Day 4180 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Colossians 3:4 NIV

gives up the glory

Or at least the common pursuit there toward as is pursued here by all in what’s long remained basically the same place and in somehow the same things. For within this place such things as riches and fame and even being well thought of have long been the goals for which all have gone. All of us have chased after such prizes as power and popularity and prosperity. These are the very things that this world tells us daily we should want as, to most still, they’re things that most think we need.

But only because they’ve too been told that they do.

What if we don’t?

I don’t know, it might be another one of those altogether inevitable processes in life that we all experience as we get older and, though in my mind I’m still 20-something, it kind of hit me last night that I’m now closer to 50 than I am 20. Hit me when a friend asked me if I was going to our high school reunion. Realized that it’s the 20-year reunion. Been out of school (at least the last part I actually enjoyed and managed to get anything useful, meaningful, memorable out of) for longer now than all the years I went.

All the way from kindergarten up!

For we spend 13 years going to school and those are our formative years in which we learn the very most about all of life that will go on to define what we do, where we go, who we are in many ways. And in many ways I too had that experience. I carry with me still so many lessons I learned within those years, both inside the classroom and out. So much of what I experienced back then forms now the basis of what I compare so much against as, to me, those were some of the best years of my life.

And yet, no, I’m not going to the reunion. I’m not looking to catch up with old friends. I’m not interested in reliving long-gone memories. I’m not willing to be reminded so much of who I was as told me from those who I was always working so hard to please, impress.

It’s nothing against them as I truly wish them all well and want nothing but the best for everyone I ever knew.

I just can’t find within me the interest to meet a dead man.

Because, well, that’s all that’s left of who I was back then. He’s gone. That life is over. Those days spent in halls and lunchrooms has ended. And honestly, even typing some of this as I’m thinking of even more has left me kind of unsure as to what I’m doing as for so long I held so tight to those memories, to those friends, to that hope of our being friends again and making memories more.

But I guess I’ve just finally started to realize that so much has changed in life, at least in mine, that there’s nothing left back there for me to find.

Hit me yesterday while I was out mowing and thinking over a few things that had been on my mind and in my heart that we don’t grow backwards. We don’t get better by looking back. We don’t improve ourselves, our lives, our faith by revisiting the past in which we weren’t whatever it is that I hope we’ve come to become since. And I have this hope because I do know that we are here for more than the sum of all that already was.

Not to say that what was wasn’t great as I know for a fact that it was.

I’m just saying that things ought to change because we ought to move because no matter what we’ve had, who we’ve been, where we’ve stood, there’s far more that’s far better up ahead than everything that now exists behind.

And that is such a strange thought to me because for weeks, months, years in some ways I’ve found myself spending so much time and thought thinking back to what’s now behind me. I’ve insisted that I bring with me into my every tomorrow so many memories of all my yesterdays that most of my todays have been lived lost between the future and the past. And maybe it’s supposed to work like that.

Only problem is that we again don’t grow backwards and we can’t go forward so long as who we are now remains a willing participant in wherever we’re going.

Again, sounds pretty weird as, well, we’re the ones who are going wherever it is that we are and so it stands to reason that we’d be the ones who are willing to go wherever it is that we ourselves have chosen to go.

But that’s the problem you see?

We’re not the ones who choose where we go. Might choose some of what we do along the way. Might have some say in the words we say and why they’re said. We might have some sort of control over what we come to know and what all of all we’ve known stays with us for the ride.

But the truth is that within this life we’ve all such little power and so little authority that humility ought to be our commonest of all commonalities.

And yet it isn’t.

Rather we’re a people always found boasting about whatever it is that we’re doing or buying or thinking or believing that we’re becoming. Indeed, you want to know who someone is, ask them their plans. And indeed, this is something we as a people do all the time. Down here we’re fascinated by the thinking about what we want to be doing five years from now. We’ve got all these 10-year plans and 30-year mortgages and hopes that we can retire at 65 like everyone told us we could.

Though that was back when the economy was good and gas and groceries weren’t so high.

Nor the mortgage rates, car prices, streaming subscriptions, child care, school supplies, dog food, toilet paper, paper towels and those little embroidered ones that you’re not really supposed to use.

Yeah, a lot’s changed since I was in high school, most of it not really for the better, but what’s maybe strangest of all is that you’d never know that if you again dared to ask someone where they want to be in five years. Because, well, that now four sets of five years ago have gone by since I was in high school I can say for certain that this is nothing that I’d have said of the world I wanted to know. Because all we’ve come to know within this world since back then is only our continued seeking of riches and glory to the point in which, yeah, we’ve gotten minimum wage increased but the stuff we buy had to get higher in order to pay everyone more for their doing the same job.

And speaking of same job, yeah, we’re all here doing mostly on the same things that we did in high school. We spend so much of our time, our lives, our bodies and their minds upon these goals of our gaining glory within good reviews at work, hopefully promotions or raises then earned because of them, a still-growing number of friends who we don’t really know all that much about other than they add to our number that’s out there for all the world to see, a list of things we want to get done by the time we’re 40 which, for me, is only a year and a half away!

I’m almost 40!

And yet here I sit still thinking so often of my own days of glory.

Days spent surrounded by so many friends I don’t have anymore. So many hours spent playing games that I don’t have the time nor interest to play these days. So many plans I’d made for the person I thought I wanted to be. A $60,000 college degree that is utterly worthless to a guy like me who mows lawns for a living.

Oddly enough something I was doing way back when I was in school. My (at least I thought at the time) best friend and I started our first mowing business in our neighborhood when we were 10 or something. That makes this the longest job I’ve ever had! And, oddly enough, still the one that I like the most. Probably because I do it mostly alone and, well, life since high school has taught me that such things as popularity aren’t really all that important.

And yet so many around me still live as if they are.

Because nothing new is under the sun. The weirdness comes in that I’ve been made new inside the Son as the Son died to live in me and, now that I’m finally doing far better about thinking about what He thinks of me than the world around me might, there is so much that’s so new within my life that my going to a reunion would be like an Eskimo showing up at a luau.

Just wouldn’t fit.

And I’ve long since given up worrying about where I do and don’t fit in as, well, I have no interest in trying to anymore. No, that’s one of the many things that I’ve given up in recent years. And that list is as long as I never knew I always needed it to be. In just the last decade God has helped me to change so much about me, so much within me that who I am now is neither who I used to be nor, and this may sound rude, but I have no interest in even thinking about the old me other than using him as a baseline against which to measure everything better that God’s still helping me to become.

But that’s sadly something that I fear most folks can’t say.

Not that He’s not helping them to become something better but rather that they don’t know that He is. And I say this because of the difference in improvement to be seen from inside how my life has changed and how much this world hasn’t in the same amount of time. And it’s not that this world hasn’t changed as we’re all well aware that around here we love talking all about all the amazing improvements and advancements and progressions that we’re making.

But dudes dressing up like ladies and reading books to innocent children was definitely not on my list of anything I ever wanted the world around me to be back when I was still looking ahead to 20.

And yet here we are.

We’re lost in a world so utterly vain and lustful and lazy and losing our last crumbs of shared sanity that all of us have rather resorted to just melting into our phones in which we’ve all crafted and created and curated these perfect little worlds in which all of the words say always what we want to hear and all the pictures just look so perfect and everyone we see is always having so much fun and the numbers on our accounts prove we’ve so many friends and everything is just always whatever it is that we want it to be.

But again my friends, we don’t get to choose!

Life isn’t supposed to work like this. In fact, if we were to be honest, not much is working about this life we’re all living! For after all, what are we even living for? What are we working toward? Have we even anything we’re working on? Have we reached our mid-life crises yet in which we feel the need to afford to buy a new corvette or finally take that trip on that cruise ship that our cousin said we just have to experience for ourselves?

Or are we just doing still the same things as we did yesterday?

What did we do yesterday? How much time did you spend outside? How much time did you spend on a screen? Did you read anything? Learn anything? Grow in any way?

Do you even care?

You see, my point is that within this life we’ve all come to live as if all that matters is only us and our happiness, our hopes, our goals, our dreams, our memories. We love both looking back upon all the glory we’ve already gained and too making plans for days still to come in which we gain even more. We are a world welded to this pursuit of our every personal pleasure such as power and popularity and profit. We always want more of everything that everyone else is also looking for.

So much so that it’s nigh impossible to tell any of us apart anymore.

We’re all headed the same direction, doing the same things, talking about the same headlines, worrying about the same bottom lines, trying to make the same ends meet.

That’s what our lives have become. And I’m not saying that none of those things matter as all of them do.

To what degree though?

To what extent does it matter? See, the sad reality is that so many things in this life have come to become as important as our life. Not that we see it that way nor then that we’d ever say it that way. But friends, such things as time and effort and interest, these are life! They’re all things in this life that we give our lives to.

What then are we giving our life to? What are you giving your life to? What matters the most to you today? Has it changed since yesterday? Is it different than whatever you were doing five years ago? 10? How about 20?

What is this life that we’re living?

Is it still something in which we’re seeking for our own gain, our own glory? Is it a time in which we give endlessly our minds to worrying about things so worldly that we too remain both in and sadly too still of? What thoughts do our minds think these days? What are we giving our effort to accomplish?

Where do you see yourself in five years?

Me?

Hopefully not here.

And I mean that in that, well, yeah, I’m truly ready to leave as this world and me just cannot seem to figure one another out anymore and, in the event that that doesn’t happen and I don’t get to go home by then, then I hope and pray that I’m at the very least not who I am now.

Why?

Because who I’ve been lately is still that same old someone who always spent so much time thinking about himself. Who I’ve been lately is still that guy who whines whenever things aren’t perfectly easy. Who I’ve been lately is that one who’s so very selfish that he gets frustrated whenever someone else is in his way, as if he owns the world and everyone else should step aside so that he can live his life according to all these little schedules and plans and opinions that he has.

I hate the guy!

Much the same as I once despised the guy who weighed over 300 pounds and ate like a child. Much the same as I came to hate the person who was so lazy that being asked to do literally anything made him almost ragingly angry. Much the same as I hated the man who listened to music about drinking and drugs and breaking the law and so much sexual innuendo that I didn’t realize at the time. I hate the fact that I know now what I didn’t know then!

I hate him who traded away every possible chance at love and dating and maybe even marriage and children for nights spent on seedy websites.

I despise who I’ve been. And granted, who I am now and me are somewhat better friends. But again, who I’ve been lately still has entirely too much that I don’t want to be.

Why?

Because so much of the time I still live as if this life is my life. As if my plans are what matter most. As if my growth is something that I can determine, design, direct. As if what I have is supposed to be able to make me as happy or pleased as it does.

And I know that none of that should be the case.

Why?

Because this verse tells us that Christ is our life.

It’s not who we are as is made up of both who we’ve been and whoever it is that we’re either trying or refusing to become. It’s not what we do as is done trying to keep in step with plans we’ve made. It’s not the words we say whenever asked a question that we don’t have the perfect answer to. It’s not the goals we have, the glory we think we do.

No, Christ is supposed to be our life!

Can we say that He is?

Can we say that His glory is the only glory we care to find? Can we say that we’re here trying only to please Him? Can we say that we’re doing everything we can to focus in only on those things He’s asked us to? Is sharing the Gospel as important to us as getting a raise? Have we any treasure stored as hope in Heaven or are they mostly still hung on our walls or in storage bins in our garage?

We’ve all tried so hard to find a life within all of our plans and expectations. But most of our plans and expectations have been given us from the world around us. And thus our lives, as are again made up of our time and interest and efforts, they’ve been given to the world we’re in and our living the same version of life that everyone else here is living.

And that version of life is one in which everything matters but Christ. It’s a life of cell phone plans and streaming bundles. It’s a life of vacation expectations and forecast models that we trust to help us pick the best time to take them. It’s deadlines at work and headlines without hope. It’s a loss of love and thus a lack of life.

We know nothing of life because none of us know near enough of Christ!

Are we working to change that? Are we asking Him to help us whenever we realize we can’t? Or are we just still thinking ahead to what we hope the next five years will be like and that all they’ll lead us to is a better retirement or a handful of nice memories made along the way?

I don’t want to live my life for memories. Not that they’re not great, trust me, I’ve plenty of them that I absolutely adore. But I just know that one day my entire life will be a memory and that that means that I won’t be living it anymore.

I know that we’re all going to die!

To what and what for is all we really have any say in.

The Gospel is there to help us see that we have a choice when it comes to eternity. But friends, living as if we can work or earn or plan our way to Heaven, that’s just pride continuing to get in the way. That’s us seeking still for some measure of glory for ourselves.

And if we still think ever about our glory, then we’re still lost in that losing way of life that has so many convinced that we have some.

We don’t.

Again, these aren’t even our lives.

But what then are our lives?

Are they Christ?

Or are they just confused?

And no, there is no other answer to that question.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold