Day 4164 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

John 14:3 NIV

pursues the promise of patience

Though, if we were to be honest, it’s usually one pretty hard for us to find the need to feel as if we need to find it. And that simply because, well, we’ve become so impressively impatient that now being patient, or even being asked to consider it, it’s something that feels unto us as if a punishment. It brings with it always this weight, the wait, and it seems more often than not measured only in wonder and worry, neither of which seem at all light to a life lived always in a hurry.

And that’s the problem precisely!

It’s that this version of life we’ve all chosen, yes, chosen to live is one lived so fast and, well, freaked out both by and because of it that we’ve all basically become entirely willing to abandon boredom and belief as both of them ask that we sit inside a silence of time that, again, seems almost a violence against us as it brings unto us all the thoughts we’ve never thought that we thus have no idea how to think. And that weight of wondering what all they might cause us to imagine, reconsider, even realize we need to let go of, it’s pretty crushing.

Especially unto a people who really seem to enjoy this idea that allows us to feel as if we pretty much always have all of everything entirely figured out.

And that idea is brought to you, and me and everyone else that we see, by all the lies we’ve brought to life inside our lives such as time and all the little offshoots it has such as plans and schedules and deadlines that hang always over our heads asking us to shift priorities sometimes and even cancel our plans so as to ensure we stay on schedule to meet a looming deadline.

Indeed, we’ve all done some truly messed up stuff in life, but I’m increasingly convinced that among the worst of it all is this ever-quickening thereof for which we’ve fallen in love and that simply because such a love is really but a lust for a trust placed still inside ourselves. After all, we’re the ones who can see the clocks. We’re the ones who either have, or mostly try not to, the thoughts. We’re the ones who are locked inside this world we’ve made and thus captives of all the reasons we’ve either had or never thought about our having had to have done all we did to make all of this turn out like this.

Like what?

Like what seems a sea that is a society that’s made up of roughly 8,283,851,939 chickens without heads running around trying to figure out where we put them, or more commonly, who took them and why they would.

Yes, it would appear to wondering eyes that nearly every life is being lived in some degree of doubt, denial, despair, disappointment, just your general and thus garden-variety dishevelment as is probably made up of at least some measure or depth of all the above. Indeed, every single one of us has felt every single one of those. And the sad reality is that we’ve each had our hands in making this reality whatever it is. And the worst part is that nobody ever really seems at all interested, let alone actually willing, to stop for a second and second guess both what we’re doing, why we’re doing it, and, again probably worst of all, where all of it has us heading.

And that because we’ve all got our heads in the sands of time trying always never to find anything else that we feel we’re supposed to feel as, well, we can barely handle all the varied worries and woes that we know we already know!

We don’t have time to sit around and learn new things that would cause us to worry about only more things!

Each day has indeed trouble enough without our adding to it an audacity to wonder as to who we’ll be tomorrow and where we might be it should here, by then, be no longer the option that our every plan and presumption has always really needed it to be!

But why is that?

Why do all our plans seem always to fit within this place in which we are? How is it that our every preference manages to seem all but perfect in regard to the spot in which we plan it finally found or figured out? How can we seem to always see what is a life that both looks right unto us and yet still feels right and holds hope in what is a world that knows little of right and thus nothing of hope?

Indeed, what do we know of hope if to patience we respond always, “nope, not interested, thanks for visiting, please don’t ask to come back and see us anytime ever again”?

Truth is that we can know nothing of hope so long as we keep ourselves wrapped within that rope that is the time in which we live in what is a love for schedules and plans and the expectations of promised success that the both and their like seem always to add unto our lives.

And that is why we love them so.

It’s because they offer us some semblance of a promise we know won’t let us down. Granted, may not impress us all that much either, but sadly having all of us become patients of impatience, seems we’ve all learned it somehow better to be underwhelmed than to be disappointed. And so, in our keeping always in line with that way of life that seeks for usually only good enough as it’s always found just close enough that we know it won’t let us down (mostly only because we’ve become really good at adjusting our expectations always lower so as to meet our willingness and effort) we’ve all but given up on expecting much of anything at all.

Rather we all awake unto each new day already okay with the fact that says it’ll probably be more or less the exact same as yesterday. And with this we’re all always okay because, well, yesterday wasn’t too bad. Wasn’t perfect. But hey, we’ve all already come to terms with this imperfect world thus not having much in the way of perfection to offer. Which is yet another reason, and a viable one, that we’ve all continually settled for seeking always only good enough.

Again, may not blow our minds but at least we know it won’t break our hearts.

At least not yet.

But you see, that’s the thing that I, and I have to believe there are at least some left like me, spend an increasing amount of time thinking about. It’s this wonder won within the worry so often not that weighs the waiting alongside a rather simple realization of where we have it. It’s something asked in that arguably most existential of all existential questions:

Why are we here?

Now the difference that faith makes to both how that question is asked and, even more so, why, is that it seems to help us focus less on the time and more on the trial. It shifts our wonder away from such personal matters as seem to be often the basis for someone asking such a question as what we’re meant to be doing toward a decidedly different wonder as to why here.

Yes, it’s not why are we here as in what should our job be or what kinds of choices should I make next week so as to feel as if I’m doing better and understanding better the reason I’m alive. It’s more an asking of why here is where we are in regard to what is a world that seems less and less the kind of place that He would have left us.

This world is a mess and it’s all getting only messier every moment!

So why are we still here? Is it to undertake such common wonders as to worry about finding our personal purpose? Is it to spend some time asking ourselves what it is that we want to do, who we want to be, why we want that next thing that we’ve already agreed we need? Or is it maybe to spend that same amount of time wondering as to what all we done to life, who it’s all caused us all to become, what all we have and how to make our peace with the fact that part of His promise is that we’ll one day lose it all?

That is His promise, you do realize that?

That anyone who loves their life will lose it whilst anyone who hates their life will keep it?

Granted, sounds kind of like an ongoing punishment as, well, why keep what you hate?

But we’ve to always keep in mind His affinity for flipping tables. For that means that those of us who hate this life and thus live it looking to lose it, and that by doing as He asked elsewhere and getting rid of all we have and instead storing our treasures in Heaven via minds set on things above, will keep their ability to live it. Doesn’t say that things won’t change along the way. And in fact, they most definitely will. It’s rather just pointing out the obvious to which we’re all now completely oblivious:

That both none of this world can come with us but that sadly a lot of it has become us.

Yes, we’ve all of us let entirely too much of this world and its way of life inside of our own. And this fact we can know because we worry about such things as buying a bigger home or getting approved for another loan or being first in line to get the new iphone. We’ve so many worldly worries that, honestly, we probably don’t really have much time in the day to worry about anything else.

Leaving then faith itself and He in whom we’re told we should probably at least consider having it, you know, seeing as how there’s still no other Name under Heaven that’s been given unto us by which we, yes all of us, must be saved, to be rarely if ever considered.

Meaning then that salvation itself is mostly only an afterthought thought about only if and when we’ve any time left for it to fit within.

Which we don’t.

Ever.

Why? Because, again, we’re just too busy. Like I said we’ve got bigger houses to hunt for, loans to apply for so that we can buy them whenever we finally find them, a phone that also asks us to keep up with monthly bills that also then add to our need to make more money so that we can afford this way of life we’ve clearly come to love.

All because we love being in debt and drowning there in doubt that it could ever be worth our going here without because that might leave us with a little more time on our hands with which to think about all we’ve tried really hard to never think about. Such as faith. Salvation. Our Savior, whom we know terrifyingly little of thanks to how much of this world we know thanks to our thinking always about what we own and how much we love it so.

Indeed, turns out that we really can’t love both God and money.

Problem is the money seems often closer and thus doesn’t ask us to endure the patience of wondering where it is, what it’s doing, why we’re still here in this crumbling ruin of a world waiting for something better to happen. Yes, we love money and all the junk we buy with it because it all brings with it a belief we don’t have to believe in. We can see the bigger house. We can read the fine print on the new loans we take out. We can take our phones out, and we do every second we’re awake, to peruse all the other things that everyone else is worried about.

And among all of this world’s worries is rarely found anyone spending hardly any time thinking about what comes next.

And why is this?

Because we know.

We know what comes next. And I know we know because He made sure we did. And I know we know that we all know that He made sure we’d know because all of us have within us the ability to imagine something better. All of us have in fact the ability to imagine forever!

Problem is that we don’t.

No, rather we spend our every waking hour worried only about what’s happening now and how we’re supposed to feel about it as is often measured by however others are reacting to it. Indeed, we spend our lives living in comment sections seeking there our every justification, validation, affirmation that adds some sense of firmness to our failures and folly thinking that should we find it, and we always can, then we’re somehow then okay in living our lives this way.

But friends, what’s ever proven okay about refusing to accept that there’s something different coming, so different in fact that it’s promised to be everlastingly dangerous unto what it also promises shall be many?

It’s like we all hear the train coming but think that if we just close our eyes then at least we won’t see it hit us.

WHAT KIND OF LIFE IS THIS?

Why do we like living like this? What’s the point of continuing to agree to lose it like this, a loss in which we don’t realize we’re losing because we think we’re winning and that because we continue to have more things here, thoughts and worries included, that we’re all promised that we’ll one day lose?

When?

When He comes back!

Who?

The One we don’t spend much if any time thinking about, talking to, learning from, leaning on.

All opportunities missed or misunderstood simply because, unto us, our lives seem to be going fairly good. After all, we’ve found the bigger house and just signed the loan paperwork yesterday with an agent we’re squeezing the life out of our phones waiting to call us back to hear if they accepted our offer because we can’t afford full asking as there are too many other things asking for a piece of our paychecks, such as the phone bill.

Friends, my point is that impatience is a well that in fact never empties of water. There’s always another worry that we can ignore by staying busy doing other things. There’s always a question to refuse to ask as we know we don’t have the answer. There’s always some wonder as to something worldly that always offers to keep our attention focused here.

But there’s also always a Savior who has promised that He is coming back to take His people up from this place so that they are saved from the literal hell that’s coming.

That’s literally why He came!

It was to pave the way, to in fact become the Way, for us to be saved and thus set free from a life we’ve all known lived in captivity to all that most find still captivating. Why then, considering He reaches still the same nail-pierced hand, do we spend so much time running away from the life that He’s called us to live if not because it’s not the one we know how to love?

And that mostly only because it asks that we wait.

That we sit patiently and ponder the promise that only hope is able to believe is worth all that we’re promised to go through before we get there.

To embrace the fact that this life is supposed to suck, not because He wants to see us suffer, but simply because He helps us slowly come to learn that the entire point is that if we’re share in His victory then so too must we share in the violence over which He won it.

And yeah, patience does often feel violent as it looks to the world and thus feels unto us as nothing but wasting time that we could and thus should be spending doing something that the world would consider productive.

But friends, what’s more productive than producing fruit that proves we really are trying really hard to keep with repentance from what is a place, and a life we’ve lived entirely like that most common of all versions lived by literally everyone else, that we then spend every day showing Him we don’t want to be in nor of anymore?

That’s why the waiting. It’s not because He’s slow in keeping His promises but rather that we’re slow in caring enough about them to actually start wondering about them, worrying about them, wanting all of them more than everything we’ve already learned to crave and come to have.

The fact of the matter is that He wants us to be home with Him but He’s waiting then for us realize that this world isn’t our home and to find inside that fact a faith that helps us start getting rid of everything we’ve let get in our way of being where He is.

Yes, He wants us to be with Him but He knows it wouldn’t mean anything if that’s not where we wanted to be.

He will never force us to accept Him, to appreciate Him, to appreciate then the many promises He’s given us nor what He had to go through to give them.

And if we can’t find it in us to spend some of our time here inside of these lives learning to appreciate the patience He has for us as we all learn to shift our trust from lust to love, then it’s pretty clear we don’t want to be where He who is love has gone to prepare a place for us. A place He thus won’t be returning to take us to as, again, He’s not going to force any of us to want anything to do with Him.

Much less then spending eternity with who we lived our entire lives believing a stranger at best, a silly belief at worst.

Who do we think He is?

Maybe that’s the question we should spend our lives asking instead of why we’re here and why it seems to be for so long as it so often does.

And who knows but that if we did, maybe His promise of our finding peace forever wouldn’t still feel so far away.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold