Day 4206 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Matthew 5:6 NIV

Everything emptied

The same is all that can ever be filled for that which already has has already some that can, yes, be added onto, but that which is had already will be thus always there either blended with that which is added or elsewise buried beneath whatever’s placed or poured atop. And this truth, this simple, scientific understanding should prove enough for all of us to stop and question what we’re doing with life, in life for in life we spend life seeking always the additions and addendums added unto the already and thus seek with the same time and intention less of the empty.

And indeed, of this I am truly guilty as I sit within what is a room that is as any other with what are four walls, a couple doors and even a window.

Every wall nearing full with what is basically the very sum of everything I’ve managed to continue enjoying within this world. But as I’ve added and added and planned and plotted and figured out the pathway forward to the finishing of my ideas within this space inside this place that I here call home, I find myself of a strangely deepening delight found within the empty places and blank spaces as they, to me, have become the only ones which aren’t defined.

Something else we sadly know nothing of within this life.

For in this life we set out every day to define everything. We want for all that we do, all that we see, all that we hear and hold and feel and fail to have something of an identity by which we can recognize it, monetize it, memorialize it, memorize it. We want always only those things in this world that we can understand, that we can comprehend, that we can look at and say, yeah, I know what this is. I’ve seen that before. I heard that recently. I’ve felt that way plenty and thus know how to feel that way again.

We want for everything to be realized in such a way that it’s meaning is mainstream and thus so widely agreed upon that we never need worry that any of all we’re doing is something potentially empty of meaning or purpose or value or worth. Indeed, we even endeavor to add a worth to everything be it means of time spent or the money we so often prioritize within the spending thereof which we then spend thereon upon whatever it is that we’ve thus equated our time to being equaled by.

Thus attaching a further meaning to that with which we both fill our lives whilst only emptying them of their time.

And that simply because time is the single commodity that we cannot have more of within the expanse that is eternity. Not because eternity doesn’t have an endless existence as forever is a real thing and even to be spent by us all in someplace as something, the something being whatever it is that we come to become when we’re done being humans being whatever human beings are supposed to be or rather decide to be become and the someplace to be determined by His decision as to whether or not we became anything He’s willing to associate with His Name.

Time will tell, but alas only when the clock’s run empty of the ability to be proven of use.

That’s become a thought I think quite a lot these days. That forever has no use for clocks or other such counters of time, space, distance just amazes me to consider! I truly cannot wait to feel those outermost fringes of forever whereon all we’ve known of every limit we’ve come to hold will be forever gone. All because that which is endless and thus undefinable has then no need for anything of anything by which it could be defined or confined or entwined.

No, eternity is endless.

But it’s far from empty. Rather the promise of eternity is that it shall be filled for all of forever with whatever it is that we’ve stored up for ourselves to find upon that day when our lives are emptied of this place and this place emptied of our being here living them. Indeed, upon that day we will all see the entire sum of everything we’d hoped to find.

Only difference is that for some it will be hope itself that is found having lived their lives in constant hunger for something better and always thirsty for something trustworthy and true. And, sadly, for many it will be that they then find only all their hope being forever left behind as they’d chosen instead to seek this life filled, their hearts here full of whatever and with whatever it was that cannot come wherever we’ll go.

Thankfully He’s told us plain of this plan that is part of His promise.

Sadly we all still clearly struggle to embrace the gravity of letting go.

Why?

Because, again, the way of life we know is one seeking always for the completion of something. We’re a people of finish lines, accomplishments, accolades and other such finalities. We love those things which exist as what they are, already full of whatever it is that they can ever be as they’re the things that will not confuse, will not fail, will not disappoint. We can trust that which is to be whatever it is within this place in which it is.

But friends, what of all that isn’t?

What of all those things that we can’t have here? What of those feelings that we feel only infrequently or faintly? What of such things as peace? What of rest? What of purpose?

Can we truly find those things full within this world?

Truth is that many have tried and that all of us have been, at times, part of said many. We’ve all of us spent at least some part or parcel of these lives giving our time to whatever it was/is that our eyes have convinced our minds we need to find, need to have, need to hold, need to know so fully, so completely, so abundantly that we know nothing of need. But still, despite all we’ve tried and all we’ve found and all we’ve felt and how we’ve always longed to find only the good, seems that our still looking means that we’ve not found good just yet.

For are we not all still looking to whatever it is that we’re hoping will complete a hope? Are we not still working to pay down balances upon the bigger purchases that we once hoped we could afford? Are we not still taking to the streets where the stores are or the yard sales be seeking for those things that we want to have, hope to hold? Are we not still making plans, delighting in desires, setting our sights to what we see and there our hearts on fire for whatever it is that we so long to find whenever we get to wherever it is that houses, holds, has whatever it is that we want to have?

But friends, of all we have had, of all we do have, what of it has brought about any true completion to our lives?

What here has given us unshatterable peace? What here has provided us with unending confidence? What here has brought about unbreakable belief? What here can provide or prove to add any of these things into, unto our lives?

Indeed, how much more of all that’s here can we add into, unto our lives and still not manage to find that the fact that we always resolve right back to looking for more only proves that nothing here can fill our lives?

I think the problem is that we just don’t want to admit just how empty we really are, nor the honesty of humility helping us to see that it only makes any sense to be here only emptied further.

Why?

Because only that which is empty can be ever filled.

Only what’s lacking can find abundance added. Only that which has not can have at some point. Only that which is blank can be painted upon or written on. Only that which is void can know the hope of not being void someday.

Can these lives and how we’ve come to live them offer us such hopes?

Or does not that we hold already so much only leave us with less room for whatever more might be?

Friends, this is the very reason that Christ chose the cross! It was to be for us a visual representation of the very physical, on His end, emptying of a body of all that gives it life. He poured His blood upon this spinning ball of dirt willingly. He was emptied of the water which makes up the majority of the body. He was brought right up to the point in which the very last breath that His lungs could breathe became in fact the very last breath that He here breathed.

He emptied Himself of everything that makes life life.

All to help us see that life as we know it, life as we understand it, life as we live it, life as we have it, it can and will be taken and we’ll be then emptied of literally everything we need to keep going.

This is the death of which we’re all afraid. It’s the point and place in which we’ll have met our fill of this place and we’ll be then lowered into a grave and left there with nothing around us but the very dirt from which we came. Everything that we’ll have then known of life as is lived within this world, all that we’ll by then have had within this life we’ve lived in this world, it will be left behind within this world in which we’d lived to find it or hoped we’d figured it out.

One day we will not be here anymore.

Why then seek our fill here? Why seek our full here? Why seek our meaning, our joy, our purpose, our hope here?

Why not rather do as He desires and store up for ourselves all such treasures in Heaven?

If not because we’re both clearly not there yet and we’re too so very impatient that we mind not settling constantly for all the less that is clearly found both already around us and thus far quicker and much easier?

That is in fact the version of life that we consider normal!

It’s that version in which everyone is doing whatever it is that they’re doing in the express expectation that the doing thereof will pay in dividends given immediately. Everything we do here is done within the understanding of the goal, the reason, the reward. In fact, we don’t do anything if we don’t know both what’s in it for us and that whatever is in it for us will be found, in full, by a certain point in time.

Again, we’re a people of finish lines as within them we find this assurance of a matter having met the fullness of its meaning or importance or value.

But that’s my issue.

It’s that we’re all down here rushing always to the very end of everything with what is the perpetual plan to move on to the beginning and then completing of something else afterward. It’s this whole life of checked boxes that has become, what I believe, one of the very worst concessions to befall an already fallen and clearly still falling humanity.

Why still falling?

Because we keep finishing things. We keep finding things that we can find here. We keep seeking for those things which we can have here. We keep amassing so much stuff that they’re building faster new storage unit facilities and the banks from which we borrow the loans to buy the stuff with which we fill them than they are even the stores from which we buy the stuff upon which we spend the loans pretending always that whatever we’re buying means so much to us that it’ll never be sentenced to the silent solace of a storage unit.

But odds are it will whenever we find that it doesn’t actually fill our lives.

And there’ve been a great many things that we’ve all hoped would do just that that have instead fallen flat of any ability to actually accomplish it.

Why?

Because everything here is empty. Granted, we can’t see that as we can see its form or witness its function or perhaps even feel its fun. But still, just because something can be seen here or felt here or found here doing something, that doesn’t mean that whatever it is or whatever it does is all that important in the grand scheme of eternity.

In fact, one day He’s going to make the case that all that was done under the sun, a day met when the sun’s gone out and the only light by which to live is that of the Christ who came to pierce this night via the piercing of His side, that it was all not only meaningless but that it was so very worthless and wrong that any found doing it for so long that they never found the ability, the interest, the willingness to stop, to let go, to leave it all behind, they’ll have had already their reward in life.

Indeed, “woe to you who are rich, for you have already received your comfort.” Luke 6:24.

“So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full.” Matthew 6:2

“Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven.” Matthew 6:1

“But Abraham replied, ‘Son, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, while Lazarus received bad things, but now he is comforted here and you are in agony.’” Luke 16:25

The last one spoken unto a rich man who’d spent his life in the very lap of luxury so comfortable and complete that he even overlooked the needs of the poor suffering in the streets. And, having done so, he was found worthy of the eternal torment of hell. And yet the poor man who died around the same time as said rich man died, he was granted a welcome unto Heaven instead. And in the passage the rich man cries out to Abraham to send this poor man, this Lazarus to “’dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue. For I am in agony in this fire.’”

All of this rich man’s comfort and worldly acclaim and social accomplishment, it was all gone.

But friends my point is that so too was gone the poor man’s emptiness and anguish and suffering.

For again, as we just discussed again yesterday, Jesus flips tables. Something, like the cross, that He did to show us visually an easily understood image of His promise that not all will sleep but all will be changed.

Why?

Because He came to make all things new up and to the very point in which it will be found, and that by all, that the “old order of things has passed away.”

Everything is going to be eventually the eternal opposite of itself. Those who have will have not what they have. Those who don’t have will have whatever they don’t. Indeed, those who hunger will be satisfied just like Lazarus was upon that day that he died and then got to forever leave behind his old order of life as was lived “longing to be fed with the crumbs that fell from the rich man’s table.”

And indeed, everything that the rich man had and enjoyed upon that same table, it was so far gone that he was found in hell begging for a single drop of water to soothe his newfound suffering if even but for a moment!

Friends, that which is here full will be one day emptied out and that which is here lacking will one day be supplied abundantly.

This is why He tells us, calls us, all but begs us with His blood to store up for ourselves our every treasure such as a peace and hope and even pleasure in the safe confines of Heaven!

Because once we get there, should we get there, everything we find there, all that we’ll feel there, it will never be lost again. It cannot be taken, it will not run out, it will not be empty again.

But if we’ve by then spent our lives filling our lives with only things of this world, then yes, we will have had our reward. Be it money or fame or influence, if we have anything in this world we will lose it!

For we brought nothing here with us and we can take nothing here with us whenever we go the way of all man. And that way, if you didn’t know, is death. We will all die someday. The only question which will be left to be answered is whether or not we’re welcomed unto everlasting life when we do or if, like the rich man who’d already known his comfort and joy and pleasure and self-chosen purpose, will be found only suffering for all eternity.

On that day when everything is changed.

The scary part is that all of us have again lived our lives trying so hard to find so many things with which to fill them. And what’s even scarier is that we’ve all done a fairly good job. Again, storage units! But friends, all we’re doing within all this seeking for all this world continues to keep buying and selling is avoiding the emptiness. All because we’ve all been told that we’re supposed to live here full lives filled with meaning and worth and purpose and importance.

What if we’re not?

What if we’re rather only here to empty ourselves of all the time, effort, ability and opportunity that God’s given us to do those things for which He created us to do?

What if nothing else really matters than how much we know Christ and how many we warn of His coming?

I guess one day we’ll all find out just what all matters and how much it does or doesn’t. My worry is that we’re all running the risk of never even wondering about such things as time runs out.

All I know is that it hit me last night that only that which is empty can be filled as that which is already full has already all it can have, all it can hold.

Do we really agree, really believe that this world and our lives lived herein can be filled, can be full of all that’s only here? Can all that’s here really fill our lives, make us feel full?

Or will it perhaps be better to be found upon the day of His coming as nothing but a beggar who’s still seeking only the Bread of Life and a drink of that Living Water He said won’t leave us hungry or thirsty ever again?

Again, all things here will end and that to be instantly replaced by their opposite.

Perhaps we should then live these lives to ensure them so empty that He can fill them with every promise He’s given. Otherwise we’ll be found so filled with want for this world that He won’t have anything more to offer us that we’ll know to want.

Don’t risk that.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold