Day 4202 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Ecclesiastes 7:3 KJV

The best for last

For such is simply where ‘tis best saved all so that better might be known along the way. Because that is the true purpose of this path both in but through this place. It’s one we take upon which we feel what are all these things that cause our brains to endure this strain of trying to make this life make sense. And indeed, it is this, this journey called life as is so often met with strife and stress and the sum of the mess we’ve made and will make that makes us hopefully better people for having learned however we can to have lowered ourselves to the seeing of the value, the sheer worth of what is this gift.

Because, well, what is this gift?

What is this life? What is this ride? Why’ve we this time in this place at this point? Yes, what’s the point of all this? Why does life bring both sorrow and joy? Why must there be both happiness and misery? Why can’t we all just enjoy endless enjoyment?

Because what would anything mean if we knew it all the time?

What would be of this life if we never knew the lowness thereof felt so often herein? What would happiness prove able to accomplish if it were such a common companion that we knew we could trust it to be always there while we’re here to make that which wasn’t hard, that which didn’t hurt, all that wasn’t scary or remotely scaring seem less the burden than they already weren’t?

What would there be for Christ to either take away or help us through if in this life all we knew were good days and easy things and a constant comfort to our ways met with always a smile on our face and relaxation in our hearts? Yes, what can the heart know, how can the heart heal, who can the heart cause us to become if never we’re left tired, cold, afraid, alone?

Indeed, how might better feel whatever it is to feel better if we’re not at first found feeling worse?

This is the journey of joy.

It’s the one taken toward what isn’t already. For such is every journey, is it not? Don’t we take our every trip toward somewhere else? Isn’t the point of something such a vacation meant to be and thus bring a break from the burden of our normal vocation? Isn’t the rest promised that which proves the prize for which, toward which we fight? Is not the relaxing the point of all which reveals all the ways in which we’re still so far away?

From where?

Who we’re meant to be.

You see, this world has sold us so very many lies about how we ought to live these lives. They tell us to do whatever makes us happy when the Truth calls us to do only that which makes us holy. They teach us to offer ourselves endless pleasure but God deserves unending praise. We’re told that we can make our own way and thus and there ensure it paved with only all those things that we like alone and enjoy by ourselves and find personal satisfaction in.

The Word tells us that the heart is deceitful above all things and there beyond cure and that we’re not to seek ourselves nor their satisfaction neither first nor last.

Rather we’re to deny ourselves completely for in this only is there meaning.

Because, again, what can anything better ever mean anything at all when all that better is is only everything we already know, already feel, already see? No, in truth we all need better always to be something else found only somewhere else and that at only some time later.

Why?

Because otherwise what reason would we have to keep going? What promise could ever possibly prove better than our having actually found the living here of our best lives and thus our life’s best? Indeed, what hope might Heaven hold if we’ve held all for which we’ve hoped in what’s then been a happiness held so very close for so very long that at the end of this road we’d then find only ourselves losing only everything we’d ever known as good?

You see, this is why so many still seem to assume so clearly that the Gospel is foolishness and thus us few who follow it fools. It’s because they believe God unjust, unkind, uncaring even because He calls us to take up crosses as opposed to vacations. Because He asks us to seek never ourselves first but promises instead that the last will be first eventually. It’s because He commands us to endure suffering as good stewards of the gift to which He entrusted us, and too then the work He’s entrusted to us within it.

Not because it’s easy but simply “because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope.”

And indeed, “hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.”

Why?

To get us through all that’s still to come! After all, that’s the whole reason that perseverance is even a thing! It’s because, as we all should know, this life does hold plenty of things that we cannot wait to get through and be done with. And it’s that way on purpose! For again, what else might we ever know of hope except from within that place we all find in this place in which it’s all we have to get us through whatever it is that we’re going through here?

That’s the point of all this thing we call life. We’re down here surrounded on all sides by all things, some of which are good, this much is true. But so too is it true that even more are not. And the issue with that is that we’ve proven so easily blinded to that fact whenever we’re allowed to feel happy, to feel joy, to experience laughter. These things, all of which are undeniably good things, they’re in fact so good that they can mask or cause us to miss or misunderstand those things which aren’t good.

It’s not that they’re deceptive but rather can, at times, prove distracting.

And I don’t say this because God, as some again assume, wants for us to be unhappy, to feel unwell, to exist here without joy or enjoyment. No, rather I say it because the point of this life isn’t for our to be happy, to feel well, to experience enjoyment. Those things are all great, when used and experienced and expected properly. But they must remain always the goal toward which we hope and thus for which we go through what is a world in which there does exist far more which should cause us stress and sorrow and sadness.

Things we so easily miss whenever we’re busy being happy.

Again, not that happiness is a bad thing because it isn’t. Indeed, even later in Ecclesiastes we read that Solomon himself, a man of unequaled wisdom, had found that “there is nothing better for a person under the sun than to eat and drink and be glad.” Because, “then joy will accompany them in their toil all the days of the life God has given them under the sun.”

And there you have it. The reality is that such things as joy and thus enjoyment, they’re accompaniments meant to exist as companions along this journey through what is a world that will so often prove hard, dangerous, scary, sad even.

Problem is that when such things as happiness or pleasure are our daily goals, we then feel the endless need to seek for any possible way to stay away from such things as those which are hard or dangerous or sad. Because, well, again we’ve just been convinced that such things are bad. That’s the problem I have with this world always insisting that everything is both black and white but also too that we alone get to determine what all is wrong and what more is right.

We don’t.

And it isn’t.

In fact so much of this life is meant to be lived within the gray as only from within the fogs of fear and folly and failure can we ever hope to find within ourselves the willingness, the courage, the audacity to fight for whatever better is wherever said better might be. But we needn’t find that fight that does exist inside if inside this life we feel always good and everything goes always right. No, I’m convinced in my bones that we need this world to feel less and less like home every single day.

Why?

So that we can rouse ourselves and pull on our boots and take up our swords and pour ourselves into His truth seeking daily, hourly within His honesty the hope of this not being the final reality.

And again, I say this not because in this world we can’t be happy because it’s clear we all can as we all have. Rather I say it because happiness and joy and peace, friends, they need to remain the goal. They need to be held up ahead. These indeed are the treasures He’s asked that we store in Heaven.

Why?

Because in this life, as we all know, such things as joy and peace and comfort can be stole. We’ve all experienced so many moments in which we were happy or at peace or laughing like crazy only to have the laughter silenced as joy was replaced by sadness.

I think of Job. Life was going good. The man had all a man could ever hope for. He then had no reason to expect to experience that which he went on to upon that day when everything he knew fell through, fell apart.

But through the fall he found a better ability to appreciate God’s divinity and what it means to be holy.

Things we simply cannot find whenever our lives are going well.

That’s what I meant by saying that such things as happiness and laughter can be distractions. They cause us to miss things, to misunderstand things. They turn our attention toward themselves and ask us to keep seeking them for as long as we might find them, feel them. They exist as sugar to the soul. And I know that too might sound strange as these days sugar is in everything and there in such excessive quantities that we can all go to the store and find easily a bag of cookies.

But in olden days sugar wasn’t easy to find. It was rare in fact. And our bodies, as they were designed, were created to seek for that which sustained them. And, well, sugar offers us a very quick source of a great deal of energy and so whenever someone would stumble upon, say, some honey, they could quickly overindulge and thus lose their grip on reality. Perhaps even going so far as to make themselves sick having eaten too much of this good thing.

Because, yes, there is such thing as too much of a good thing.

Because, well, should we ever here dare find our full, get our fill of that which feels good, looks good, sounds good, seems good, is good, then what more good would we need? If in this world can be found our fill of all that is good, of all that is joyous, of all that brings us happiness and peace and pleasure and purpose, then for what would we need anything from anywhere else?

This is why I detest that lie that says that here in this place is waiting our best life.

For the wise know to save the best for last.

The fool rather knows the path that goes to squander all that better might be.

It’s like the story of the prodigal son. The boy asked his father for his share of his worth and goes off to live it up experiencing only all the best he could find and afford. Eventually his newfound fortune runs out and he’s found longing to be eating with the pigs he was there feeding when the realization hits him that at that very moment even his father’s servants were better off than he’d become. And so he begins the journey taken only in the shame and sorrow of humility in the hope that his father, whom he’d since wronged having drank and gambled and partied away half of his father’s everything, would somehow be kind enough to let him eat among the scraps left by the servants.

And yet his father, having seen him from a distance, ran to meet him, threw his arms around him, adorned him with fine clothes and had the fatten calf prepared for a celebration demanded of his lost son having come home.

Friends, that’s what we all are here. We’re the lost children. We’re the prodigal sons and daughters. We’re but the ones who’ve taken this life of sudden plenty given us by our Father alongside the freewill to spend it, use it however we please. And, indeed, we’re the ones who’ve squandered this amazing opportunity upon such things as sin and self which, somehow unbeknownst to us, have brought about shame and sadness.

Who’d have thought?

Well, we clearly didn’t. Why? Because all this time we’ve been busy laughing, playing games, having fun, enjoying ourselves. We’ve all treated this life as if it were a party and we were the star, the centerpiece, the one being celebrated. We’ve denied ourselves nothing, refused ourselves no enjoyment, abstained from no good thing that this world both offers and tells us we should sample.

We’ve sampled it all.

Thinking all along that the point then of life were for our to find all that we alone think good in life.

But no, God’s told us that the point of life is for our to find the good of life.

And He’s told us that the very best thereof is not found herein. That the best of life is not in this world. That the best of life is not in such prizes as momentary happiness. That the best of life isn’t the enjoyment of whatever little we think now joy is. No, said plainly that the best of life cannot even possibly be within us as, well, “they know not what they do.”

A sad statement made in truth as Christ hung dying on a cross while smiles and laughter were seen and heard across the crowd that has come from all around to witness this apparent wretch suffer to death.

Proving perfectly that laughter and enjoyment and celebration can prove desperately distracting as those gathered at the foot of the cross cared not about the life He lost but rather that His dying meant that they could go on living having all the fun and finding all the enjoyment that they’d become used to.

Yes, they sentenced Christ to death because He dared ask that we consider something better than the mere pleasure of the flesh.

All because, as His choosing of the cross contests, it is far better for our to here experience our death than to die here thinking we’d found our life.

Because life isn’t lived wherever life ends.

And, well, here everything ends. Again, we’ve all experienced those times in this life in which we were happy and did feel good only to have something hard or scary come along and cease our celebrations. And yet we always go right back to celebrating just as quickly as we can.

Friends, what have we here to celebrate?

Why can we here feel so good so often?

What good has this world that is so amazing that it’s worth never seeking for everything better that Christ died to prove is out there somewhere just waiting for us to stop waiting for it?

You know, I’m often told that I don’t seem a very happy person. That I should lighten up, chill out, calm down a bit. And sure, I can see both why they say that, how they see that and too ways in which I could. But I can’t. Because, though I am happy, I’m also not. And as weird as that sounds, that it sounds weird kind of seems to prove my point.

It’s that just because I don’t smile all that often or laugh as much I used to, that doesn’t mean that I’m not happy. Rather it just means that I’m aware of there being here far more to be unhappy about, to unhappy with than there is to enjoy or celebrate. And that’s because, to be honest, this world offers me nothing anymore. I have come to this place in my life, this point in my time in which all I care to find is whatever way I might best uphold this task He’s given me of living a life for Him.

Should the world be able to see His light shining from within?

Yeah.

Did Jesus go around always laughing, telling jokes, cutting up, getting along?

No.

Did He spend His every day of His thirty something years planning parties and taking vacations and getting drunk on the apparent highlife that so many here seem to find?

No.

Instead He often disappeared. He’d go off alone to pray. He’d come back only to say some stuff that very few could or would understand and then go off alone again. He wept. He fought. He argued. He stood always upon the truth which tells us that we are sinners who have thus failed and forsaken both God and thus this life we’ve been given to honor Him.

And He was so hated for doing so that this world thought it best to kill Him.

Laughing, mocking, entirely then unmoved as He died.

Because happiness, enjoyment, celebration, they ask we stay.

The empty grave rather calls us all to come and see both where it goes and thus why it’s better.

And that because He died to there enter to from there leave as He intended to do so as to go and make ready our place in that place where happiness and joy and peace will not fade, break, get lost or be stolen.

The problem is that we’re not there yet and yet we’ve all lived as if we were.

Indeed, I do believe that happiness is the closest thing that we can know to Heaven in this world. But I also consider that it should thus be so rare here so as to always allow us to seek Heaven rather than anything around us. Because, well, Heaven’s meant to be the goal. Heaven is our home!

I want to go home.

And I long deeper every day as I see every way in which both myself and this world I’m in continues to fall short of glorying only in Him.

But I wouldn’t be able to say that if I knew of enough happiness here. I wouldn’t be able to desire ever-deeper to go home and be with Him if here I’d found a life in which I didn’t need Him to be my hope.

But I do because I haven’t.

Because there isn’t enough happiness here. In fact I find less of it all the time. Maybe I’m wrong. Perhaps I’m blind. Maybe I should be more happy more of the time.

But no, I don’t think I will because I don’t want to squander any more of what treasure such as my happiness and my joy and my piece of His peace is supposed to be within this place in which so much remains so wrong.

No, I’m plenty content to spend the rest of my days insisting such things as happiness remain rare. Why? Because I don’t want to risk finding them here as they rather give me a reason to be ever ready to leave for that place in which I trust them waiting. And I’ll understand when those around me don’t get that. It’s because it goes against everything we’ve been taught and told about how in this life we’re supposed to hold happiness and enjoyment more often than not and thus too always closer than anything.

But the closer we hold them, the more often we find them, the less reason we have to keep looking.

Rather I’ll keep looking, knowing that best isn’t meant to be found until it’s found perfectly permanent. And, well, this world just can’t offer that of anything.

So I’ll save my best life for last, for seeking it here would risk me finding it here.

And here’s just not where I really care to be anymore.

So, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll again keep looking as I know I’ve still plenty more of happiness to find as I know I’ve little left to find in all the places I’ve looked already.

And that I've found too much sorrow instead.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold