Day 4205 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Luke 6:25 NIV

A barren beautiful

A river with nowhere to go. It’s a desert that doesn’t want an oasis. It’s an iceberg frozen in place, unwilling to bend to the want of the waves around it. It’s a wasteland what wishes to be nothing else, hopes to become nothing more. Not here. Not now. Not even soon, it doesn’t matter anyhow. No, for upon the fringes of the found there exists this sleepy town in which all are welcomed in to what has always been an inn in which there’s both no room and yet plenty then of hope to spare.

For whatever is had here is what will be left here when we too have left here.

A promise given us not in order to grieve us but rather to see us unto that place where hope is, the very home of such companions as curiosity and the courage to chase it until we’ve run out of ways in which to waste it, run out of things upon which to waste it. Yes, He calls us into the desert, toward the rugged mountains which move and shake as we climb them quaking as we go. Yes, He calls us to go without, to even give away whatever we might have left.

Because He too has already left to go and prepare a place at His table that will be filled with those who weren’t the first anyone would have thought to invite, those that bring no delight, no regality, no significant formality nor even function unto this function of failures and fools. For those are the ones He came to find, to free, to call to be with Him for all of eternity in that place in which all that is not at all all that is here, thus meaning that all that is now will not be and cannot come.

It’s a place called Heaven and it’s the home of only those who’ve only known a life of the barren beautiful.

What is this beautiful barren? It’s a life lived herein as if we wish to be left out. It’s a heart not merely willing to be rent but adamant because we know it’s been let to rent unto those things we wish not to know ever again. It’s a soul spent and without then a way by which to pay for the ticket to take this ride from this life to that place that, try as we might, we just can’t find. It’s a mind broken by a belief that all things here we shall certainly leave behind.

It’s a pair of hands that find within themselves so little desire to hold anything more that they cling now so loosely to everything which grasps them, intending then to have held all of life as is lived within this temporary time so very lightly that they’ll simply not notice it gone wherever it goes whenever we’ve gone wherever we’ll go.

Yes, it’s a longing which knows that one day all that is will not be and yet, in that, finds this beauty inside that belief that just because all that is cannot come wherever we’ll go, there must thus be there plenty more still to know, still to hold for God isn’t a God who merely calls His children into the deserts and unto the mountains to test them, to try them, to tell them that they’re His through the breaking of hearts and restarting of lives, no.

No, He’s more so a God which leads them out.

And friends, I’m telling you now, this is all that God is trying to do, wanting to do, longing to do. To us, sure, it may seem as if He’s asking us to give up everything and walk away from the way in which we’ve lived in which we’ve loved the ability, the opportunity to have stuff, to enjoy stuff. And yeah, He is! Go and sell all you have. Give away whatever you gain unto the poor who’ve nothing in this place. Turn the cheek. Give the cloak. Ask for nothing back.

Take for the journey no bag, no money, no extra clothes.

Just go.

Tie your belt around your waist, make sure your sandals are in place, wipe your eyes, rend you hearts and then and there start what is this journey into the jaded and empty. Come, follow me into the desert that is death! Carry with you only your cross as you come! Learn then to die as you live out the rest of this life.

Why?

So that we know how to do it when it comes time to lose it!

That’s why the desert. That’s why the mountain. That’s why the valley. That’s why the trial. That’s why the temptation. That’s why the confusion. That’s why the frustration. That’s why the fear. That’s why the worry. That’s why the hurry.

That’s why the grave.

But it’s why He left it empty.

It was to show us that what we go through within this world does not matter not near so much as we think it to. It was to help us see that it’s okay to lose everything we’ve ever known because He who is the Way thus then knows of the way to help us find whatever might be that life that He left here through death to find.

And, well, what’s more barren than the tomb? What’s more hollow than that place in which all of the hopes we’ve known and thus all we’ve known of hope is promised here to go no further? Is that not why we all fear our demise? Is it not because we’re not ready to die? And is that not simply because we’re still convinced that we’re living a life? And is that not simply because within this world we continue to find all that, to all us, seems to make a life worth living?

Indeed, for centuries, millennia now, mankind has been of the mind that knows only to worry himself, herself for what is. We measure the very meaning of live, the very worth thereof via all the stuff that we’ve learned we’re apparently supposed to fill one with. We determine one another’s worth, importance, power via the positions they have and then just how high the tower they climb toward the higher rungs of common employment.

Yes, we not only live paycheck to paycheck but we are paycheck to paycheck.

That’s all that means anything anymore. It’s what do you do for a living and how much money you make in the doing thereof to undertake what is that common of all hope of living here a life so good, so filled, so full and so fun that everyone under the sun will agree that you’ve done well whenever you finally break down because your body can’t take it anymore and you’re forced to retire, reaching then the Sabbaths that you’d never known because you were busy repaying fourth mortgages on your home taken in loan so that you’d have money to take trips or build additions or buy sports cars.

Yes, what we have is who we are and what we are is also then perhaps promised to be nothing someday.

Why?

Because Jesus came to show us what He does and plans to do. And, well, that’s flip tables my friends! He is so skilled at making all things new that He’s promised us that we’ll all be changed. Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow. Maybe not for another 10, 20, 50 years. We may spend the entirety of our lives here knowing increasingly little of change.

In fact, that seems kind of the goal!

It’s to settle down. To hone in on what we’re doing. To find that line that we like most and walk it so very close that we become creatures of habit rather than children of hope. Yes, this world loves all of its ruts and routines as they are clearly these things that we can do over and over and over and over without ever, never needing to learn, to risk, to try, to fail.

No, we rather are here to apparently come to know our chosen path so very well that we can do whatever it is that we do with our eyes closed and our willingness, our need to change, to grow all but gone.

We spend our lives running away from losses and lessons as we find within them only the sum of something we don’t need or can’t afford if we’re to keep living the lives we’ve come to love.

But still, that’s the problem! It’s that one can only grow fat whenever they’ve stopped moving. One can only lose something if they’ve sought successfully to find it. And, well, what we’ve all sought to find, and that quite successfully, is that version of life that’s allowed us to have all that we enjoy, all that makes us feel good, all that makes us look good to those who think that good is measured in material as opposed to mercy.

Problem is that it isn’t.

Mercy is to one day be the only good things for which we can hope!

When?

On that day whenever we’re all changed.

On that day when He comes back and either takes away the life we’ve loved or simply the death we’ve lived. On that day when He tears so wonderfully the veil that we all keep hanging back up that’s woven of want and wish, a day upon which we’ll finally see that should we have gained godliness then we’ll have gained everything but so too that if we’d gained only anything of everything else, we’ll then have nothing but the weight of our regret and an entire forever to spend unable to deal with it.

That’s why He calls us all into the desert. That’s why He asks us all up the mountain. That’s why His road leads into the valley narrow.

That’s why He leads us into the grave.

It’s to help us shed this life lived for everything that isn’t Him, one that, yeah, we’ve all found and felt a great deal of self-perceived good within.

The problem is that He’s never asked us to determine for ourselves what we think good might be. Rather He told us, showed us plainly what all good is, told us all about all that good isn’t. And what does He require from us in exchange for this information?

“To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.” It’s all there in Micah 6:8.

So too is it there in Noah building a boat a thousand miles away from water. It’s there in Moses standing before Pharaoh for the tenth time telling him that lives are on the line. It’s in Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego telling the king to his face that they don’t have to do whatever he’d commanded them to. It’s in Jeremiah lying on his side for 390 days, a day for each year of Israel’s sin, and then another 40 for those of Judah.

It’s in Jesus dying on that cross to atone for all the life we’ve all of us lost to living it in lust for rust and trust of dust.

It’s all the same story written, breathed by the same God!

It all points to those who are His people doing the impossible, the illogical, the absolutely fanatical and widely-considered foolish. It’s staring death in the face and refusing to blink because of this beautiful belief that to die is gain because only then can we leave forever behind the sum of everything that was never a life anyway!

Because this isn’t a life we’re living here my friends!

Rather this is just the life that we’re losing.

Question then is what are we living to find? Where are we hoping to go? What more do we desire to know? Have we the audacity to believe in forever? And, if we do, then why do anything, have anything that may jeopardize our ability to reach the end of these lives and find there any semblance of sadness to leave anything behind?

Why not rather meet that day with such a smile on our face and so much joy and excitement in our hearts that we all but jump into the waiting arms of He who we’ve been seeking for, praying for, moving toward for all our lives?

But, then again, how can we do that whenever we’re surrounded by so many things that exist only to turn our attention away from Him, steal our appreciation away from Him, cause us to live our lives walking away from Him?

Again, that’s the purpose of the desert. God didn’t lead those people out of Egypt just so they’d become hungry and thirsty all those miles from what they’d come to consider their home. No, He did it to help them see that they’d settled for making a home in a land of their very own slavery! He did it to help them see the suffering upon which they’d become used to feasting. He did it to teach them the woeful water that they’d grown fond of drinking.

And indeed, at one point in one of their many grumblings against Moses they literally say that they miss the days in which they bore their prior chains because at least back then they had food to eat and water to drink. Indeed, they actually longed to turn around and run back to being slaves!

That’s how little we’re willing to change!!

We will do anything to keep the way of life we’ve gotten used to living. Why? Because it’s easy. It’s safe. It’s normal. It’s what we know. And so it’s not scary. It’s not hard. It’s not empty. Rather it’s filled with all that we’ve found worth or value or importance or meaning within. And, well, whenever we think we’ve found such things, we find never any reason to leave them.

Much less when the path ahead is carved through a desert and into a grave!

But again my friends, as I just asked the other day, what is it that we now expect Jesus to save us from? For, again, He’s already saved us from our sins. He took care of all that upon that cross centuries ago. What then is there more for Him to come back to save us from if not from lives that we live on the other side of knowing of His finished work that leave us too carrying crosses and spending every day looking toward the sky in an increasingly eager anticipation of one day seeing them open?

We are still here in what is our Exodus!

For this world is not our home but we’re rather exiles, refugees, outsiders, outcasts who’ve been cast to play the role of roaming child of God learning all throughout life what all life isn’t. That’s what I believe the point of this life really is! It’s but a time given unto us in which we learn to let go of all the hope, of all the trust that we’ve sadly learned to place in temporary and transient things along the way to the grave that, while it may be our body’s final resting place, is but the place in which we’ll all find whether or not our souls will ever know anything of rest.

Problem is that, again, He really enjoys flipping tables!

Blessed are the poor in Spirit. The first will be last. They’ll have had their reward.

Are we finding within this life our reward or rather are we living this life seeking it elsewhere and later on?

I guess the point is that He’s such a kind and loving God that He won’t force us to give up or miss out on our having whatever it is that we’ve decided or shall decide means most to us. And indeed, we witness a world in which every single day the masses are enjoying themselves so very much as they’re surrounded by so much of what they claim is all their favorite stuff that having fun and feeling good have become the ultimate goal in life.

Yeah, most are down here trying everything they can to ensure they’re living here their best lives filled with everything both money can buy and the heart can crave.

But friends, still there comes that day in which we will all enter unto the desert where and when everything we’ve ever known, ever had, ever hoped to know or longed to have will be stripped away. We will all know a life in a barren place surrounded by only emptiness and nothingness and hollowness.

When?

When will we take our trip through the desert that is void of such things as comfort, enjoyment, fun, pleasure, success? Will it be here within this world in which all that we go through will end? Will we spend this life trying to find the Promised Land in this place or rather wait to find it on that day when all that is for now is finally replaced by that is forever?

So many here are living to find their treasure here too. He tells us to do the opposite.

Why?

It’s because He knows that He can even turn the grave into a place in which life is given rather than taken away.

And He knows that because He’s done that.

Friends, again, He’s a King who turns tables, flips things upside down. Again, the first will be last as they’ll sadly find that they’d already found their reward.

Blessed rather are those who seek not their prize within this life but within that promise of another place, a forever place for us to be.

Challenge is that the better part of forever is only found through the desert, through the trial, through the fire, through the flood, through the famine, through the failure to find anything of any worth in or of this life. Yes, Heaven is the home of those who seek for no other hope along the way there.

After all, His call is to enter unto His rest. And, well, what is there to rest from in all that’s only fun and feels only good and seems already only perfect?

Let us live these lives so as to leave the desert behind rather than being forced to find the barrenness forever.

For all will know a life of void, of emptiness, of loneliness and misery and fear. Know that life here my friends, for everything we know here shall end.

And it’s that promise which makes the barren beautiful.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold