just shouldn’t be whatever they are. I hear so many conversations about so many things that I know in my heart just don’t matter. And yet they’re spoken by those wrapped up within them with such a conviction that it leaves me wondering why I don’t care.

It’s not a matter of rudeness or disinterest.

I just happen to find that all that matters is faith and I personally cannot see then why anyone else wouldn’t spend more time thinking about it, talking about it, learning about it than they do all these other things.

Who won last night’s game will not matter by tomorrow.

But that Christ won our victory over our death should only mean more and more as said death gets closer and closer!

But that is arguably the rarest of all thoughts to think within this place.

Nobody here seems to live with any concern as to what comes next. All because we’ve all become so convinced that death is the end of life.

What if it isn’t?

What if the Bible is true and there is so much more waiting for us on the other side of the grave’s finish line? Wouldn’t that render everything here a little less important, all while making some things here even more crucial?

And how is that supposed to ever make any sense if never we experience anything of any change to everything we do and hope to be?

Change itself being something that we’ve all been inspired to hate.

Friends, my point is that all of us have tried really hard for a really long time to within this world and this life find the very purpose and meaning thereof herein. And what scares me now is that it seems like a growing many continue to find it. But yet they find it in fitting it, looking the part, knowing the lines, living a life that makes everyone else either jealous or proud. Yes, the vast majority of people in this place are living only to please and impress the other people who are too in this place.

Leaving then the wants and wishes and worries and wars being fought and sought by people to remain that which leads us toward whoever we’ll become by the time we get wherever this goes.

I personally cannot accept such uncertainty. Rather I want to know where I’m going because I find that the goal helps define the line we walk along the way. I want to know where all this leads as that helps me to do whatever I need to in order to make sure that I’ve done all I could to get there.

Not because it relies on me, but, more than anything, simply because neither can I allow my hope, my growth to rely on those around me either. Not even myself.

Not anymore.

No, we can all see what this world’s made of such things as hope and growth, and, well, no, they’re not really matters of much concern for some.

Which is why I don’t find that I feel as if I fit anymore.

Should I take everything as seriously as I do? Maybe, maybe not. Should this world take some things more seriously than it does?

Undeniably so.

And that’s because the Bible says that all of this goes somewhere, but that only one of the two outcomes is worth wanting. Doesn’t make it easy to get there, and doesn’t make it any simpler to understand as the world’s way continues to veer away from our walk following His.

If anything, I’m convinced it’s all going to get even harder and unexplainably more heartbreaking.

But friends, even sorrow and sadness have a point and purpose.

They’re meant to lead us toward that place where they aren’t.

And that we’ve all felt the both of them here, well, that should be enough to finally convince us that we too aren’t where we should be.

Rather we’re just “foreigners and strangers on earth.”

#LeaveNoSoulUntold