Day 4172 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

1 Corinthians 15:54 NIV

finds life in letting go

And that of life itself as there’s this tomb that tells of a worthy well which knows thy name and came to this place to save the same by dying to this world so that we would find within Him a faith that sets us free from feeling still as if we here should be. Granted, that here we are is undeniable and all things which are as they are are so because they’re supposed to so be. The only difference for you and me is that who, what, where we are is all perishing.

The why never will.

And who, what, where we are is all whatever it is because He’s still things for us to do, to see, to be. And truth is that they are all waiting for us to stop waiting for them to be or become whatever it is that they’ve not yet been thanks to our having been whatever it is that He came to at first overcome and then to help us unbecome. And to unbecome whatever it is that you have become is something that’s just bound to take some time.

Thanks to the Christ it only takes this entire life.

Without His having did what all that He’s done, well, that tomb tells of a wrath to be drawn from the same worthy well.

Thus this life is but for us some time in which to either get it in our minds to give away all that we can’t take or to do as most have and will continue to and that is to simply continue to refuse His offer to come wherever it is that He’s gone. And what makes it so very hard for us to this hope want is that we can neither see it nor find within the path which led to it anything that would make the bold audacity to enter unto eternity so very blindly as to walk there by faith anything that makes any sense.

Because it seems counterintuitive to lay down a life in the humble expectancy of there being another there waiting to then and only then take back up again. Sure, there are a great many of us who have that sort of gambler’s mentality in which we’re somewhat more willing to risk whatever is for the as of yet unknown that is all that is not yet. But still, even those who are known to be so prone to place a bet, it’s just a little different whenever the wager is your life.

No, there aren’t many alive who are so willing to risk their lives as to the lay them on some line that was drawn so long ago by a Man we’ve never seen but who claims He’s seen the worst of everything we’ve ever done.

And that His death was caused by just the same.

Indeed, this whole idea of there being a God who at first created life and then defined sin and then sent His Son to pay the death that sin’s wage wins in order to offer unto all the gift of life again, and that only gained in the going through redemption as is only gone through via repentance, which is itself the letting go and leaving behind what pretty much becomes basically the sum of everything you’ve ever known, done, wanted or become, it’s crazy.

It’s madness.

It’s absolute insanity as there are, according to many, still plenty of amazing things found and felt within this place that they all seem to believe are truly worth giving as much of our time and attention as we might possibly have left to give them.

But my question is just how much do we have left?

And too, since we do only have some unknown amount left, does this not mean that what we have will be all used up and gone at some point?

You see, it literally just hit me as to the overall trajectory of life itself and how perfectly God’s set it up to fall apart. We start as little children who’ve all the ability to believe that we’ll ever have, imagining the impossible the only job we know. And then we grow into older kids who go off to school and start learning there all these new things that at first broaden our understanding of life and all that we might be capable of doing or seeing or being within it. And this learning continues onward for years including such things as how to drive and what good sportsmanship looks and sounds like.

And then we reach an age in which the growing kind of slows as we’ve learned quite a bit of all there is to know, at least enough to achieve for us the ability to take on even more responsibility as is found in having jobs and owning cars and eventually buying houses and starting families and having children and trying to figure out how to start them off on a good line within this life within this world that’s starting to get a little darker all the time.

And then we spend the next 30, 40, 50 years working away at our chosen careers that have long since narrowed what all it is that we need to know as we didn’t end up using all that science stuff and calculators are cheap and so the math too gets mostly forgotten. And then we start to get old and so much starts to slow down, and our bodies themselves begin to do the same. And this new aging process brings about all kinds of change in which health is no longer a hope but a daily fight.

And this season of life continues to progress to the point in which the end begins to become so near that we finally meet with the fear of all the life we’ve lived and all the life we’ve lost and all the things we’ve learned and all the things we’ve forgot. And, if we’re lucky, the mind itself starts to break down, basically the blessing of escaping the reality of what’s really happening as rather we spend our few final moments fading back to the past in which we were kids who spent our lives playing outside in the sunshine with friends we knew and the family we’d made.

And then they load us up and drive us to the grave with what we hope to be a bunch of cars with flashing lights driving slow tailing behind telling the world just how many people knew us and loved us enough to be there to see us off onto wherever it is that by then we’ve gone.

And yeah, all of this takes upwards of 100 years, maybe even more depending on whatever God’s determined. And there’s a lot of life lived within the time we’re given to live it.

But the sad thing is that many live it thinking it the only one we have.

And sure, maybe it is.

But friends, why believe in that?

What does it benefit us to burden our beliefs with the belief that all there is is only all we can see? How does it help us to live these lives as if these lives are the only lives we’ll ever live? Sure, I reckon it inspires us to live a little more boldly, this belief that this is all that will ever be. It might encourage us unto the courage to take more chances and maybe even embrace some changes. Living as if this is the only life we’ll ever know may in fact implore us to know everything of such things as enjoyment and pleasure and vanity.

But what do even those things gain for us?

Personally I’ve spent the last 10 years or so learning all of this stuff about exercise and lifting weights and working out telling myself that it was because I wanted to be healthier and get stronger and live better. And it is because it has as I am. But I’d be lying if I said that all along the desire to look better wasn’t arguably the greatest factor. The vanity side has long been the ultimate goal, the mirror then what I’ve turned toward to measure my progress in muscles being bigger than before and the waist being smaller too.

And yeah, as I said I have gotten some good things out of it as I do feel better, I do feel healthier, I have gotten stronger in many ways both physically but I believe more than anything mentally.

But as I lean daily closer to 40, which sounds really weird as in my mind I’m still just barely in my twenties, if even that as most days I’m still that 15 year old kid learning to drive, what I’m starting to find is that life’s overall progression demands that we humble ourselves unto seeing things different and doing them the same.

Different.

Indeed, as I sit here I’m pretty overwhelmed by all the thoughts that I’ve been feeling He’s been calling me to think. Thoughts about what all I’m doing and how much of it actually matters. Thoughts about all the things I have and how many of them I really need. Thoughts about changing things in certain ways so as to hopefully get better results along the way to wherever my ever-shifting goals decide to go. Thoughts about where I’ll go and who will be left to try and sell all the stuff that I’ve spent a part of my life looking for and trying to buy.

And it’s all just starting to become this breakdown of sorts in which I’m starting to realize that I’ve gotten so much so twisted, so confused, so wrong and backwards and upside down that yeah, it is staring to make sense as to why He’d come down from Heaven to walk amongst we heathen so as to help us with our spiritual blindness and the deafness of our souls.

Because, yeah, it seems as though there’s come all of the sudden this ongoing realization that I’ve not seen some things, not heard some sounds, not wanted to.

All because I’ve, like you, always thought that I either had it figured out or could all on my own.

And yet as here I sit halfway through 38, I’m wrestling with realizing that I’ve already lost more than I have time enough left to learn, to gain, to grow or know or see or be.

So much less is left in fact that I find something new that I don’t care about all the time. Even things I used to enjoy! Truly, over the past weeks and months I’ve found myself on what’s felt something of a trip to the museum that is my past, wandering through relics and relishing the revisiting of past enjoyments. For whatever reason I’ve gone back and listened to music I used to love but decided to not partake of any longer because of topics and language and such. Lately I’ve been watching videos of guys opening packs of sports cards, a big thing I used to do all the time back when I actually enjoyed watching professional sports.

Something I’ve not done in a decade or more.

And all this time I’ve been wondering why. What’s caused me to chase this sudden curiosity as to all the things that I once loved but have long since left behind?

And I don’t know why but sitting here today it seems as if God’s been taking me on something of a purely personal journey through all the things I’ve known, been, had, enjoyed. All to help me see both how far I’ve come but also that I can have it all back if I want. That I can turn around and go back to who I was. That, with whatever time, energy, interest I might have left, I can spend them upon anything I wish. That I can, as this world still demands, “leave this way, get off this path, and stop confronting us (them) with the Holy One of Israel!”

Indeed, I’ve even found myself wondering, even if only slightly, scantly, scarcely, as to whether or not I should keep doing this and, if so (as I still have every intention of continuing as I’ve told Him I would), whether or not I should do it different, maybe make these shorter or something like that.

Yes, God’s for some reason chosen to, at this point in my life, help me to witness, experience, feel the breadth of my life as if to say that I still have to choose.

Or maybe it’s that I get to choose.

And as I begin to close what’s probably been one of the single most random and chaotic and perhaps even confusing posts that I’ve ever written, for some reason it seems to fit. And that because, well, aren’t we all just here trying to make it all make sense? Hasn’t our every life become a time in which we find that we feel as if in at least ten places at once? Aren’t our minds so much of the time torn in twenty?

Does not nostalgia cause us to indeed become a little salty as to what all life’s become since the days of old have since gone by?

I’ll be the first to admit that amongst all of this looking back and even revisiting some of the life I used to live and trying some of it all on again, I’ve often found myself struggling to find any joy or hope or even reason in why things are what they are nowadays and how it is that we seem to have let it all get this way. I truly find almost nothing to be of enjoyment or excitement or even cursory pleasure anymore.

Rather I’m pretty much done with looking for anything else of all this world continues to offer as I find that the best this world had to give was already given in the past and, well, I guess we’ve just run smack out of ways to improve.

No, from where I sit it does so often seem as if this world’s best is behind us.

Question is do we believe that ours is too?

And again, for us what would that belief do?

Again, I’ve for some reason here lately found myself spending a curious amount of time sifting through the life I once lived, revisiting nearly everything from memories made with friends I don’t have anymore, wondering how they’re all doing, watching those videos on youtube about things I haven’t thought about in a long time and not cared about all of that time, cluttering my walls and room with things I enjoy and others I’ve had to continue to convince myself I do.

Wondering how to get my workouts in when I’m so much busier these days than I was back when I started a decade ago.

Wondering how to do this daily Bible post thing better, even whether I’m meant to keep it going at all.

So many thoughts, all of them big, scary, confusing even.

Why?

Because He knows I’m not ready. In fact I contend that the only reason we’re all still here is that none of us are. We all still have things to do, a message to share, or maybe ourselves accept. We all have choices to choose, maybe even those we’d thought we’d already chosen. We all have things to let go, perhaps even those we thought were gone having not even thought about them for so long.

Whatever the case may be, there is a reason that we’re all still waiting.

And it’s because we’re not ready.

And in truth we never will be so long as anything here still matters.

As we’re told here the ultimate goal of life is for the death we’ve earned thanks to our way of having lived it to be swallowed up by the life we’ve not lived it for. And this goal can only ever be reached whenever finally we find that which is temporary, transient, transparent then replaced with that which is eternal, unending, unfading.

We have to reach this point in which we make our peace with the promise that everything in this place is passing away. Even the things we like. Even the ones we love. Everything here, and everyone too, it all has an end.

Are we living our lives for our victory to be found on this side of that end or have we the audacity to be still of just enough childlike mentality to actually imagine it better to wait for what none of us can see coming and many thus doubt will come?

I’ve spent a lot of my life living on, for this side of forever. So much so in fact that it now seems that I’ve surprisingly little ability to even begin imagining doing anything any differently.

I find hope in that I want to. But I find fear in just how little I do.

Friends, this life is our chance to learn how to get ready to not live it anymore.

Sounds weird, I know.

But what if it only sounds so weird because we’ve lost our ability to believe, to imagine, to dream? All things that we all had and did as but tiny little kids. And I contend that that’s why He calls us to a childlike faith. It because, after all, who other than a kid would be so bold as to believe that we might actually live forever in a place even beyond the stars with a God who so loved the world that He sent His only begotten Son to come and save all of us from our sins?

To many that will never make sense as it’s considered too childish and dependent.

And we’re not supposed to be those things anymore.

My question is what do we gain by continuing to live these lives as if we can do this all on our own and that only until we die and what more might we find were we to believe that we can perhaps live in peace for all eternity?

Maybe it is foolish to believe in such a thing as eternal life, or these days even peace! But, as for me, I’ve been helped to see just how little hope I’ve had, just how little peace I’ve known, just how little life I’ve lived within the life I’ve lived. And having looked back on my past and tried again some of the things that I’ve chosen along the way to let go, I smile now knowing that I get to let it all go again!

Didn’t think I’d get to do that.

But I do because it turns out that I do still need as much practice in surrendering as I can get.

And thankfully we’ve all this fading life in which to practice before the forever part of life begins.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold