Day 4219 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

John 17:3 NIV

What is life?

I’m not sure that there’s a more perplexing question that might be asked amongst those living one than that which asks unto the substance and the assurance and insurance and the inspection and the introspection and the perspective and the preference and opinion and outlook and assumption as to what the meaning is of this thing we’re all here living. In truth I don’t know that there ever can be a question considered that’s in any way more demanding, more daunting, more complex, contentious, confusing, even in many ways compounding.

For the reality is that it’s both a question we’ve all already answered innumerable times throughout our lives as it’s one we answer every single time that we give our time, our trial, our torment or torture unto the doing or elsewise enduring of anything that we so agree to go along with being done.

But too the simple fact is that we’ve all done so much in and with and to our lives that our estimation then of life is something as complex and so often reconsidered that we likely haven’t any idea as to the answer.

Thankfully, as always, God’s will knew that we’d need help figuring all of this out and so He breathed a Word which stands ever-ready for all and any who already or will eventually come unto a wondered worry or maybe even a worried wonder as to what all of this is and what all it might mean.

I just fear that the majority of folks here have already found their answer.

And that it’s found in something here with them.

Because when I look around at the world we’re in and all that’s going on within the goings on of those going along all the common ways following faithfully all the normal things I see only a people losing the battle. And I don’t say this in any way judgmental as in truth I myself am still seeking and struggling more often than not as to this most perplexing of all mental asking. I do feel that I’m getting closer to closing every chapter written by my life as to what I thought was life that’s since turned out to have been wrong.

But as I do I see still this same people who find not the same strangeness, the same oddity, the same violent curiosity as to all that isn’t here and everything that isn’t now. Rather I venture daily among a humanity that seems, to me, to be lost inside this endless insanity in which their apparent estimation as to the purpose of this life vocation is strewn still amongst what are but a billion opposed directions.

For some it seems that life to them is meant in money and what all they feel they have to do in order to earn it or what more they wish to have having come upon their ability to earn that with which they might afford it. And this, in many ways, it seems the most common of all approaches as we’ve all known that life lived surrounded by things to do and more to have and we’ve all, in many ways, learned to like that life. Most still seem to love that life as indeed it does give them both something to do and a purpose for which it’s to be done that can be seen, heard, found, held down here under the sun.

For others it appears as if their answer might be having fun as this seems another commonality that is altogether, well, common. So many seem so endlessly happy, so continuously joyful, so amazingly content within the content of lives being lived so loyal to that which is pleasing or exciting or interesting or entertaining that their answer seems to be having fun, enjoying themselves, getting lost in laughter as often as possible, planning vacations spent away from their boring and thus easily-perceived to be burdensome normal.

Still others might answer that life is the opportunity to learn, to grow, to read, study, focus on and in doing so come to know as much of all there is to as one might prove able to. And this is too one entirely common, one that I myself have, at times at least, offered up as at least a large part of this life’s purpose as I too have found myself always of the ability to find something interesting, perplexing, some puzzle or curiosity that simply got the better of me as it invited me to learn more and more about all I didn’t know.

And there we find yet another potential proposal as to the purpose of this existence. That it might be what we know as, well, what we know is what often allows accomplished basically all the above. For what we know in terms of skills and trade offer us the opportunity to money make which allows then our having of things we’ve wanted to have which, for what are always only personal reasons, was wanted because it seemed fun or exciting or curious or elsewise able to bring something unto our lives that our lives were before lacking.

Alas, that’s one that we see next to no one seeking toward in regard to what the meaning of this life is. Lack. Loss. Struggle. Chaos. No, these things are by no means anything that anyone would ever imagine to have all that much about them to add unto this life nor then its meaning as it seems to all of us that all of them only detract from life, subtract from life.

Because to all of us life is a matter made of abundance be it in possessions, experiences, expectations.

And thus the missing of or missing out on anything that we could elsewise be in any way even accidentally inclined to wonder about our potential want or need or growth or hope as could, even if only theoretically, be found within, no, this cannot be then the answer to life.

For to us life is about what we have. It’s about what we do. It’s about who we do it all for. It’s about actions and ideas and undertakings undertaken in the express expectation that our doing them will accomplish then whatever it is that our reason for doing them may have been.

But the point is that our reasonings always seem to have some physical manifestation attached to them. There’s always some prize that we can either hold or see or feel that we expect to be found waiting for our to finish doing, saying, thinking, believing whatever it is that we’ve come to believe we need to in order to have them, see them, feel them.

There’s always a tangible outcome to all we try for under the assumption that said trials and tryings will accomplish for us something of a better understood meaning as to all there is about all this is.

But what I’ve started coming to find as I’ve found more and more of life coming my way inside all of these days that keep coming the same is that there’s this end to our perception of endlessness. There’s a finality to everything firm or able to be figured out. There’s, sure, a confidence inside of every finish line that we either draw for ourselves or agree to another drawing for us as they bring either toward us or us toward a moment in which a matter’s complete.

But that’s what I don’t understand.

It’s that the way we’ve come to live has found us come to love this idea that to everything in life there ought to be a prize, a completion, a moment in which we’ve completely accomplished it, it being whatever it is that we’d set out to accomplish. We seem entirely content to continue measuring our lives and thus their meaning in meetings and promotions and raises and coupons and competitions and collections and other such obvious confusions.

Confusing because, again, they all have an ending. So much of all we do is stuff that can be done. It can be finished. It can be accomplished. It can be felt. It can be held. It can be known.

Should that be something we can say of life?

That we can know it? Understand it? Accomplish it? Is it truly something we can complete? Should we so endeavor as we so do to finish it? Should we so force it as daily we try into everything that can fit inside our houses, our hopes, our hearts, our heads? Or is it not this doing we’ve all done that now demands us dead?

For the truth of sin is that it’s something done that’s only able to be done via our missing God in the moment in which it’s did. It’s an action, a word, a wonder or worry that’s won our focus away from Him upon whom it should endlessly remain. It’s the shifting of our attention away from seeking Him, praising Him, pleasing Him unto something that doesn’t lead us closer to Him but may in fact pull us only further away than we already are.

And why are we so far away if not because we’ve all come to chase all of these other things?

Because He didn’t move. His Word didn’t change. The cross didn’t disappear from the pages of historical fact. Faith didn’t just become the addendum unto life that we’ve all all but insisted it be. No, these things we’ve assumed or presumed, they’ve only proven so possible as they seem because we’re a people who still seem to seek for that which can be had, held, known, finished.

I don’t want to finish with life. I don’t want to know of that time in which I’ve actually figured it out. I don’t wish to come upon that moment in time, in mind in which I feel I’ll find the reason for all this being whatever it is. I want to remain forever curious as to what more it might be, what more I might see, what more I should be.

For without something we can’t complete all we can ever do is finish with everything.

And I believe that this is why God has set the concept of eternity in the human heart. It’s because the mere idea of forever gives us a place for a faith to start as the reality of eternity has none of this finality that we seek inside of everything else. Rather the idea of forever asks that we forgo the often found ability to confine everything into a meaning, a reason, a season.

No, God didn’t create life to exist for a time, not even in accord with time.

Rather He created us to be like Him as in His image we were created and He is timeless.

Time is but a measurement of the temporality of our existence as time is something that, while marching onward, it’s only doing so to the point in which it runs out.

Why then do we measure our lives by it? Why do we live our lives by it? Why are we so worried as to hours and minutes and what all we feel the need to get done within them? Is anything we can so complete within them worth the fact that doing it leaves us with less of them with which to do something different?

Have we the childlike audacity to do something different?

To live for more than hours at work worked for things we want? To live for more than lessons we can finish and tests we can pass as are passed in our ability to offer up answers to whatever trivial trivia that another may ask? To live for more than houses full and hearts still empty? To want for more than trips to the store or some beach in Bali? To long for something other than another trophy, another triumph?

Might we even become of the childlike audacity to imagine that triumphs only lead us away from what truly matters?

For indeed, kids fall down, they scrape their knees, they cry, they bleed. But then they gather themselves and get back up again and go right back to doing whatever it was that they were trying to as was tried to because they were convinced they could see to a reason for doing it that could mean their flying.

Why’ve we allowed our wings clipped unto the consideration that life’s meaning is made up of matters ending?

Because the truth is that everything here does. The fun stops. The laughing gets replaced. The successes fade. The trophies tarnish. The trying slows as we get tired or become entirely too busy to keep trying certain things. The jobs, careers, they end when we get too old, frail or just mentally disinterested to continue doing them. The trips become harder to take as other priorities get in the way. Even the beliefs change as new ideas are offered us all the time.

How many more of them shall we try trying to find whatever it is, this meaning of life?

Indeed, how much harder need we make this than we all already have? For again, all of us have done so many things, accomplished so many things, amassed so many things thinking them all of the ability to add something to our lives and thus make our lives mean something better.

But friends, what can we know of better thanks to any matter that we can finish?

Is better something we can complete?

Is improvement something we can accomplish?

Is understanding standing still somewhere waiting for us to find it?

Is wisdom really won within wages earned or years lived or facts known?

What will it matter all we’ve here known when we’re not here anymore?

For that day does come for all of us. Problem is that all of us have or are living our lives up until said time seeking for life in all of these things that we will either fail or fulfill by the time we leave the place in which we will.

Do we know where we’ll go when we do?

That’s the question that we should be asking. Because honestly, the answer to the other has already been given. For in this verse we find that God’s given us the purpose of life, the reason thereof. It’s to know Him who’s given us the chance to live it. And further, if that’s even possible, to know His Son whom He sent to show us all that life isn’t by dying to all that we’ve all thought life was.

Do we know God? Do we know Christ? Do we know then the gift that is eternal life?

Or are not these things, these men, these miracles of such vast meaning that they exist outside of everything that means everything to everyone, are they not matters meant for our to spend forever trying to seek?

Friends, for long enough we’ve sought for, fought for a life we could complete. We’ve set all our goals, pursued all our plans, idealized our every idea. And I’m convinced that the worst thing that can happen to us is for us to find here success because such will always feel good, look good, seem good. And, to us, anything that we can consider as good is good enough for us.

I don’t want for such settlings in life anymore. I don’t want to finish anything. I don’t wish to make any more plans anymore. I hope rather to spend more and more of my time, my mind, my life seeking for the ends of forever as I know that such will take me forever to find as they simply don’t exist.

Indeed, we can all spend a million lifetimes learning of Him and growing closer to the same then.

And still not finish the opportunity.

Yes, eternal life is exactly what it sounds like. It’s a life that doesn’t end but rather runs onward throughout forever. It has no finish line.

My hope is that we this come to find as only when we do shall we finally be of the ability to believe in He who came to call us there from here where everything else ends.

Do you know Him?

Because the simple fact is that we can’t know life until we do as the Life He is.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold