Day 4173 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

2 Timothy 1:10 NIV

ravels in the reveal

For within the realization of our redemption both being sealed and straining near there comes this loss of the fear of the loss of this life as we come to learn that within the Light is and was the only life that ever were we intended to live. And sure, this realization brings with it a realizing as to the life we’ve lived instead, one which left us both spiritually dead and deserving of the bodily same, which is too part of this parcel which is His promise which doth indeed pursue us. And yeah, it’s still sometimes somewhat strange to find oneself finding joy in approaching such a destination.

Because none alive wish to die as it’s the living of life that clearly makes a life worth living.

It’s just that in Christ and His finished work upon the cross which was and is and will forever remain the cornerstone of the Gospel, a cornerstone still being roundly rejected by the many who continue building their lives within the deaths designed within the wide road which leads to destruction, a few of us have come to find that death isn’t the destination but more of something of a curious pit stop. It’s, in Christ, now less of a worry and more of a wonder.

Yes, thanks to His having overcome our death having died it in our place upon that place upon our cross as was taken to atone for our sins and trade them in for the righteousness that only He is, death becomes something of this sore loser who’s lost its sting and is now just this thing that we know we’ll all go through but becomes daily just that:

Something we go through.

As in we’ll keep going through it as in it isn’t the end. No, in Him death loses this appearance of the most worrisome of all walls and takes on this different look as if rather a door. Sure, we can’t from here see what’s on the other side. But the same can be said of the door just to my left and that more to the northwest. They’re both closed every morning as I sit on the floor in my room typing away these posts on a laptop perched atop a shoebox so as to at least somewhat muffle the clickety-clacks of the keyboard’s keys trying to keep up with my thoughts as my family continues to sleep.

I can’t see from where I sit either what all is in my closet or the sights that sit just beyond my bedroom.

But I know that things are there. I have no doubt in what all is there in fact. Granted, having just gotten up and gotten partially ready and that by grabbing my usual flannel from the closet, I had the luxury of having seen the rest of what all sits within it. And too, having run to the restroom and then made my way back the five steps it takes to find my room once more, I did happen to see at least some of the rest of the house and so I can sit with in a once more solidified confidence that everything is still just as I left it just last night.

A night through which I died to yesterday and that so as to awake to the new life that’s found me yet again today.

Which is itself a thought that I’d never in my life ever thought before.

But when you stop to think about it, sleep itself is truly something of a practice of letting go that which is now behind and preparing for that which remains ahead. And it’s within this rest and the closing of our eyes and the freeing of our mind to think the thoughts that we define as either dreams or nightmares that we find perhaps the truest, most unaltered, unadulterated version of what this existence is perhaps supposed to be.

One in which not much relies on us other than that trust that when we close our eyes all will be just fine until we’ve recharged them enough to awaken back up and take on the burden that is the blessing of each new day we’re given.

Truly, have you ever thought about what happens in the 6-8 hours in which you’re asleep? The world doesn’t stop. There are still people out there somewhere driving around, going to work, buying groceries, watching movies, having arguments, working out, reading books, eating lunch all while we’re passed out and eternally unaware of any of it.

And that’s just on this earth.

And sure, this earth is massive and our time spent upon it equally long and wide. Indeed, within this place we’ve each a life in which we’ve untold years, decades perhaps in which we see and hear and learn so much of what all there is here to see and hear and learn that our lives slowly take on this estimation that perhaps our vocation is to spend this vacation upon such things as learning and hearing and seeing only all that this world has to offer.

But what if our life is only the vocation rather than the vacation and the vacation is actually something we’ll only find whenever we’re finally finished with our work within this life?

Is that not what the Gospel tells us?

That Christ, who came in our flesh so as to die our death, was both found in the form of a human and that doing human work? Was He not a carpenter whilst here? Did He not learn from Joseph the tools and tricks of the trade? He came to be fully man, right up the very point in which He left behind immortality so as to embrace our mortality as is now demanded because of our immorality. Yes, God made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us so that in Him who had no sin we could again become the righteousness of God.

The Gospel tells us that God so loved the world that He sent His only begotten Son to die on a sinner’s cross in the hopeful anticipation that some of said sinners, however few it may come to be, would come to see inside His suffering the justice that they’d spent their lives denying having chosen to seek their every delight within the darkness of depravity and despair, meeting us there upon that cross which thrust Him into that grave where we’d all learned that the very bitter end of our every story awaits.

But then He walked out as the grave couldn’t hold what God intended should live. For there is no darkness nor death which can upend the plans and promises of the love that is the Light. No amount of night can stop the shine of new day’s life.

For death is not the end of life.

It is but the end of this version of it we know.

And we can know this, with the very same confidence that I have that my keys, my clothes, my hats and cereal snacks are sitting cozily in this closet right next to me even though I cannot see them from where I sit. I know they’re all there because that’s right where I left them and so I know I can go back and find them whenever I want to. Same can be said of His having left us which has left us unable to see Him. The cereal I stockpile can’t see me. The clothes I wear can’t read this that I’m writing.

But for now they’re doing the job I need them to do which to wait for me to need them with me again.

Cannot the same be said of Him? That He’s left us all here to either do some work or perhaps work through some things? Hasn’t He left us all with a Word which remains living and active, the action proven in the growth of the Spirit in us and too then us in the Spirit? And as we grow in He and He then in us does not a similar trust exist as I have with everything outside of my door? I know my sister is just down the hall, but for now she’s doing what she needs to do in sleeping a little bit longer so as to face the day soon.

And I close the door every morning so as to leave her be to do what she needs and get a bit more sleep.

Same is said, I believe, of Heaven’s gates. That beyond them awaits that place that He came and died in this one to show us that we all have waiting for us for whenever our work here is done. What is our work here? It’s something different for everyone. For some it’s teaching. For others it’s writing. For a few it’s preaching. For many it’s learning. For all of us it’s learning. We are all here to learn more of Christ and to, in turn, realize the blessed opportunity we have to help others do the same.

We are here to do whatever we can to make Heaven as full as He already knows it shall one day be.

Can we change then the outcome?

No.

Can we live our lives as if all we do just might happen to?

Yeah.

After all, why not? What more could we work for than a Savior who offers unto all sinners, who remain all of us, the salvation that offers to turn death from a dead end into the moment in which the best of life finally begins? What more could we give ourselves toward than spreading the Good News which is that salvation has come near and is near to coming again?

What better way to show we love our friends and family than to do exactly the little He asks us to?

For what greater gift have we to give than to lay down the lives we’ve lived in exchange for the chance to change so very much that everyone who knows anything of us comes to see inside of us something so very different, so very new, so finally hopeful and joyful and true that they too want to know what it is that we’re on to?

Aren’t we all just starving beggars begging for bread?

Are not our every soul but a barren hole seeking for something in which to hope?

Hasn’t our every pursuit only left us persistently parched and in growing desperation for something to drink?

What better upon which to feast and refresh than the Bread of Life and He who is the Well of a Living Water that will never run dry?

To what better might we ever give our lives than unto living them in the illuminated shadows of His light as we strain inside each day to share His story and seek His glory and inspire His people to do the same?

Was not the first time He came to do the very same? And are not we all called to share in Him in as full a measure as we might? And thus should not this life be given vastly more to the working away at all He gives us to do toward the blessed assurance of Heaven that He gives us too rather than to worrying as to that which is not but a door beyond which we’re meant to believe as opposed to assume we’ll be bereaved?

Why do so many still believe that death exists only to bereave them of the life they’ve come to love if not simply because they’ve come to love the life they live?

And sure, I believe that we’re all supposed to appreciate this life we live. That we’re to be grateful for this life we live. I even believe that, in some ways at least, we’re meant to enjoy this life we live.

Problem is that He warns us that anyone who loves anything in or of this world has not the love of the Father within them. And that problem is proven then quite personal in that all of us have, at times at least, loved our lives as are lived inside this world.

A problem He long ago sought to avoid in telling us plain that whoever loves their life as is lived within this place will lose it whereas those who hate their lives in this place and fret not then over the promise that we’ll leave here, they’ll be the few who find it.

On the other side of the door that so many love this life we live here entirely too much to wonder as to what all awaits on the other side and worry rather as to all they’ll one day leave on this side.

Death is the door and there is life to be lived on both sides.

Question is which life do we love more: The one we have here or the one we’ve not yet?

The Gospel was given us in the Christ who came to us so as to open our eyes to see that life in all of its intended perfection is still waiting up ahead. And too that death is now due because we’ve all, yes, all chosen to live this life not seeking the glory of the Christ nor even our glory within the same but have rather learned to glory in sin and deny the shame.

And there is here, every single day, seemingly less and less shame to be seen. Folks all around are doing things that even a few years ago would have been considered unthinkable. My family and I have noticed the truly disgusting nature of even commercials on tv as we’re trying to watch a show together of an evening. So much filth is being forced before our eyes and thus into our lives!

Why love this life then?

Personally, I’m beyond tired of seeing all the sin. I’m sick of being shown the continued downfall of an already fallen man. I am over being forced to know the wickedness within which we here exist. That’s why I don’t watch new movies anymore. Don’t listen to the music they’re making nowadays. Don’t care about much of anything this world is doing nor asking me to do.

I am perfectly happy, entirely content and utterly at peace living out the rest of my days growing continually distant from and disinterested in all that is in this place.

Because I don’t want to be here anymore as I know full well what being here has done to me, and too, just how much work me and Jesus have had to do to shake the dust that I’d allowed to pile up in what was once a life I loved so very much that I too did all the common things that everyone else does too.

And yeah, I still slip up from time and time and do something that leaves me at my window telling Him how sorry and ashamed I am.

Something I sadly seem to do almost every night.

But in the sorrow and thanks to the shame I find this hope in my still being saved. Because, well, if I couldn’t see the mistakes I make then He might have washed His hands and walked away. But that I can hear the words that sound like death and notice the actions that feel the same, this says to me that He’s not finished with me yet.

And that I’m still here today on this side of death’s door means that nor am I finished with all He’s given me to work on, work with, work through, walk from.

No, that we’re all still here means we still have time. We still have hope. We can still change. We can still pray. We can still learn, and judging from the lack of progress in the righteousness and truth departments, I pray we do!

My point is that in Christ we’ve all been shown the very glory of God and the trueness of His every promise. Problem is that every promise He has for us is yes and amen. Yes means it will happen. Amen means “so be it”. Where we all seem to run into our struggles is that that which will be isn’t then what is. That which will happen thus hasn’t happened yet.

In short, we wait. In fact, He asks just that. To be still and trust in Him. To wait upon the Lord to win this war that is life that still we fight. To trust that this battle is not ours but is His and too that He’s already won this thing through His death on that cross taken in our place. To follow Him to a solitary place and spend time just praying, listening, learning the lesson that’s found in our longing to be home.

A lesson learned only as we grow to realize that home isn’t here and that we’re not thus there.

A promise which will be proven only when we reach the end of this life and step through that door that is our death and that into everything we chose here to believe was waiting for us there.

Many here believe that nothing worth living for awaits them on the other side of death, and, well, He’s promised that that’s exactly what many here will find:

Nothing worth living for.

Thankfully we’re all still here on this side of that door with then the opportunity to turn toward Him, learn from Him, live like Him in which, yes, we too will come to lose everything we’ve ever known of how to live a life. We will slowly experience what it’s like to die to this world as we feel this world die unto us. And, in so doing, we’ll come to find that there’s nothing here to love, nothing here to like, nothing here for which to live or give this life.

But that rather is it better to store our treasure on the other side of the grave where nothing and nobody from this place can mess with it.

He has shown us what is good and where it’s best for us to seek it. And even how to ensure we’ll find it even though we can’t really from here see it.

Christ has given us the map my friends, and left every step there still glowing so that we can follow them even through this valley of the shadow of death. For one day we’ll all step out of this shadow as we walk through that door that is all that death is to finally see the sum of everything we believed could be waiting for us to get there.

I believe that eternal life with our loving Father is waiting on the other side of the end of this life.

And since I believe that, the end of this life is nothing but now everything in which I hope.

That’s what this faith does to you!

Sure, some may say it causes you to go mad, to lose your mind, to become insane.

And maybe they’re right.

But I find an increasing delight in the idea that this dark world thinks I’m crazy.

For they thought/think He was/is too.

All because that which is darkness cannot exist while there is light. But the Light can, on the other hand, survive just fine without the dark.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold