Day 4222 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

1 Peter 5:6 NIV

When is life?

Another odd question, right? Because, again, as we’ve been talking about for days now the truth is that we have here a life that we are living as we are all here as those who are alive thus living a life. And so common logic as is measured amongst human wisdom would have us believe that our being here as human beings who are humans being what is considered alive, as we are all living a life, means that life is both here and now. And indeed, it is.

But so too it isn’t.

And I propose this because life as we live it, whilst amazing and tragic and everything in between, it’s just that. It’s a steady blend of everything in between. It’s filled with both good days and hard times. Fun memories and long nights. Laughter enjoyed with friends and tears known by few. Lists of things we hope to find and plenty of those we hope we never need to do. Life here is a perfect chaos in every manner and measure of the word.

All because, within this world, what we’ve all come to do is take it upon ourselves to moment-by-moment choose that which we win and what little we’re willing to lose. What I mean is that the life we’ve seen through these screens that are our eyes has become in many ways and at many times nothing more than a lie that we’ve come to believe simply because it showed us something we wanted to see or told us whatever it was that we wanted to hear.

Illusions illuminated by everything from our own intelligence to our more commonly overlooked idiocy.

But such has become to us the thing in which we place all of our trust. It’s in ourselves. It’s in what we know. It’s in what we want. It’s in what we do and what all we’re not willing to. What I’m getting at is that we’ve all come to consider that we’ve got all of life figured. We live as if the mere fact that we’re alive can somehow prove to provide us with enough knowledge to comprehend life and even go on thus to find the very best way in which to live one.

Mostly done by our ignoring that fact that we’ve got but the one and that we’ve been told that all we do, all we seek, all we hold will one day either testify against us or accomplish for us rather an evidence as to what was by then a life lived in which we lived our lives looking elsewhere for thus something else to find.

But that’s really hard to do whenever you become so convinced as we all are that you have something to lose.

And that’s sadly exactly what’s happened to us. It’s that these lives and the way we’ve lived them has left us looking at what we have as what matters most. The things around us have become unto us those wins and worries that we want to keep or hope to lose. All that we know to do is to look as close as possible for that which is easy as possible to provide for us whatever it is that we’re then willing, eager, able to estimate as being worth spending our lives trying to investigate or instigate or initiate or insulate.

We’re so vastly worried about the lives we know as are known for all they hold that we seek only to hold more of that which we can. And it’s been this way for so long now, and we’ve become so good at living this way, that we’ve long since accomplished what seem kingdoms jammed with so much luxury and excess that, yes, it’s now normal to us to see this life that we live here as what could well be the very best life we may ever live.

A consensus now so common that most folks spend their every waking moment thinking only of how to make these lives better, as is pretty much always accomplished via their leaning again and looking to only themselves to know, to find, to prove that which is best from all the rest.

Meaning that we’ve chosen to exalt ourselves as we’ve come to consider that we’re the only ones who could ever know what’s best for us from all the rest that isn’t.

All because we’ve all again come to consider that we’ve got all of life figured.

And that simply because we are technically alive and thus technically living a life.

Thus seeming to validate our society’s commonest of all arguments, that being that since we are here then life is too.

And yeah, this seems true as we all seem plenty willing to agree that what we have here is a life.

Is it the only one though?

This is something we’ve been discussing for a few days and something I’ve been wrestling with for several months, probably years if I were to look back and find any ability to remember all of the thoughts I’ve had on the subject. Which I can’t. But what I can do is continue to peruse what all Scripture says as to the matter.

And, well, here we find that part of the calling is to humble ourselves, meaning think of ourselves in proper measure (not highly but honestly) and to do so under the then humbled expectation that God will be the One to lift us up and that to both where we should be and that with little if any help from us.

Why?

Because He doesn’t our help and that because our version of “helping” usually only gets in the way and causes problems. Why? Because we love to think that we know what we’re doing, that we’ve figured out what’s best for us, that we have here so many things that add unto our best that we’ve thus entirely too much to lose to learn how to live from He who calls us to do so via such hobbies as giving away all we have and carrying crosses everywhere we go.

Yeah, His road and ours are very different.

Issue then is that we’re so convinced that ours is always right that anyone who ever dares argue otherwise is thus most likely wrong and we’re more than willing to fight it out.

All because we’ve all become so very high on ourselves that we’ll literally risk everything upon our being proven right. We’ll even run wildly outside of reality in order to remain convinced that we’re not wrong.

Not hard to see then how so much has gone wrong. It’s because we’ve come to become convinced that we’re living a life in what is a place in which others are doing the same and we’re all doing it so successfully, so happily, so comfortably that to ask us to do anything, see anything, consider anything at all differently would be basically a non-starter.

Why do things differently when our way continues to pay off in so many amazing things, possessions, memories?

No, this is our life and we’re living it as we see fit within the place in which it obviously fits seeing as how, well, here we are.

Thus seeming to prove that life is here and now all because so are we who are alive living it.

But friends, again, is this really all there is to it?

Is it all supposed to always be this endless scene in which we see only our way to only those things that we alone think are good? Is life meant to be this book we read by they are but we who wrote it all by ourselves? Is life truly nothing more than our seeking always for more of what is a world that oddly enough always offers exactly that?

Doesn’t that seem to have at least some ring of that whole “too-good-to-be-true” idea?

Isn’t it the least bit suspect that this world continues to offer everything we’ve come to think we need to live here a life? Does it not strike anyone else as at least a little strange that this world offers us everything we want to have or hope to hold?

Doesn’t it kind of get old always having to be the ones who spend our days trying to decide what all we want and that at the direct expense of being happy, being content with whatever we have and a humbled hope of where all else we might go?

And that as in not here?

Call me ungrateful if you’d like but I’ve just started running out of excitement for this life. Things seem to be consistently getting worse all the time. I was fortunate enough to have been born at a time that allowed my life to be lived growing in a world that was vastly different than whatever this in which we’re living now. And now I understand the lack of wisdom found in comparing the old and the new as the old is gone and the new is what it is.

But still, things have changed in countless ways and, from my perspective at least, not many have done so toward the better. Rather I would argue that things are getting worse all the time as we seem to find within this life that those who are here alive seem to daily find increasing ways to prove those not-so-fun parts of the Bible to be true.

Such as that passage where it posits that people will go from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived. Or that other in which it’s told that many will hold a form of godliness but deny its power. Or still another which lays it all out as to how all of this will go down:

“People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God.” A passage ending by saying that part about their having a form of godliness but obviously denying its power via their opting to rather give in to all the lesser traits and desires listed above.

And that with a command to “have nothing to do with such people.”

Problem is that we are all such people. All of us are, at times at least, a fairly large portion of those things. Not always. Some of them some of us would never do. But the point is that that list does really prove some of the ways in which we continue to fall short.

All of them chosen because we remain all but frozen in this assumption that we know what we’re doing and that we’re good enough at doing it well enough that we thus know enough about life itself to live one however we think it should be lived.

Thus proving that we’re looking to only ourselves to determine what our lives should be.

But friends, how can we know what life is supposed to be whenever we continue to get so much so wrong alongside an amazing inability to see it that way?

How can we know what life is supposed to be without much if any humility?

Indeed, how dare we contend that this is life when all we’ve done is live it so wrongly that God humbled Himself to walk amongst humanity toward what He knew would be a cross we’d consider Him worthy of suffering?

That any of our words, our choices, our actions or assumptions have gone against God, refused His will, argued against His Word, this is all we should need to help us see that while we are here alive, His defining sin as death and all of us as sinners means we know nothing then of life!

Question is will we?

We can for that was His entire intention. Christ came to walk amongst His creation to show them, teach them, help them learn how to live a godly life. And by them I mean all of us. And He did so, does so still via the Holy Spirit that He literally died to send our way, all to help us learn to get over ourselves and this idol that is “our way” all so that we could come to see that He who created life thus, wouldn’t you know it, knows far more about it than we who are down here just messing it up as we go.

Yes, He came to help us see just how far we’d fallen thanks to how highly we’d come to see ourselves.

Problem is that that message is hard to sell to a people who think still that they’re living well. And yeah, easy to see that in many ways we are. In fact, referring back to the countless changes that I mentioned I’ve witnessed as I’ve gotten older, many of them have been considered for the better thanks to mankind’s fascination with such things as technology and politics and affluence. Indeed, in many ways we seem better off than we’ve ever been as we’ve now more access to more which makes our lives safer, easier, more successful than ever before.

Issue there is that many here have come to see that as the goal.

That life here is meant for our to be safe, successful, able to then enjoy what is a vastly easy ride, one so easy that many today can’t even read and some don’t wish to drive but are rather more than happy to rely on driverless cars that run on computer systems to get them where they’re going.

Yes, we’ve become a people so impressed with ourselves that we’ve come to a willingness to rely on things we’ve created or imagined or elsewise come up with to take the lead and get wherever it is that we want to go.

We are letting computers take the lead and trust them to get us wherever it is that we want to go.

Computers we’ve made. Computers we’ve programmed. Programs we’ve written to do only as we’ve told them.

Friends, we’ve become our own gods and live now this version of life in which we’re the ones calling the shots and even our cars do as we tell them.

How then could one argue that we’re not so utterly high on ourselves that life as we’ve chosen to know it is now but only whatever we want it to be?

My point is that we’ve taken it upon ourselves to craft a version of life, or at least an approach thereto, in which we’re the ones who know what to do, what’s best for us, what’s not for us. And we’ve done all of this because we think we know enough to find some justification in calling whatever this is that we’re living a life. And yeah, in many ways it is. But friends my worry is that we’re only down here moving the finish line so that we can make it look like we know what we’re doing with this life.

We keep rewriting the rules, redefining words even to make it seem like we’re not doing or saying or getting anything wrong.

But we are.

Again, from my point of view this world is falling apart. And granted, I don’t expect that everyone sees it that way. Imagine that most don’t. But that kind of helps prove my point. If we’re all down here living lives with such vastly different perspectives and opinions and plans and priorities then how can any of us be sure that we’re the one who isn’t wrong?

Doesn’t seem very good odds!

But you know what does have good odds? Our not being the ones who act like we know what we’re doing but rather trusting He who created life, gave us life, gave His life to give us the hope of eternal life to thus know vastly more about this life than we ever could.

Is that easy to do? No, especially considering how amazing we think we are at living, a position we’ve taken simply because we are living and think that somehow endows us with the knowledge and ability to do so well.

But friends, technically a baby can sit in the driver’s seat of a Ferrari.

Doesn’t mean they’re the best candidate to take it out on the highway.

All I’m saying is that while we do have a life here and we’ve come to consider that we’re at least fairly good at living it, maybe we’re not and maybe how we’re then living it isn’t the best way to do so. In fact, the Bible contends that how we’ve come to live our lives means now that we’re all going to die.

That’s been my point all along.

It’s that while what we see here is a life we have, what it really is is a life we’ll lose.

Question is will we find life waiting when we do or will we have lived our lives so focused on trusting only ourselves that we get to Heaven’s gates by complete surprise?

Yes, what we’re living here and now are in fact lives. But friends, one day we’re all going to look up and find that all we’ve had here is gone. And so while life might be here, our best hope is that life is elsewhere too as, well, in this place we’re all promised to lose.

What will we lose and what will we find whenever we do?

And how much of that did you read thinking you got to be the one to choose?

#LeaveNoSoulUntold