Day 4166 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Philippians 1:23 NIV

rebuilds a belief in whatever better may be

Or maybe wherever better may be. Whyever better may be whatever and wherever it might be. In whomever better may wait and in however we’re supposed to get there to wherever whoever better might be as they must then wait for you and me who aren’t yet whatever better may be. Indeed, perhaps the path is that of a wonder as to whenever we might be wherever better may be with whomever better’s always been after however long and whyever hard the road there will be toward whatever better must be.

Whatever the case may be, I just know that from right here and right now I cannot help but see that I am not the best that I can be and nor is this world around me but rather the both are but what I must believe is only the meager beginning of whatever better must be as it simply cannot be whatever already is.

Because all that already is is only whatever it’s already been and, well, growth just doesn’t work like that, not with time still on the clock and life still on the map. No, we’ve all of us still breath to breathe and things to see and room to grow in regard to things to know of even those many we don’t yet know that we’ve not yet known. For that’s the entire basis of every belief, isn’t it? To imagine there’s more? To hope there’s something bigger out there? To learn to listen to a soul longing to look finally upon the purpose of the promise we can feel inside is waiting outside these lives?

Yes, is not faith a matter meant to save us from all we’ve settled for?

Mustn’t it thus move us onward, I pray upward, if we’re to ever be wherever and whatever our own better may be?

For surely we don’t believe that we and this is truly the best that everything can be, do we?

That’s a strange question as even despite my this doing every day for what is now 4,166 days in a row, well, it seems sometimes still that I don’t seem to know. And this I say because within my way of what I still sometimes consider is my life I find that I live as if what I have is pretty good if not at least not all that bad. And while I don’t really think in such terms I find that I live them anyway inside what are ruts and routines so rutted and routine that I sometimes fear I’m failing to find my own measure of whatever better may be.

Because so many days still come and go in which I do the same as the day before. Just this morn I’ve awakened to yet again another Monday in which I plan to do this thing and then follow it by my usual push-up routine in which I throw down a bunch of them thinking all of them matter, which they do, but still somehow stuck inside the number of them I do as opposed to how well are done the ones I’ll do. So too have I every intention of sticking to the same schedule that I’ve invented as it works so well for me that it seems I’m stuck to this belief that there is nothing better my schedule could be.

And I think we all do this, don’t we?

We seek out so incessantly that which is good enough or whatever works well enough or those battles that allow us to believe we stand for something or those choices and changes that don’t really challenge or change us all because we want to believe that better is indeed what we are becoming without risking our losing of whatever it is that we already believe not bad to be.

But my wondering today is why not bad and good enough are so close to good enough for all of us that we think it not bad to settle for them rather than pressing on toward whatever, wherever better may be.

Is it not because we don’t know? And too that we don’t enjoy that which we don’t as it allows us no semblance of the safety we’ve all come to assume inside all that we think we do? That’s why we’re all so fascinated by facts, isn’t it? Because we can know them? Because we can prove them? Because they won’t then make us look or feel foolish?

Can’t say the same of better can we?

In fact it seems that better is something which has to make us look bad, feel bad, seem fools in fact. Why? Because everything that is better than whatever, wherever and whoever we are is only to be ever found at the loss and letting go of whatever, wherever and whoever we already are. That’s the thing about growth. It’s this widely known experiencing of pain, perhaps even shame, that we find and feel within mostly only failure and folly and other such feebleness.

All learning, all growth, even all of all hope is a matter which asks that we forget and forsake this arrogance that’s long lived within this ongoing insistence that we can’t be better than whatever we already are. A lie believed because we’re afraid of the truth coming out and telling everyone all about how we’re not as strong or smart or otherwise impressive as we’ve all long tried so hard to make ourselves seem.

No, we can’t allow anyone to see us for whoever we really are as we know in our hearts that we’re not anything special but rather just another failure who’s gotten plenty wrong and will probably mess up even more going forward.

Which is itself a fear we find that finds us afraid of moving at all. It’s that of all the guilt and shame and regret and things that we’ve already found and felt thus far, they’re things we don’t want to feel anymore. We don’t want to feel weak, unable, reliant then upon anyone who isn’t whatever we are. But the issue then is that we are weak. We are unable. We cannot know what we don’t know that we don’t know. We have to learn. We have to grow.

We have to get up and start moving if ever we’re to go to wherever better may be.

And the hard part of His reality is that we simply can’t find that place that we’ve never gone. None of us know where Heaven is. It doesn’t have signs on the highway telling us that the turnoff thereto is coming up. It doesn’t exist on any map we’ve made.

It literally isn’t here!

How then are we supposed to find our way to it?

We’re not.

And that’s because ‘our way’, it’s not a thing. And that’s clearly a problem because it’s clear that ‘our way’ has long been our thing, the main thing, the only thing maybe that we’ve lived to see, to find, to feel, to prove. We are all, or have all been what are nothing but guardians of our own goals and plans and priorities and the pursuits they ask along the paths they beg we follow.

All of which is all about us, which is in fact why we love it so much.

But the problem is that we’re not the best we can be. Neither is this world the best place we can be. Nothing that is now is anywhere near the best any of it can be.

And honestly, we shouldn’t want any of it to be because, if it were, then we’d have reached our destination and, well, call me ungrateful but looking around I can’t say that this is what I had in mind anytime that I’ve spent any time thinking about the best possible outcomes for my life.

Or anyone else’s for that matter.

No, in fact I look around and see a world given to flounder and failure, folly and fear of finding that truth staring back at us in the mirror. I see a world falling so short of the glory of God that we still enjoy things gory and gold. I hear a world in which is spoken the language of foulness and fornication, failing then to speak of faith nor thus our Father. I feel a world growing always colder as we sit so shamelessly upon the shoulder of the highway of this life wondering why not the wide as it just seems so much simpler.

And it is.

And for however long we’re here it will be. It will be here always easy to do nothing. To change nothing. To risk nothing, lose then nothing. And this is clearly the overarching goal for most of humanity. It’s literally to live our best life here. That idea, the ideal, it’s even got bumper stickers and billboards. It’s something shared in commercials on tv and all over posts shared on social media. We are thrilled to death with this idea of living here life at its best.

But friends, what of all that here already is is truly anything that we could honestly consider, let alone prove, is actually the best there is?

How many things have we thought we’re unbeatable in the past that, somehow, ended up being beaten by something then better? I mean I at once thought that it didn’t get much better than watching football, the super bowl the biggest event of the year what with all the fun and food. I loved it. Had my room covered in sports stuff, autographs and jerseys and such.

To me then it got no better than sports and those who play them at the highest levels.

I haven’t watched a single snap in years. Can’t stand it now.

Guess it turns out that back then I didn’t know what I’d today think was better than whatever I then thought best.

Could say the same with my diet and all I used to eat. Or the hours I used to spend playing video games. Could say the same about a whole bunch of things that I’ve in my life thought were so amazing that nothing else could be better than they seemed.

And yet I sit here in what is the aftermath of a decade or so spent changing so very much that my greatest worry now is to stop.

Yet, again, I awoke today with all of my pre-made plans of doing the same things that I did yesterday and last Friday and the previous Monday.

What sense does that make?

That I want to improve knowing that I have improved and how much better I feel and my life feels because of said improvements being made and yet I do still so many of the same things that I’ve been doing for so long the same way.

Where is there any chance to improve in our choosing so often to do only that which we’ve already done?

Where is there anything better in that?

You see, that’s the problem that I’m getting at. It’s that we seem perfectly capable of making everything flat. Of turning everything into a worry, a want, a war fought and hopefully won unto winning us whatever we’ve been wanting so badly that for it alone we’ve worried. We’ve all come upon this version of life in which we seem to all honestly believe that better is really something that we either cannot be, assuming in arrogance that we’re already the very best we can be, or that, if we’re not there yet in terms of pride and arrogance, that our best is waiting to be found somewhere here.

Yes, we live our lives as if this world is the best place for us to find our best lives.

Even though this place is filled and filling fast with such things as fear, hurting, hatred, hardship, failure, doubt, want, worry, loss, sadness, heartbreak, anger, frustration, confusion, guilt, regret, remorse.

Are those really to be so widely known and commonly felt in that place where everything better awaits?

Heaven is promised this place of unending peace, of joy that lasts, of eternal rest for every wayward and worried soul, a place in which every heart will finally know what it feels to feel whole.

What here can compete with that?

Truth is that nothing can but yet so many seek Heaven not because it’s not on a map. For that means that we can’t find it on our own. And that means that we couldn’t glory or gloat whenever we got there all on our own.

No rather Heaven is found only on our knees with our eyes closed and hands folded as if we finally agree that with them we can’t do anything anyway.

And that’s just nothing that we would ever think better to be.

Because, to us, better is something proven in riches and renown. It’s a triumph touted in trophies and titles. It’s measured in money and mansions. Found in friendships and fandoms. It’s the pursuit of they who are but phantoms rushing about heaping up wealth and want not knowing that having everything here only keeps us from wanting anything anywhere else.

All because we’ve come to believe that everything better is here and thus just waiting for us to find it or feel that we want it.

But I’m personally tired of the conveyor belt existence spent inside this insistence that the entire substance of this world is enough. I’m tired of trying to find more things to make me happy as if happiness is supposed to come unto us in so many pieces. As if peace is a puzzle that we purchase one part at a time.

It isn’t.

In fact peace and happiness, they’re not things we can find. Rather they’re things that are promised to find us whenever we stop looking everywhere and to everything that they aren’t.

I want to be where they are as I’m tired from being where they’re not.

Just last night I stood again at my bedroom window and this time just asked Him where joy is. What does peace feel like? Where is the house of hope and when can I visit the home of happiness? Because it seems that I’ve only know rumors of such things here. Felt them maybe in part and that only a few times perhaps. But enough to know that they’re out there somewhere.

Where?

Don’t know.

I don’t know where better is. Don’t know how to get there. Don’t know when I’ll get there nor if I’ll be welcome whenever I do. In fact I most days imagine that I won’t be as, well, I know I shouldn’t be having lived this long missing so many opportunities to have lived better than I have as someone who was thus better than I’ve been.

And yet faith gives me this opportunity to rebuild what is a belief in that everything can and will be better one day. Again, don’t know when. But I do know that He will not fail in any of His promises to us. In fact He’s proven that He’d rather die than lie. So no, He will not fail to get us home to that place in which everything better awaits.

Question is will we keep giving up because it takes so long to get us ready and settle instead and that only more and more for what we can clearly be convinced so easily better might be?

Will we continue to agree that this world has something to offer us? That we’re not doing all that bad and thus needn’t change too much? That our lives are in fact our lives and thus this is our time to do with them whatever we, at any given moment, think might be best?

Or will we get up off our fears and failures and finally start to fight the Good Fight that’s fought in a faith that helps us find that to this life, to this world, to this flesh we must die if we’re ever to find all that better has always been?

Seems He told us this already. For His Word reminds that naked we came into this life and the same shall we leave, taking nothing here with us as we go.

Surely the God who loves us so much as to send His only begotten Son to die for us wouldn’t then really plan for us to leave everything better behind!

Would He?

No.

Why then continue to live as if this world has or can then offer anything of everything that better has to be? Can we not yet see that this world is crumbling? Friends, this world shows us every single day everything that better isn’t.

That’s why I too desire to leave it. I don’t want to be here anymore. I don’t want to see the shameful sights we’re shown. Don’t want to hear the hateful messages we’re told. Don’t want to read another headline of some horror that’s unfolded. I am at this point aching for peace, for rest, for hope and joy and happiness.

I want to go home.

Because I know that everything better is waiting for me there.

And yet I’m still here, and that with what I can only believe is a reason to be. And that reason seems to be what it’s always been:

To know Him more and hopefully help more know of Him too.

In truth nothing else really matters anymore. And honestly, I think that’s the place we’re meant to reach before we can leave. That mindset that wants truly nothing else but everything that Heaven is.

It’s just that unfortunately I don’t know that many if any of us can say that quite yet.

I pray we work on that while we’ve this little time left to do so because the promise is that one day we will know where and what and who better has always been.

And too I hope we don’t know them from the outside forever looking in but rather inside them not wanting then to ever look out again.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold