Day 4203 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Ecclesiastes 7:4 NIV

The hope of loss

It’s quite clearly something we’ve lost as within this world the goal’s to gain. It’s to avoid trial, struggle, strain. In fact we seem a people ashamed whenever we endure hardship or pain, many of us going so far as to hide such socially-assumed weakness so as to leave unbothered those who should be our brothers, our sisters, our mothers, our friends. We don’t want to worry them with whatever it is that we’re going through that’s left us feeling as if we’re going under.

No, we want for everyone to remain always lost within this wonder that is lust for a life in which exists this lie that everything is always fine.

Only that it isn’t, is it?

Truly, when’s the last day in which we’ve lived in which then everything was perfect? Those days simply don’t exist my friends! We want them to, and it’s understandable why. We want this life to unfold in such a way that it proves endlessly able and always willing to hold all for which we hope. Problem is that all but our every hope has become something of a joke and we’re the punchlines getting punched by lies that leave us feeling as if our feeling of fear or frustration is somehow a failure.

How did those things which we all commonly agree upon as being grievous become for us those by which we determine and define all that’s bad in this life?

Or, even better, how did we ever manage to find that other end of the line in which we’re so certain that we know what all better might be?

Have we seen enough good things to know for sure what good is? Have we endured enough truly bad things to know without question how good bad isn’t? How can we know just how bad good isn’t when all our lives we’ve lived in these eyes that see everything slightly differently all the time? Do the definitions and thus discoveries of good and bad change just because we think they should or hope they might? Does the very meaning of this life shift and settle wherever it is that we think we like?

For sometimes as little as an hour?

Truly, what happened to consistency? Everything here is always changing, and I get that our frantic fascination with technologic and theocratic advancements and progressions have a large part to play in that. But even closer to home than that it feels so often as if even everything we like and the more we don’t is all the time prone to being different somehow.

Should such things as joy and happiness exist in the vacuum of some spectrum that we ourselves have allowed our inherent selfishness to define for ourselves alone?

Indeed, do not we know that joy and enjoyment are two very different things meant to be both experienced in different ways, that for different lengths of time and thus too in perhaps even different places?

Have you ever considered that those who have joy need not enjoyment? Or too that those who seek always enjoyment may know little if anything of true joy?

No, I doubt you have because, honestly, I haven’t either. Not until this morning rather. And that probably only because of the honesty offered in yesterday’s post in which I shared some stuff that’s quite personal to me in regard to how I see the things I see. For so long I’ve felt as if I just saw life differently than those around me. And indeed, anymore even those around me don’t really seem willing, interested or able to shy away from coming right out and telling me how different I seem.

I’m told rather frequently that I don’t seem very happy. That I take certain things perhaps a bit too seriously. That I’m oftentimes nothing short of a grouch who’s perpetually grumpy and this probably not much fun to be around.

And indeed, I agree!

And yeah, I also agree with them when they say that I should probably change. I should seem happier. I should feel happier. I would love to feel happier, to be happier.

Problem is I can’t.

And I know because I’ve tried. In fact these past few weeks I’ve, I’ll just put it as bluntly as I possibly can, backslidden into doing things, eating things, watching things, listening to things that I once really enjoyed. I’ve felt for months maybe that I’ve been led on this amazingly odd journey back through so many moments and memories all made in and of a past that was, at least perhaps, quite happier than my life probably seems today.

And, yeah, I’ve enjoyed it!

I’ve found myself having fun. I’ve appreciated the ease with which old habits have come back. I’ve not minded the things I’ve allowed myself to be talked into adding into my diet. I’ve felt that warm hug of nostalgia felt in hearing a song that I absolutely loved back when I was growing up.

Seems the issue is that I did grow up. I got old. I learned things that, while I may really wish I didn’t know now, I can’t change the fact that I do now know them. I’ve made choices that have brought with them literal physical repercussions that I face and feel anytime I dare turn back around and allow back in something that I once made the decision to walk away from and leave behind for good.

All things I chose to do because I was looking for good.

And, well, I still am!

And, well, the problem then is that I find that I can’t find very much of it anymore. And that’s really weird to me because, yeah, I too used to be able to go to the store and find enjoyment on the shelf. I used to be able to walk through the grocery department and pick up anything I wanted. I used to listen to music without thinking about the message written atop the melody. I used to watch things on TV that didn’t even pretend to bother me.

Problem is that all the above are now things that seem plenty able to bother me. And I think that’s because I’m not seeking for enjoyment anymore but rather for joy. I’m not seeking indulgence but rather deliverance. I’m not looking to feel good but rather to become better. I’m not trying to find pleasure but instead the promise of my life’s purpose. I am no longer able to consider that my life as is lived here is meant for me to enjoy all that is here.

Rather I’m increasingly convinced that my life here is meant for me to live here learning to lose all that stays here.

Because that’s what the grave promises!

And, well, that’s why so few of us spend any time whatever thinking about the fact that toward that hole we’re all getting closer!

We don’t want to lose these lives because we’ve come to love these lives. We have fun in these lives. We’ve made friends in these lives. We’ve made friends with these lives. We’ve made fortunes in and with and of these lives. We’ve all of us given so much of our lives to letting only our eyes seek for us whatever we think best for us that we have no idea how to look for, let alone forward to, all that we can’t see from where we stand.

And that’s the problem for each and every man!

It’s that we’re anymore so afraid to move thinking that if we do then we might lose whatever it is that we’ve allowed ourselves to become busy only existing to hold onto so tightly as we have for however long we have that, well, we don’t. We don’t move. We don’t learn new things. We don’t grow in any new ways. We just give every single one of our life’s remaining days to doing over and over again those things that we know will make us happy and help us feel good and probably then make us look good.

And yeah, we love that too! Because, yeah, we love the praise of people. We love the ability to look impressive. We get so much enjoyment out of the idea that someone around us might happen to look at us and see in us or on us or of us something that they envy. We want people to applaud us for the lives we live and how wonderful they seem to be.

Thus we always seem more than happy to resort always to doing those things which are common, normal, considered then the best things we can have or hold or do or be.

What if they aren’t?

What if we what this place knows of pleasure is but a prison made so perfectly personal that its comfort seems so unending that we all find never any idea of leaving? What if our understanding of happiness is only holding us hostage to ourselves and their enjoyment of whatever seems enjoyable? What if, again, joy has nothing to do with enjoyment and thus all our endless fascination with such things as entertainment is only a chain that we continue to wrap around ourselves?

Do these seem like really odd questions?

Probably.

Is that not proof of the problem?

It ought to be!

Why?

Because we’re all down here so very busy living our best lives that we don’t seem then to have any fraction of an understanding that we’re going to be losing all that we have here whenever inevitability has its say. For indeed, the grave will call our every name.

Issue is that the way we’ve come to live our lives what with all the fun we have and the fortunes we find, it’s all left us all but perfectly unwilling to consider our own mortality. And somehow increasingly unwilling at that! We don’t like to think about our death because we’ve all become convinced that whatever this is that we’re doing down here is somehow living a life.

No friends, what we’re doing here is a losing a life.

And the impending problem is that we’re spending this life not even thinking about what it will be like to leave this world behind but rather finding ways to enjoy here so many things that we’ve all come to so loathe the thought of it all being lost that we once insisted the very Son of Heaven lose His life just so that we could go on pretending that we hadn’t lost our minds!

But can’t you see that we have? We’ve lost them to looking for only those things in this world that make us happy or help us feel good. We’ve given our devotion not to being disciples of Christ who are thus eager to be ever disciplined by the same but rather to diving the depths of every delight and delicacy this world can offer us. We’ve traded away both time and attention placed and spent thinking about Heaven for only our having here of some best life that we’ll come to love so much that we’ll only know sorrow and sadness whenever it’s eventually stolen from us.

Yes, we are living a life that’s going to force the Christ to come and steal, to rob us, to remove us from what we love and thus drag us unwilling to go thus toward that hope that He died for us to have.

We don’t want His hope!

We don’t need that home.

We can do just fine without the faith that asks us to number our days as we think it wiser to spend these lives however it is that we’ve come to enjoy spending them.

But friends, if we know so much of enjoyment as we’ll even admit we do, then why is joy so hard to find that I dare say none of us even know what it feels like?

Seriously, do you know how true happiness feels? I don’t know that I do. Same goes with such things as peace. Peace is something I know I’ve only felt in pieces as I know I’ve felt it fall to pieces far more often than it hasn’t.

Indeed, I don’t so much about all that is good that I am worried to think about whatever it might be. I am terrified of trying to find anything that I could even possibly be convinced is decent!

BECAUSE I DON’T WANT TO BE THE ONE TO DECIDE SUCH THINGS ANYMORE!!!

Why?

Because I’ve tried! And, well, I got it wrong. A lot! I’ve honestly made so many mistakes doing so many things that made me feel happy and thus assume that I was that I am now terrified of being happy because I know that odds are my happiness is only blinding me to some new mistake I’m making. And I also know how great I am at making mistakes.

How much more might we get wrong whenever the entire world agrees with our flesh and tells us that whatever it is that we do enjoy is truly best?

Indeed, this is why I’ve tried to live my life in recent times trying to be as different from the world as I can. If the world likes it, I’ll reject it. If they enjoy it, I’ll take no part. If they say it’s good, leave me out. If this world even pretends to act as if they appreciate or understand anything that I do, I’ll change it. Do something different. Do it somehow differently than anyone, everyone else.

I want this world to think of me as so very weird that I’m forced to stop seeking for fun, fame, fortune or friends.

Not because those things are all inherently bad, wicked or wrong but simply because I’ve seen them all go horribly wrong having realized some truly wicked habits that they’ve brought to life in my life.

And honestly, as I’m pretty sure I shared yesterday, I too just see entirely too much going on around me in what the Bible tells me is a world going under that I cannot allow myself to agree with, to go along with, to want to be found by Him standing with, laughing with, loving with, living with.

No, I have truly found a new kind of peace and pleasure and happiness and enjoyment in the almost violently narrowing down of my life to the point in which there’s just very little that I like and I’m always open to find myself being asked to lose something else that I may happen to learn isn’t something upon which I should lean or of which I should love.

And I truly believe that I simply can’t lose enough. I can’t be unhappy enough. I can’t be miserable enough. I can’t be lonely enough. I can’t be sad enough. I can’t be ashamed enough.

Because I still fear that I’m too easily convinced that I’m getting things right.

And, well, the Bible doesn’t ask us to keep count of those things which we think we do right but rather to take up our crosses and count all things as losses compared to the surpassing glory of knowing Christ Jesus as our Lord and Savior.

But friends, I think that’s arguably the best question that we never ask ourselves:

What is it that Jesus is coming back to save us from?

For the Gospel tells us that He has already saved us from our sins. What then is left of our need for salvation in Him?

If not from lives lived on this side of that cross in which we seek only to see all that is lost in us, around us, about all of us that seeing such leaves us so ashamed and afraid and there so very far from happy and peaceful and content that we’ve but one hope left:

His coming back to take us home from what we then do not continue to live as if could be our home?

You see, we’ve all heard that home is where the heart is. Where then is your heart? Where is your happy? What is your happy? What makes you happy? Is it anything here in what is a world we’re all promised to leave and that because it’s gotten so bad and continues getting so much worse all the time in terms of people pleasing the flesh and thus denying the Father?

Or is it perhaps rather the thought of leaving this place and thus losing everything here, leaving it all behind because you’ve finally come to find that you can’t find happiness here anymore?

The truth is that I am happy only when I’m at least somewhat miserable. I dread those moments in life in which I may happen to find that I think something is going right.

I don’t want this life to go right!

Because I don’t want to reach the end of my line and think then that I’m leaving the best of life behind.

I want to die knowing that I have an entire eternity of life to look forward to.

But friends, how can we look forward to something that isn’t here yet whenever we’re still so busy trying so hard to find and feel only the best of everything that is?

Look, it’s not that I believe that God doesn’t want us to be happy, to feel good, to know peace. After all, Christ wouldn’t have promised us all those things if He didn’t want us to find them. But you see, that’s just it! He calls us to find them in Him, not in this world nor then our time spent in this one place in which we’ve all lived as if He hasn’t! God does want for us to be happy, to feel good, to know peace. He just tells us plainly that such things shouldn’t be sought so endlessly within this place in which all things will end.

Rather He calls us to store for ourselves such treasures as these in Heaven and to then spend out the rest of our days looking no longer to find them closer or feel them sooner but instead looking forward to the day He comes to let us out of these cages that are these lives that have been lived within the bars of worldly enjoyment and personal pleasure.

Because all such things are not our treasure my friends. No, our treasure is Him who came once to tell us how wrong we’ve been to have found so much happiness, meaning and purpose within all that is sin and thus should bring shame.

We know far too little of shame!

And, well, that’s what truly needs to change before He’s forced to come back and change it for us.

He’s promised He will. Will it not be better to be found having practiced before He does?

My point is that there’s greater hope had in our losing everything here and enjoying very little of the same than there is in our having here of so much fun and feeling so much happiness that we have no hope left to find beyond the horizon of this life. For whatever we find here we’ll leave here. And yes, sadly many are living still seeking for their every reward assumed hidden inside everything here that makes them happy.

Why live to lose our happiness though?

No, I want happiness to remain a hope and, well, the Bible tells us that a hope had has no hope left to find.

What then shall we be left to find should we have found all our happiness here?

I personally don’t want to find out. Rather I want to leave this world and my life herein to find all of my happiness, all of my joy, all of my peace waiting there to meet me.

So I’ll welcome them only briefly within this life as I just don’t want to die and find only then that I’d already used up my opportunity to have felt or held all the above.

Guess what I’m saying is that it is wiser to save always the best for later. So save up your happiness for another day, for who knows but that we’re closer anyway to that day in which it will be found than our misery sometimes forces us to imagine?

Indeed, please don’t listen to the world telling you to enjoy yourself here and now. Listen instead to He who commands that we deny ourselves and, in so doing, learn to become more like Him who will one day determine our eternal destination based upon how much of His Son He sees in us.

And no, it’s not that Jesus was never happy while He was here. It’s just that being happy wasn’t His life’s main, overarching purpose. Being holy was, is.

How much longer can we afford to get that backwards?

#LeaveNoSoulUntold