Day 4239 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Romans 9:33 NIV

A simple difference

Issue is that it’s not in any way simple for a people who so easily confuse that which is simple for that which is supposed to be easy. And indeed, I believe that this difference, though perhaps subtle, is one altogether best seen inside the scene that is our faith and/or chosen, yes, chosen lack thereof. And I believe that to have a lack of faith is a choice because we all have both the ability and the opportunity, as well as the promise of enduring a great many things that make it a vital necessity, to have faith as is placed in another.

Which, granted, is clearly a rather large part of the problem seeing as how we’ve all come to absolutely adore the idea that we can do all of this all on our own.

And, granted, we sort of can. After all all of us have in fact lived at least a portion of our lives getting by, and that perhaps probably alright, all on our own as in under our own strength as was given to only our own plans which are pretty much always made to exist in agreement with our own priorities and preferences. And so, yeah, we can make this life so much about ourselves and what all we want and what all we can do and what all we think we have done that it does seem as if we are the ones who do call the shots and make things work.

Here.

The problem is that the promise is that we’ll not be here forever. And, if you so happen to be one who doesn’t believe in this faith in which I believe, then I’ve good news. And that is that that promise is made by the grave. And that because, well, we’re all going to be in one at some point in our stay here and, well, when we’re put in it we’re going to stay in it. And this truth asks for no trust nor belief as it’s something entirely plain to see in all of those cemeteries we drive by every day.

We’re all going to die.

So at least we got that out of the way.

The point for today is that we do have a life to live up to and until we do and how we live that life may well decide what we do or do not find on the other of that line that is life that is lived here and that by all of us who are daily endeavoring to make our stay here as simple and easy as humanly possible.

Our struggle will at least eventually come in that, although we’re pretty much convinced otherwise, easy and simple aren’t the same.

And in regard to faith, I’ve personally come to find they’re not anywhere close.

Because, take for example this verse for this post. The entirety of God’s purpose is utterly simple. It’s all been boiled down into something being done that doesn’t even ask that we do anything. In fact, what He’s done, and continues doing, it all but determines our actions for us. Perhaps not in the moment but inevitably at the very least.

How?

Because He’s indeed placed a Stone in what is the path that is our every life that will, at some point in time (or many if we’re to be honest), cause us to probably both stumble and fall. And granted, even these two are close enough, at least in regard to our vast understanding of humiliation, to be all but used and confused and thus considered exchangeable with one another.

But to stumble is something achieved in what is the process of walking in which, as you’re walking, something causes your walk to become off balance and thus you to struggle for a moment to regain the same. And indeed, this is something that all of us have experienced. We’ve all found ourselves walking along just looking ahead to wherever we’re trying to go and, unbeknownst to us, something below us, outside of our fixed awareness, pops up seemingly out of nowhere and encourages our feet to, at least momentarily, lose their cadence.

Now it could be anything that causes this. A curb along the side of the road or a large enough rock in the same. Could be a toy or box left on the stairs to the basement. Maybe your dog brought in a stick that you don’t know about and managed to leave it right in your way.

Either way, the point is that we all know well what stumbling is.

Same said of falling.

Falling is a decidedly more humiliating venture in that what at least plausibly starts as a stumble leads unto an all-out crumble to the floor as our feet find themselves unable to regain their ability to keep us upright and moving. And thus we lose our balance and forward trajectory in exchange for a downward trajectory and that toward what usually hurts and proves rather embarrassing.

This is something that all of us have experienced too.

But I think that the issue is that we’re a people, thanks to pride, that see stumbling as the better option. Not that we want anything to do with either as rather we’d all clearly prefer that nothing ever get in our way and there mean the risk of our looking foolish or falling down/short of whatever it is that we’re trying so hard to accomplish. No, we want for this life to be easy.

Thankfully it is.

Problem is that this life isn’t simple.

Faith is simple.

But faith isn’t easy.

Why?

Because faith turns everything upside down. For example, in the Christian faith one slowly becomes of the ability to realize that to stumble is actually the more problematic experience. Why? Because, again, stumbling always ends with us regaining our momentum and continuing onward along whatever path we were on toward whatever goal or prize or other such pursuit we were after.

Falling rather demands we cease such seeking and instead invite the risk of breaking that comes with our crumbling to the floor in what may well prove plenty of pieces.

People obviously prefer the stumble as they can bounce back.

Faith warns us though that such is but for a time.

And eventually, thanks to the promise of the grave, we all know that at some point in our stay here time will run out.

Faith asks if such will take place whilst finding us in pieces or rather still so able to have kept walking toward whatever it was that we wanted to find that we inevitably reach this life’s finish line and crash full-speed into the outcome(s) that we didn’t see.

Indeed, this is the entire purpose, an altogether simple one, of this here-spoken Stone that God has lain in Zion.

The Stone is Christ and Zion is this life and all of us will experience probably plenty of both stumbling over Him and that before all of us inevitably fall either upon Him or before Him.

Problem is that, again, our pride has convinced us that it will prove a better outcome to fall before Him at the end of what have been entire lifetimes in which we refused to find the humble audacity to fall on Him as in a faith that begins with our confessing that we neither know what we’re doing, which He already told us on the day in which He died for us, and too that we then have no idea how to do better than we’ve done, a doing which demanded His death.

And the issue that we’re all going to have, many have still, is that it’s not easy for us to confess such a truth. Rather we’re again so prideful that we remain all but actually unable to see that it was our sins that caused so much suffering for Him and that because we’ve all learned how to not see our sins. That part is again easy thanks to such things as all this worldly affirmation and applause that continues to pour from the crowds around us who likewise don’t wish to do anything other than slightly stumble every now and then, and that only because it’s entirely inevitable whenever you live looking only ahead and thus never down to see what may or may not be in your way.

Things thus able to cause us to stumble.

Some of which might cause us to fall.

One of which promises to cause us to fall so wonderfully that there may well be nothing left of us to put back together. And that because, again, the same end comes for us all. The only difference which remains to be seen is whether we reach Heaven’s gates having slowed down, humbled ourselves, and embraced the call to carry crosses which likewise only helped us to slow down even further so much as to consider literally everything we do along the way or if we’ll get there having proven able to continue moving so fast toward all we wanted here, stumbling only every now and then and that not bad enough nor long enough to really cause us to lose any momentum.

Thus leaving us to crash headlong into said gates at which point we’ll all but blow ourselves to smithereens thanks to the speed in which we lived and that only mixed with an inability to consider where we were going and what we might find/feel/hear whenever we got there.

Promise is that we’ll all fall.

Question is will we do so having practiced in this life or will we have rather spent life trying so hard not to stumble, all because it makes us feel dumb and look foolish to all the other people, that we refused every opportunity to have practiced and thus find the experience entirely surprising?

Point is that He put this Stone in our every path because of the fact that we’ve all lived our lives running so very fast both after and toward all this world has and holds that we’ve become of an impressive ability to ignore basically everything else.

Mostly He who both created us and will eventually judge us based upon how far it’ll by then be that we’ve fallen away from who He created us to remain.

Thankfully He’s kind enough to allow our correction to hopefully be accomplished via merely stumbling over such realizations as that of our infatuations with all that we’ll inevitably leave behind. Unfortunately we’re all so very infatuated with all that we’ll inevitably leave behind that still we run through this life all but blind to the simplicity offered us in the stumbling in thus preference for the demand of the fall.

Indeed, we all will fall and that on our knees and that before He who came to save us so easily as pointing out that we’re sinners and offering us forgiveness via repentance which should lead us to the living of new lives thanks to an awareness of both that and how He died and that it was for our many failures and chosen flaws.

We just can’t allow it to be that easy and so we continue making a mess of basically everything in what are lives in which we continue stumbling over pretty much anything that may in any way seem to be anything that we may want, enjoy, find even passively entertaining.

Truly, this world is a minefield filled with so many stumbling blocks that continue to trip us up as they turn our attention toward whatever invention or intention that may seem worthy of our consideration.

Issue continues to be that we continue to see Christ as not being worthy of our consideration, our attention, thus none of our intention. Rather we seem entirely content to continue racing through life doing whatever we want and focusing wherever we are on whatever it is that is probably only something else we want.

And none of us want to stumble.

But all of us would rather stumble than fall.

Faith merely teaches us to see the simplicity in simply going ahead and falling rather than continuing to put off the inevitable for always later.

And that because only for now do we have the opportunity to fall on Christ as is done in asking for His forgiveness and mercy and help to start living lives that will hopefully find us doing, saying, thinking, being less of those things which need said mercy and help and forgiveness.

The Day is coming when the fall will be demanded. Only problem is that if we show up to that Day without ever having fallen on Christ then we’ll have failed every chance we had to come to know Him as our Lord and Savior and thus to Him we’ll seem a stranger and to us He will then be the same.

And that won’t go well.

Issue is that it works just well enough for now that we can all continue ignoring Him for however long we determine to do so because ignoring Him allows us to only merely stumble through life. Ignoring Him allows us to keep living lives that go usually alright. Ignoring Him, denying Him, refusing Him actually allows us to enjoy these lives so fully because He is everything in the way of humility, responsibility, honesty, moral decency.

You know, all those pesky things that only seem to get in our way of having a good time?

Yes, so many remain certain that this life is meant for us to have a good time. That we’re here to enjoy ourselves. That the grandest expectation for our every existence is for our to spend it having so much fun and finding so much success that everyone around us is as impressed with us as we are ourselves.

That works here.

But again, promise is that we won’t be here forever.

But even that is a promise that most here continue to stumble over, a truth most here will never then fall upon.

Because we don’t want to die. We don’t want to lose. We don’t want to find the end of all the fun and success and friendship and fortune that we can find here, most of which is far more easily found whenever we too do as the world does and ignore He who is the Stone which God has placed in our path to hopefully help us come to our senses and stop living so stupid as to keep rejecting He who holds the keys to Heaven and the promise of eternal life that only exists inside those gates.

But many will.

Why?

Because stumbling is easier. It allows us to stay mostly on our feet and thus always on whatever path it is that we’ve probably chosen for the self-perceived prize waiting at the end of it.

Falling on the other hand is measurably more miserable as it puts an end to our said searching for whatever prize it was that we probably felt was lurking just around the corner. Falling asks that we completely stop the living of our lives however we were living them, sit on the ground for a moment as we gather ourselves and then, only once we’ve done so, only then to get back up and try again only this time probably in another direction so as to avoid another humiliating crash back down.

Again, the promise is that all of us will fall and that on our knees and that before He who has already come the once to tell us to get our act together and that as was said in that scene in which HE DIED FOR OUR SINS, which are our stumblings only over Him as if He’s only in our way of our getting whatever and wherever it may be that we’re trying to go or get.

If we continue to treat Him as if He is only in our way then, yeah, life here will continue to go okay because we’ve all endeavored really hard to make this life a time in which ignoring Him is what brings more success, more pleasure, more popularity. But until we fall on Him we’ll never be able to see just how deadly it is to keep stumbling toward our humbling unwillingly.

We will all be humbled.

Faith just makes the eventual outcome better by making it easier and that by offering us a life simplified by the promise of salvation and that given only to those who come to humbly recognize their failures and ask Him for His help in overcoming them.

Stumbling is easier, but friends, falling is far simpler! Because stumbling only allows us to keep going but falling finally helps us to stop.

And the promise of this life is that one day it will stop. And on that Day life won’t be allowed to keep going if we get there having continued stumbling only over Christ rather than falling on Him and receiving only there from Him the gift of a renewed life.

The choice is ours:

Stumble or crumble?

One is easier but the other is eternally safer!

#LeaveNoSoulUntold