Day 4162 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

1 Corinthians 2:9 NIV

imagines in the impossible

For why continue to hinder whatever our every hope may still be as to insist it be whatever we think it could? After all, what sense does it make to insist we’re the ones who can in anyway know anything as to everything that isn’t yet? As is asked constantly in Scripture, who was there when God set all of this in motion? Who of us knows the ways to where are stored the waves of the ocean? Who of us know where the stars go to sleep when the sun starts its shift? Who of us knows why the wind goes whichever way the wind blows?

Indeed, who of us can even say we know the reason yet for all the thoughts we’ve thought or can understand those we’ve not?

I am convinced that among the greatest tragedies to befall a fallen man is for him, her, them to imagine themselves as anything other than paper-thin and temporary. And that’s because, as again the Bible makes mention, the surest way for any to fall is to find themselves thinking they’re able to stand at all. Yes, “therefore let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall.” Why? Because you can’t fall if you’ve not reached heights so tall that gravity may have to dare remind you of who you are.

And in truth, I don’t think any of us know who we are. And that because it’s long been impressed upon us who are already geared to be or become impressed with ourselves that it’s only ourselves who should undertake the defining of our own identity. We’re told as children that we can be whoever, whatever we want to be. To follow our hearts and chase after our dreams. To refuse ourselves none of the things that we may enjoy or those which might help us along our plight that is this fight to find a place in which we feel however it is that we think we’re supposed to.

We hear still, though less frequently than before, of this ideal of the self-made man, hinting at the ability of someone to undertake the audacity to do things which cause them to become whoever it is that they are, apparently getting there all on their own and by themselves.

Yet I heard a quote the other night and it seems one that may change our attempt at life. I don’t remember who said it nor verbatim but it was something to the tune of “a man who defines himself cannot then know himself.” It was an idea spoken in the context of all our now-common cultural confusions such as gender-dysphoria and body-dysmorphia, both of which are inching toward being widely-accepted actual disorders with probably plenty of support-groups and clinical drug treatment trials under way or on the same.

But the whole point of what it’s trying to say is that he who endeavors to define himself is left then to do so within only the confines of his own understandings and imaginations.

And, granted, we’ve always proven a people of incredible depth to both. We are a people who’ve long sought to know what all we don’t. We’ve in fact stumbled upon many amazing inventions that have upended the old ways which were undoubtedly harder without such conveniences as say modern cars and indoor refrigerators. And so yes, we’ve in truth plenty of proof that we can do some rather impressive things.

But friends, what I fear we tend to forget is that many if not most of all our advancements happened by accident.

Within the past several posts I’ve mentioned a few. Moments such as Benjamin Franklin standing in his yard with a key tied to a kite wondering what might happen or the anecdote of the apple bounding off the brain of Isaac Newton thereby inspiring him to wonder why such a thing would happen. Indeed, nearly every human invention and the progression which either made it possible or that it led to the possibility of others thereafter, it was all a matter of sheer happenstance.

All of it made possible because those who invented them or realized them just happened to not stand in that same frame in which we so often do in which we so often do nothing because we’re so busy thinking that we’ve got everything figured out already.

Truly, I wonder of this weirdness all the time!

How is it that we can be or become so convinced that where we are, what we know, who the both has caused us to become is all there is for us to be? How is it possible, a possibility we’re willing to believe, that whatever already is is always to be better than whatever isn’t already? How can we be so sure that where we stand as who we are is the very best of all that we know nothing about?

And indeed, we see this very circumstance play out inside what’s a society in which so many try so hard, and that daily, to all but rewrite the entirety of this life trying to make it fit whatever it is that they refuse to change? Again, let’s go back to this whole new gender thing. Yes, I use this as an example of humanity’s insanity all the time, but friends, I hope we can all see why! It’s because it’s ludicrous. It’s asinine. It’s absolutely and utterly contingent upon someone being so inside themselves that they, from within their own unique blend of wants and wishes and worries and wars, they eventually begin to live outside their minds trying to find some way to make all that they want make sense.

And they’ve to continue to shift things around, trying on different ideas and identities seeking always for that one that sounds right to a mind that has no idea what it wants to hear.

In fact, just to add a bit of stats to the mess, according to a quick internet search as of 2024 there are apparently 21 officially recognized genders with some citing the culturally and socially accepted existence of nearly 80.

Started at 2 and managed to help that truth balloon up roughly 40x its original size.

And yet we pat ourselves on the back in regard to all the ways that we make our lives easier?

Friends, we’re so obtuse that our pride and ego won’t allow us to know the simplicity of being either a boy or a girl.

And even then still remains the dilemma of who we want to date, which is a whole new issue we’ve come up with as there exist now same-sex weddings and people literally dating an imaginary friend they created on their phones with the help of artificial intelligence. Which, just a couple close synonyms away could also be something that someone could call fake smarts.

Yes, we’ve chosen to just fake it trying to make it all make sense to a people who are losing their grip on reality and the simplicity of God having already set it up as He wanted it to be, as it needed to be. And why do I say that things needed to be the way that God intended them to stay? Because, well, the world’s spun just fine for a long time and everything here, outside of humanity, seems to work just fine still. Truly, have you ever just stopped everything you were doing and watched nature do its thing?

It’s absolutely amazing!

Clouds and storms and lightning and lightning bugs and buzzing bees dancing through flowers and trees doing their job of pollinating things that they then help grow for those who come along and eat them such as deer and birds and things. This world is in every way a perfectly functioning thing.

But looking at society as is made up of humanity, I can’t in truth say the same.

Rather in all honesty it seems as if nearly everything that we touch our hand or heart to all but falls apart. Truly, there is nothing that wouldn’t probably be better if we’d stop messing with it. And yet we mess with everything we do because it seems as though we all continue to think that we know best. That we could do it better. That our ideas and their ideals would arrive everyone alive to a place so amazing that they would all gather around us every morning to thank us for leading them to such a wonderful existence.

And yet one that would have still come from only our ideas and their ideals and thus entirely hindered by both what we know and thus unaware of all we don’t.

This is something that genuinely terrifies me anymore. It’s this idea that my ideas continue to make so much sense that I continue to follow them. That I continue to rely on me so much as I still do to make it through every single day and every single problem and prize that they all provide. That my life both has been and still is lived entirely too fascinated and thus affixed to what I think, what I want, what I wonder about and what all that I don’t know I don’t.

Yes, I am perfectly convinced that there has been an entire life that I never lived as was made of all the choices I didn’t make in exchange for the ones I did that have added up to the life I’ve lived.

And please don’t get me wrong, I’ve had an amazing life. I stand at my bedroom window every single night and just talk to God about my day and the piece of peace hidden clearly within the twilight that I find at the end of all of them. And yet it’s often within these talks that I find myself feeling as if I need to say I’m sorry for getting in the way of the day having gone better than it did. And I feel like this because so often I’ll still say, do, think something that leaves me only sad, sorry, ashamed.

And yet I’m supposed to be the one that I rely on to imagine the very best of everything?

I’m supposed to trust in what I think is possible to be all that I consider of any potential?

It’s on me to figure out everything that I can’t see within what is a life in which we can’t be everything?

A life in which we can’t go everywhere?

A life in which we cannot know what all we don’t know?

Does that truth not absolutely amaze anyone else? That we don’t know what we don’t know? That we’ve not seen what we’ve not seen? That there are sounds that we have yet to hear that we thus have no idea what they sound like? That there is a life that we’ve not lived because of the only one that we chose to?

It blows my mind!

And partly because still I find that I’m in a world filled with folks who continue to bask in this idea of life that willingly relies upon themselves alone to know, see, be, have, hold, hear here the sum of everything that we would need to know to know for sure that what we’re doing, where we’re going, who we’re becoming is truly the very best that all the above can be.

Friends, we know nothing!

Truly, even our imaginations are hamstrung by our heartstrings. Our every best intention is but a solemn invention of a mind that secretly knows of its own limitations. Every idea we have is one that we thought up inside the same mind that once thought it was a good idea to make what we know now were all those mistakes that we don’t like to talk about.

And why don’t we like to talk about our mistakes if not because we think that they make us look dumb unto a world that lives as if nobody ever gets anything wrong?

Friends, what are we getting right?

And, again, how do we know for sure?

Again, a man who endeavors to define himself cannot then know himself. A man who seeks to understand life cannot understand life as life is meant to be lived not inside our limited understandings but rather outside of everything that we could ever imagine. A man who allows his imagination to be the outermost of all possible possibility thus confines his mind to only all that he can imagine.

What of all that seems too good to be true? What of all that seems impossible for us to get to? What of every promise that exists beyond our strongest strength and wildest willingness to see just how weak we really are?

What if we agreed to how small we’ve always been?

Wouldn’t that maybe allow us to imagine again?

My worry is that we’re losing our ability to believe in better because we’ve widely become bitter to the work that all improvement, that all movement demands and deserves. It’s that we’re losing our willingness to wonder as to wander beyond ourselves and their worries is something we don’t really do anymore. Rather every day finds us languishing within a life spent laughing as if we have it all figured out as we look upon those still trying to do better as those who’ve not made it to where we think we are.

But friends, where do we think we are? Where do we think we’re going? And, well, should either truly be so able to fit within whatever it is that we think they should be?

Again, what all haven’t we seen? What all have never we heard? What feelings haven’t we felt? How many times haven’t we knelt before the alter of uncertainty where God asks us to come daily and lay down our lives as if a living sacrifice at His feet inside a show that finally agrees that we don’t know what we’re doing and thus trust Him impossibly more than we care to ourselves?

Why do we trust so much inside ourselves?

Do we really know the sum of everything there is to?

And if we don’t, as reality says we can’t, then why rely on us alone to find, fake, force or figure out whatever everything is meant to be and wherever it is that all of this goes?

I don’t even try to imagine Heaven anymore as I find it only a foolish endeavor to ask both eternity and perfection to fit inside a mind that continues to find plenty of ways to focus rather instead on all that’s temporary and tarnished.

I don’t want to know now what Heaven looks like. I don’t want to hear now what peace sounds like. I don’t want to feel here what rest is supposed to be.

Because if I could then what would eternity still hold for me? If I knew peace here then perhaps the place He’s prepared wouldn’t be so amazing whenever we get there. If we knew rest within this life then it could be argued we knew not enough of the Good Fight He’s called us to fight, and thus would deserve not to be entered into His rest. Yes, if we could force Heaven to fit within our wildest imaginations of whatever it might be like, then all it would be is something small enough to fit beside a wayward mind that thinks being entertained is sometimes more important than anything.

Heaven isn’t there to entertain us with its promises. The cross isn’t there to comfort us with all He went through upon it. That empty grave isn’t a place that proves we know what all He can do.

They’re rather all of them meant to inspire all of us to step outside of what we think of all we think we know and finally there, at the foot of forever, agree to fully let go of this God-forsaking insistence that the substance of everything He has planned can somehow fit inside our hands, our hearts, our heads.

It can’t.

Rather, as we’re told here, what He has prepared is more than everything we know of or could ever possibly come up with. Why then waste our time trying? And furthermore, why waste any more of our lives living them as if we know what we’re doing, where we’re going and how best to get there?

Friends, none of us have been to Heaven before.

How then could we know the way?

Guess the problem is that we can know the Way as we’re literally called to seek Him before and above everything. And, well, that then means that everything that isn’t Christ isn’t worthy of any time, effort, appreciation even in our lives. Nothing should be of higher importance than Jesus as there is no other Name given us under Heaven by which we must be saved.

And why again must we be saved?

Because we’ve all thought it a good idea to partake in sin despite all we know or don’t of the Son who died to set us free from a life in chains wrapped in captivity to all that we think, all that we want, all that we have. He died to remove all of that so that we could walk freely toward everything He’s said awaits us in eternity.

However can we get there if we continue to insist that any part of us knows the way?

Friends, we’re told here that everything God has in store for those who love Him is bigger and better than anything the sum of those He loves could ever even being to imagine.

Why then spend these lives letting our minds continue trying to find ways to make Him fit inside what we think He should be?

No, there is so much more to this than we can see and definitely far better that each of us can always still be. We have to stop missing the opportunities to walk by faith that He sets daily before us, all of them missed because we see them as difficulties, worries, losses and loneliness.

But we don’t see where those things lead now do we?

Rather all we can see is all that is here. Let us not allow what is to hinder our hope in all that isn’t as there is just more to this than everything we could ever think there is.

Cast off your restraints my friends. For today He again begins to show us what He has in store.

Let us not agree to miss any more than we already have inside a past that had us convinced that we could understand what He’s doing and where all this is going.

We can’t.

But we will.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold