Day 4220 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

1 John 5:12 NIV

What do we have here?

For most the answer to that question usually revolves around something that’s here with us. In fact, the answer is or has been the same for all of us in that all of us have lived all of our lives looking far too interestedly upon the things and theories of this world. We’ve all given entirely too much of our time, our efforts, our energies and imaginings unto those things which we can see thus could hold, could buy within this life that we’ve fairly been convinced that we’ve lived. Because indeed, one would think that to be alive meant that they were living a life.

And perhaps we are.

Maybe we have. I hope we do or will or at the very least want to as I consider life to be an amazing gift that’s honestly, considering it’s given us daily, entirely easy to overlook and take for granted. I mean, when you continue to receive the same thing day after day, it’s pretty much expected that you’ll probably come to expect it. And this is in every way what everyone has managed to do with whatever it is that all of this is. We’ve awakened unto so many days, today being personally my 14,128th in a row, by far a personal record, that we’ve thus become almost justified in our believing that the same thing will happen again tomorrow.

After all, if something has successfully proven itself entirely promised for, in my case, 14,127 days so far, yeah, odds are tomorrow will bring 14,129.

For such has been life for all of these 38+ years.

It’s been all but guaranteed. But you see, the problem is that we read the guarantee backwards. What I mean is that we’ve all come to base tomorrow off of yesterday. Since we know that yesterday was there, and that the same truth could have been said, in my instance 14,126 times without fail, then we manage to imagine that the same thing will happen going forward. That there will always be another tomorrow. And in truth, thanks to the promise of the concept that is for now forever, in all honesty there will be.

We will all be somewhere doing something tomorrow.

Only question is will it be measured as a tomorrow still expecting another tomorrow as is only done in this place or will we have by then left this place to what is the last tomorrow that we’ll ever need worry ourselves over?

Because the fact is that eternity isn’t measured in tomorrows as rather forever only knows an endless constant of whatever it is that we find there.

Problem is that what we find there is to be highly determined by what we live our lives trying find whilst here.

And this is a problem, or is at the very least promised to become one for most of us, because, well, again all of us have spent most of our time here assuming all that matters in life and thus can make up the meaning of the same is also found here.

In short we’ve all come to believe that life does consist inside an abundance of possessions, and that simply because this world offers us exactly that and all of them do indeed seem to bring some benefit to our lives. Or at least those with which we follow with what are endlessly longing and quite lustful eyes. Yes, this world inspires us unto the craving for all that’s here as, well, we know it can be had. Now it may not be had easily. It may cost fortunes monetarily. It may ask us to spend years, decades maybe waiting patiently for our chance to have whatever it is that we’ve learned to think we need to have.

But the outcome will still prove the same and that is that, again, so much of what we have here is defined by what we have here.

And yeah, this makes sense as, well, up until today all we’ve ever known of life has been found here. Everything we’ve ever felt has been felt here. Everything we’ve ever seen has been seen here. Every sound we’ve ever heard we heard while here. All of life as we’ve ever known it has been lived here.

And again, considering this journey has proven itself unbroken for thousands of days thus far, there is a plausible justifiability to our all but expecting the train to just keep rolling.

And, again thanks to the concept of eternity being somehow something that all of us can imagine (thus seemingly verifying the at least possible existence thereof), it would seem then that the train that is life will indeed continue to roll on.

Only issue is that at some point someone will throw the switch and the tracks we’re on will veer into an entirely different direction toward what is promised to be an eternally different destination, one marked by what is but one promise of what are two diametrically different outcomes. For some there awaits at the end of this life eternal life whereas for they who are told to be many more in number there is coming closer only everlasting death.

And I get it, as much as the concept of eternal life sounds amazing as, well, life has this entirely reasonable desire to continue living, it’s the whole idea of everlasting death that I believe probably causes many to question this whole faith thing entirely.

Because, as much as we’re a people who’ve come to take our every remaining tomorrow for granted, we’re somehow also a people who seem to have come to understand that to everything there is an end.

As I say all the time, we’re very much a people of finish lines. And so the idea of unending death seems, well, strange. For as far as we can see from here death is itself the end. And we feel quite validated in our saying this, assuming this, believing this because, well, all those who have died aren’t here anymore. Now there’s rampant debate as to what came of their fate and whether they went toward another time, place, dimension and what all they may or may not have found or become once they did or didn’t.

But the simple concept as far as we know to measure it is that death is the end of life as we’ve all known it in what is this one place in which we’ve all known it.

And so everlasting death seems and sounds almost somewhat counterintuitive.

Mostly because we still rely so heavily, if not solely, upon what is our human intuition. And the issue then becomes that our version of intuition pretty much has us living as if we should belong in an institution.

What I’m saying is most of what we think is far crazier than we could imagine. And I say this because, well, just look at what we’ve at the very least allowed to happen to life down here if not actively taken part in all but insisting.

Yeah, I think it’s pretty fair to say that we probably couldn’t have gotten more wrong if we’d have tried.

Issue is that we do try and the more we do the more we seem to only get wrong, mess up, misunderstand and pretty much make a complete mockery of.

All because we’ve all become all but convinced that all of life simply has to consist inside of what we have in this place in which we also think that what we have is a life.

My question has come to become whether or not that’s really the case.

Is what we have here a life or are we just here alive?

Now granted, I can see where this might seem to be entirely the same thing. Because, yeah, we are all alive and so that truth would seem to say that we all do indeed have here a life. And yes, I would agree that we do have here a life. But the real question that I have is whether this life is the life. Is what we’re living the life that we were created to live? Is the life we’re living the life that He calls us to live? Is the life that we’re here living the only life that we’re going to be found living?

Or, as some contend, is there another life?

Is there a life that’s not lived here? Is there a life that isn’t lived however it is that we’ve lived the one we’ve lived? This is where I find myself wondering presently. It’s in this realization as to the power of our considerations and mostly the choices that they cause us to choose. I’ve found a great deal of curiosity as to the life I’ve lived and how much different it is, or at least theoretically might be, from the life that I’ve not lived as was lived only in the choices I didn’t choose.

What life would I have lived had I lived my life doing things differently than I have? What might my life have been had I been of the ability to believe in something other than what I’ve come to believe?

I know this is all really big so let me give you an example:

Let’s take college, a concept most of us can wrap our heads around. I went to college (literally one of the top three biggest mistakes of my life, but that’s neither here nor there). I went to college to become a teacher. At first it was math and then PE. And finally, because I was just over the whole deal, I ended up graduating with a degree in recreation with a minor in sports management. I made all of those choices because I at first loved math (until I started messing with the kind they don’t teach in high school) and I loved PE (as, well, who doesn’t love playing games?) and I loved the idea of recreation (as, again, who doesn’t?) and too I was really into sports.

Really into sports.

Cut to what’s now going on 20 or so years removed from my time in college and I don’t do much math, I still love exercise and things like that but I don’t teach them to kids, don’t teach anything to anyone in fact, I never ended up using the degree in recreation and, well, biggest change of all, I utterly hate sports.

So back then to my example of the life we didn’t live thanks to the one we did:

What might my life have become if I’d have done something different in all of that? What if I’d have been interested in a different degree? What if I had gone on to teach? What if I still loved sports as much as I did? What if I didn’t quit any of the jobs I did? What if I had been who I am now back when I wasn’t who I am now? What if I wanted to have something other than all I’ve come to have? What if I’d have been born somewhere else? What if we’d chosen to move into a different house?

There are all these questions, literally an almost endless supply thereof, that are asked, or at least could be, perhaps will be, in regard to the life we live and the choices we chose that led us to the living of the life we’ve lived.

But my question for today is whether or not that’s all there is.

Is the life we’ve lived, the life we know, is it the only one there is to know? The answer is obviously no. And it’s obvious because all of us are living what are very different lives. We all have very different plans, goals, dreams, ideas, ideals. All of us have different things in mind that we’re reaching for in life. All of us are spending this ride in what are different ways for what sure seem to be many different things.

What if it wasn’t so complicated?

What if it wasn’t all about the investigation? What if we didn’t spend so much time looking so intently upon the things of this life? What if we allowed ourselves to wonder as to the life we’ve not lived? What if the life we have lived, as has been lived for the things and theories of this world, what if it’s only crippled us unto the considering as to all the more that isn’t here?

What do we have here?

Again, the usual answer probably involves something else that is here with us. We answer questions like this in ways that rely on jobs or possessions or positions. We think of life as what we have within it, what more we want within it. We measure our very meaning by such things as how much money we make and how big our mansions are or aren’t.

All of life as we’ve all come to live it all but revolves around those things in this world. And we do this because it’s easy. It’s easy to believe in what we can see. It’s easy to agree with what we can hear. It’s easy to desire what we know we can find as we know then that the odds of us failing are seriously diminished. And, well, we all like that which is easy because, again, our odds of failing it are seriously reduced.

But friends, in our search to make life here easier to live, easier to understand, easier to figure out, we’ve only come to reduce the importance, the value of everything that isn’t here. We take as being of little importance those things that we can’t see. We discount those things that we can’t buy. We overlook nearly every aspect of life that isn’t lived within the confines of the life we’ve gotten entirely used to living.

And this is proven perfectly in how little we know of Christ.

It’s a fog created by our lack of an ability to do so. Indeed, there is only so much we can know. And that simply because our bodies, our minds, our lives are only able to get but so close to His endlessness. He is limitless! And the issue then is that we’re used to living within the limits of a version of life that is itself entirely limited by such things as time and space and our ability to only uphold but a limited number of things.

We all struggle badly with those things that are bigger than we can figure out.

So much so that most of us eventually just give up and walk away. And we see this play out in what is a world that is clearly walking, if not running away from all that He is and calls us to be.

And the further we get the worse things get. But we refuse to turn around because of our fear that we’ll fail to ultimately find that which we can’t see, don’t hear, fall short of.

This is what we have here.

It’s a life in which we choose actively to remain distanced from Christ due to our own fears, failures, imperfections. We allow our inability to wrap our minds around eternity to prevent us from living our lives as if eternal life is a guarantee. All because we don’t think it a guarantee all because the One who said it could be is the One we can’t see. We may know of Him. We might have read some of His story. We may get the outermost concept of the crosses we see on church buildings and Easter weekend.

But for the most part, we’re all here in some measure without Christ.

Question is do we settle for that being the outcome in life or are we doing something to close the gap?

Are we studying His Word? Are we praying regularly? Are we allowing ourselves to more deeply believe in those things that most folks find foolish? Are we becoming less interested in the world and more interested in what all might exist and thus wait for us outside of it?

Are we of the desire to know Him more or are we still just living our lives to know more of everything else?

Again, when asked what we have here most will continue to answer in regard to something else that is here. And I can see the reason why as there is a firm reliability to all that is visibly, tangibly, physically proven or provable. But friends, this verse gives us one of the more dire promises in all of Scripture!

They who have Christ have life while those who don’t, well, don’t.

So then what do we have here?

Is it a life that’s lived in faith that there’s more to all of this than we can see or probably even understand, and that alongside a fire to try and see, find, feel, learn, come thus to understand more of all He is and all that means? Or is it a life that’s focused instead on all the easier, safer, closer things?

Either way the case can be made that what we have here is a life. But my wonder will continue to be whether or not it’s the only life we can or will ever have.

My faith teaches me that this life isn’t the only one we’ll have but is rather only a time given us to come unto an ever growing appreciation for all that Jesus is and all that He did and continues to do. And I cherish the ability to believe in this because it allows me to consider that I’ll still have life left whenever I’ve inevitably left this place where we’ve all lived a life.

I guess that’s perhaps the best question.

Not what we have here but rather what it is that we’re living for here.

Is it the life we’ve always known or the life we can only here begin to know?

Again my friends, Christ has no limits and thus nor do any of His amazing promises. Please seek for that life in which you too could find that knowing Him is all that matters because one day, according to my faith, it will be.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold