Day 4168 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

2 Corinthians 5:6 NIV

considers not what’s next

But rather only what’s then next. Because as time goes wherever the rest of time’s gone into what is a past that for now still seems oddly present, this faith presents us with this trust that helps us to grow in both the understanding of and appreciation in what is a faith that says that it’s not what we go through that matters most of all but rather where we get to go to once we’ve gone through whatever He’s determined we need to in order to ensure that we’re by then ready to fit through what is a doorway so narrow that none of us can fit as we sit.

Which is the companion understanding that helps us to come to terms with where we’re standing and start here seeking for reasons as to why here we have.

For here is still not home and so it makes no sense for us to know still so much of all that’s still here, does it? Honestly, I find myself asking myself this kind of question constantly. Why am I worried about whatever’s happening? Why do the headlines still catch my eyes, intrigue my mind, control then my life? Why do I give so much time to worrying over wars and rumors of wars? Why take part in the politics of the overly popular politicizing of nearly everything?

I thought I’d decided that I don’t care!

Truly, I make that resolution at least once a week. That I’m done paying so much attention to what I feel in my bones is but a distraction because, that I feel such a way so very assuredly, such only says to me that it’s due to another helping me to see things for what they really are. Indeed, I fully believe that it is in fact God as given me in the Holy Spirit leading me that’s always helping to further open my eyes to see the sheer foolishness found and felt inside of basically everything that nearly everyone is worried about in life.

I genuinely couldn’t care less as to most of what this place of stress or an equally opposed ability to impress.

Nothing amazes me anymore. Nothing surprises me. Nothing catches me off guard or gives me even anything here to look forward to. For nothing here is new. Nobody can show to me, say to me anything that I would in any way be willing to believe was something that wasn’t already. Nowhere is there here anything that anyone can point to and say, “Now here, this here is something new!”

For there’s nothing new under the sun!

And too, I’m being made daily new in my life spent under the Son.

And, well, turns out that the two just don’t work well together. Because, well, the flesh desires that which is contrary to the Spirit and the Spirit then that which is contrary to the flesh finding me in the midst of a personal war being continually fought between my eyes and mind against my heart and soul.

Problem is, as we all either already know or are soon to learn, it’s that unfortunately both our eyes and hearts are prone to deceiving and being deceived and thus it basically all comes down, this battle inside, to a contest between our soul and mind.

And I don’t know about you but my mind literally never stops. I am always thinking, always learning, always looking for something that I feel I should be found in a deeper depth of knowledge and knowing. I truly cannot shut it off as rather the thoughts just keep coming bringing with them wonders and worries and memories and maybes. I don’t know how to manage this life anymore!

Which is why I make that decision all the time anymore that I’m done paying attention to everything this place wants me to pay attention to. I truly don’t want to care about such things as politics or popularity. I want to know nothing further of violence and vanity. I want free from all foolishness and fakery (which is only growing in popularity considering a recent study has shown that in recent months the amount of bot traffic has surpassed human traffic on the internet, meaning that the internet is becoming increasingly robotic and artificial).

And yet, just the fact that I know that shows me that I know still too much about this reality.

For while I want to care not about such things as popularity and politics, still I find myself at times on youtube watching videos talking about just such things. Even though I want to be done with all violence and vanity, I neither mind watching an action movie nor letting my mind worry as to the aesthetic side of exercise. And no, I would think that all of us are over all of this artificial intelligence offering to replace our place within the living of life, and yet I spend my every night online watching, reading, worrying about what that recent study proves may well be fake.

All because we’re bored while we wait.

Wait for what? Well, that answer’s sure to be something unique for everyone. Some are waiting for payday so they can go buy some new-to-them something that they’ve had their eyes on. Some are waiting for the weekend so that they can finally have some fun and enjoy their lives as they’ve chosen for lives they don’t enjoy for the majority of them. Others are waiting to find themselves in a relationship wherein, once in, they’ll finally feel as if they’re loved again.

Some are waiting for disability determinations hoping they say yes this time as the bank’s running dry and they truly need the help. Others are waiting for cures to be found to problems or illnesses that we don’t yet know how to fix. Still others are waiting for some appointment to get here so that it can be over so that they can then finally stop worrying about it over and over again.

And then some are just waiting for Jesus to come back so that we can finally be done with all of that, all of this.

I like to think I’m in that last group, and yet so too do I find that some of those other things and the many more just like them here also have still room in my wants and worries.

Thus I feel often as if torn between two places, two plans, two promises and purposes and paths and destinations. For I want to go home, just talked about that yesterday, and a bit the day before too I believe. But truly, I am tired of being here where we’re always asked to care about everything. I mean my family and I sometimes have some time to spend some time together and watch one or two of our favorite shows and the commercials anymore are almost always asking us to send twenty bucks to what feels like a billion different charities.

And the kids look so miserable and weak and the dogs do too that I just want to help them all.

But then I read reviews about how only part of the donations actually go to do any good while the rest may or may not make it into the pockets of those running the shows.

It’s all just chaos. It’s all continued confusion. It’s all so constantly uncertain that even when you think that you know what you’re doing there pops up another video online that says you’re only wasting your time if you don’t do this one particular workout or hear some speaker say that so long as you pray this certain way then you’re a-okay and good to go because after one single prayer then suddenly you’re somehow supposed to know that you’re saved and can then not worry about anything else until Jesus comes back.

Why aren’t we worried about Jesus coming back?

Sure, He’s said that He’d left to go and prepare a place for us. Are we living as if there’s another place we’re supposed to be? Told us that He’s going to return to gather us who are His and take us home to be forever with Him. Are we spending our life getting ready to leave or rather giving still a little of it here and there to things we’ll leave behind? He’s told us that upon our impending exit we’re to hear but one of two verdicts.

Do our lives and all we do, say, think about and believe in within them show that we’re working to hear “Well done” or are they instead leaving that door open to His asking “who are you”?

Indeed, we all know of Jesus but does He know of us? We’ve all heard that He stands at the door that is our heart and asks daily to come in and eat with us, be with us and thus us with He. Has He ever known us to open the door and let Him in? Would we did, what would He find? Is our heart, our mind, our life a place that’s been swept up and put in order as if we knew we had such royal company coming? Or rather are our thoughts and wants and worries still so always divided and disheveled that we’re not yet fit for visitors?

This is where I feel the battle fought. And oddly enough it’s one I both sometimes accidentally think I’m winning but only until I catch myself once again sinning seemingly then saying that I’m not as ready as I want to be for what I claim to believe I know to be coming.

I don’t want Jesus to return to find me still worried about what some politician is doing or watching a short video about what some actor thought about their experience filming some movie that I enjoy watching. I don’t want Him to come back only to find me on ebay trying to buy one more thing that we both know I know that I don’t need. Don’t want Him to come back to find me worried about how I’m going to manage to fit all 20+ of my yards in within what’s already been a week entirely too hot and one also with rain again on the way.

I don’t want to live this way!

Torn always between my body and my beliefs. Thinking always somewhere in between where I hope to be going and worrying about what I’m going through to get there. Worrying always about what’s happening to me, how it makes me feel, what all I might be able to do to make it easier.

What if it’s not my place to always make all this easier?

What if the point of my life isn’t to make it look successful or feel comfortable or go well? What if my time isn’t best spent spending my money on buying things that I would live better without as without them I’d have less that I’d feel I needed to worry about taking care of? What is there that I can take care of? What is there here that I can control? What more can I come to know thanks to watching some online video that would bring me closer to peace?

Why is it that I feel as if I’ll fail Him if this post doesn’t end up being more than 3,000 words?

What happened to us? When did we become so scattered amongst so many concerns? When did we all get together and agree that all this stuff matters? Indeed, as I’ve asked before, how can anything matter when it seems everything does?

Or more specifically, how can Christ mean everything when everything else still means something?

I think the problem is that we’re a people in the present. We know that we’re here and thus we know where we are. And because we can see things, hear things, learn things, feel things where we are here, we’ve come to understandably assume that everything that happens here, everything that is here, that it all matters somehow. And maybe to some extent some of it does a little bit.

But friends, my worry is that we’re missing the confidence that Paul mentions here.

And I say that because so often it seems as if we don’t know where we’re going as rather than doing everything unto the Father, we’re doing things for what are perhaps a million other reasons. And because we are so divided in our minds, in our efforts, in our interests, we’re thus leaving the door open to constant uncertainty as, well, within this world there is nothing promised but trouble.

Yeah, Jesus said that too.

He told us bluntly that within this world we would have trouble but asked that when, not if, when we do that we take heart knowing that He’d come to overcome the world. That’s the entire point of His picking the cross! It was to literally endure the worst this world could offer so as to show us that while no, the life of both Christ and thus the Christian may not be easy, safe, comfortable, it doesn’t matter because this life here isn’t the end.

It was to help us see that even though this life will end, and that perhaps violently and in sheer agony, there is something else coming next.

Our problem is that we’re always worried about whatever’s coming next as in today, this afternoon, tomorrow maybe. We’re a people of five-year plans and ten-year goals. Indeed, so many of our worries anymore are affixed to everything worldly, and that again somewhat understandable as, well, yeah we are still here. We have still a life to live while we’re here. We’ve things to do, things to change, things to learn, more than anything things to let go and walk away from. But the problem’s become that we get so often so mixed up inside the mess that this life so quickly becomes that we ourselves become entirely spread entirely thin worrying about upwards of a hundred things at once.

And more often than not Jesus is but hopefully One of them.

But friends, my point is that so long as we’re worried about all these other things that we’re facing, dealing with, going through, worried about, how are we growing in Him?

Or maybe better yet, how can He grow in us when there remain in us so many other concerns that we then ask Him to share us with?

How can we have any confidence in our faith when we’re always so concerned about so many things that only serve to turn our attention away from it?

Look, I understand the basically instinctual side of this life and how we live it seeing as how where we live it asks constantly that we pay attention to something different. That we always feel as if we need to be doing more. That life here is a revolving door through which walk so many thoughts and theories that we’ve little chance of ignoring them all.

After all, we’re the ones who have to live this life we’re here to live! We’re the ones who have to get the bills paid and keep the house clean and put gas in the car and drive it to the store to buy groceries for the week.

We’re the ones who have to deal with our latest illness or injury and take our medicine and give time and patience to recovery. We’re the ones who have jobs to do in order to earn the money to buy the groceries we need and the medicines that are entirely too expensive, actually both are entirely too expensive anymore! But you see my point. It’s that we’re the ones who are left to carry all this, fix all of this, figure all of these things out.

But I just worry that we’ve gotten our priorities so out of whack that we can’t have this kind of confidence in our faith. That we can’t honestly say that we don’t care about whatever we’re going through. That we’re not at least a little worried about what may or may not happen. That we don’t stay up late sometimes trying to fix a problem or lose sleep to worrying about how we’re going to make ends meet.

Indeed, I fear that we are worried about all these things even though the Word of God says He knows perfectly well that we need food and water and shelter and clothing. He understands all of that!

And yet we’ve chosen for a way of life in which we live as if it’s all on us, one thus leaving us to be always the ones who have to figure it out, make the way, solve the problem, win the day.

But that just teaches us to rely on us.

And so long as we continue doing that, well, where then can we find any hope in anything else?

Friends, point is that yeah, we are still in this world walking thus within these bodies which are tasked with enduring still whatever we were probably yesterday. We’ve all still work to do, things to fix, lessons to learn, pains to feel, failures to dust ourselves off from. We all have plenty that we’re going to go through and deal with. That’s just how this life goes.

But what if we could learn to stop worrying so very much about all we go through and turn our attention, as He calls us to, to that place that He’s promised we get to go to if only we follow Him through our share of what He went through to get us there?

His road wasn’t easy, His burden far from light. Rather His burden was our sins and the road He walked to absolve us of them walked with the weight of all our guilt bearing down on Him. Yet He chose to endure all of that so as to help us see that what happens to us here isn’t the end of the story.

This life doesn’t have to be the best life we live!

And if we could just come to terms with that then I think we’d have far more of this kind of confidence found in knowing that there’s a better life waiting.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that that which is best cannot be improved upon. And yet we all spend so much time and effort trying to make these lives here the best they can be that we then unknowingly keep ourselves from any ability to believe in something better coming later. That’s why I believe this life is supposed to suck. It’s because misery gives us the ability to look forward to it being over.

What hope is there for us to find, let alone be confident in, if all we know to be someday over is only the best life we ever lived?

I want my life here to be one that I can’t wait to end, and as I’ve said lately, I’m pretty much there as I genuinely don’t want to be here anymore.

But that I still worry about so much that is here only says that I’m not yet ready to leave.

No, I need my life to become such that it breaks my focus on everything here so that I can focus better on wherever He is. And if that means trials and torments, storms that pour in torrents and so many tears and fears that I hesitate to face the day, then bring the rain. Because I want to be ready to leave this place with what is a confidence in where I’m going and what I’ll hear once there.

Thankfully that’s growing in me, just seems it needs a little more time to grow a little more.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold