Day 4241 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Matthew 21:44 NIV

The humbling

Like it or not the promise is that for all of us it is coming and that perhaps as soon as this afternoon. And that simply because, contrary to our arrogant consideration that we’ve plenty of time still unto the preparation of our every preference and their every intention, truth is that we’ve a rather impressive inability to do or control or dictate much of anything. Maybe not even our actions as perhaps they’re all but reactions to things done to us, for us, asked from us.

All then that might determine our measure of wrong from His perfection of right is whether there’s any sign or semblance of a willingness to if not help at the very least get out of the way of they who try.

Something we all know very little of in life.

Why?

Because even to need help is to us a show of a life unable to grow into this overall expectancy of our being here so perfectly capable that we might prove ourselves ever able to do all things which need done all by ourselves and thus on our own. Indeed, it seems as though the life we’re supposed to know, as considered from a world which knows but one way to live it, is for our to live it as we’re the bottom line. As if we’re the ones ultimately both tasked with handling it, and that always well, and yet always able to uphold whatever we’re handed thus well enough to handle it well.

Yes, we’ve all become of an arrogance that knows to see us as the only ones upon whom we should ever rely so as to ensure that inside of this life any glory or gain we might ever possibly find is considered by all a matter due us thanks to us being the ones who earned it through efforts and outcomes that achieved it.

For arrogance is a throne upon which we’ve so thrown ourselves seeking for the assumptions given endlessly within that we’ve all now long been a people unable to imagine ourselves coming down.

But as the old adage goes, that which goes up must eventually reverse course.

Granted said adage is highly referring to the reality of gravity and its continued insistency upon returning us to this ground, something that has really worked well for all the works we’ve done and do. And this because, well, it’s hard to work on anything whenever you’re flying as flying demands pretty much all efforts and interests and expectations and intrigues to be given all but solely to not falling.

Because, well, to fly is to deny the fall and so then to fall is to fail to fly.

Problem is that thanks to this arrogance which has us all convinced that we can fly thanks to how high we are, mostly only on ourselves, we’ve come to believe that it’s always ourselves who managed to get us here to wherever it is that’s found for us these lives we live in what are all these wonderful ways that seem to prove all but always that we’ve at least some sort of say within the way they go.

But do we really though?

Do we really have any true control? Have we any real ability to at first dictate an opportunity much less then follow such dictation with a determination as to how best then to make the best of it? Can we, would we did, even then fail if it were truly always us who chose what all might happen?

Would that reality not be something of a cheat, an ace up the sleeve?

For if we were the ones to determine what all might ever happen then so too would be we they who knew what would happen before it did, leaving us there with plenty of time to plan and practice for what we know was coming.

A knowledge we clearly don’t know despite how we all know what’s on the way.

Reckon it’s simply because we don’t want coming what He’s said is going to.

Because as to fall is to fail to fly so too is to live to never die. And thus we don’t want to die, not to ourselves nor because of the same, because, well, we’re living a life upon this plain that is this place that is a plane that is getting ready for gears down and landing.

And that on the runway of eternity upon which we’ll meet He who determines where we spend it based upon both how we got there, what we did or didn’t along the way and, mostly, how much or little of the Way was either in us or we remained in the way of.

Something we all know well how to do thanks to what we continue to prove are lives in which our lives are seen as always thus.

As our lives.

And to an extent they are as, well, to the best of my knowledge, which most days doesn’t seem all that great anymore, nobody else is living my life. Rather I’m pretty sure that it’s only me. A certainty seen inside how I see so many things so very differently than most seem to see them. Indeed, I seem to find daily some newly discovered difference and thus defined discrepancy designed between, beside, behind the life I’m living and how I’m doing so whenever that be compared with however almost any other is living what I know isn’t my life as I know I’d not live it as they are.

This is grand melting of life itself in that we were all given one from the same Giver who gives them and that in the same place in which they’ve all thus far been given and yet we’ve all managed to come up with or out with what are billions of now distinct approaches to them. Meaning then that we’ve all seemingly made choices along the way that have led to our living a way that is different in probably many ways from everyone else.

We all started the same as from the same frame we came, and that His, and yet now so many deny said start that at each day’s start we all expect something different in lives that continue to diverge all the time.

Both from one another and mostly from He who made us to be His.

For in love we were given life and, well, God is love. And thus all of us are a little piece of Him and yet all of us have lived as if He neither ever did nor does even now.

All because of that arrogant throne upon which we’ve thrown ourselves as it always sells this idea of life in which all of life is all of ours to have and hold and do both with and to whatever we want. A practice we’ve all practiced until now perfected in what are all of these technologies that are now creating for us little individualized worlds curated of all we like and thus void of all we don’t. Even to the point of dating computer-crafted beings who are created to be only whatever we want them to be as is accomplished via our telling of artificial intelligence what we like and what all we don’t.

Seems the devil, while deceptive, wasn’t lying when he said that we too could be as gods.

For here we are!

And yet from here we’ll fall.

Why?

Because God won’t share His glory with another nor then surrender His praise unto people nor their possessions, which, in all the sad honesty we might have to muster these days, possess us more than we do they. A problem He sought to help us avoid way back when He asked that we deny ourselves and take up our crosses and follow Him through then a life lived welcoming the losses of us upon the crosses we’d have taken up.

Crosses which mostly still lie still upon the cold stone floor of our hearts the same.

Stone cold.

And that because we’ve asked and continue to all but insist that they only exist to lead us to what seems to free us to please us in what’s become a life in which it’s always only us who we seek to serve and satisfy.

Why?

Because it feels really good up here upon the thrones of life from which we all actually believe we can really control the same. And why do we believe this thing? Because we’re the ones who make the choices. We’re the ones who call the shots. We’re the ones with all the plans and entire pasts that have already proven their ability to go perfect.

Or at least close enough to leave in us a continued willingness to rely on us to be the ones who continue making our plans for what will hopefully be a life even more perfect than the one we’re living now.

Yet in still the same place somehow.

And that because blindness, even the spiritual kind that we all know, it doesn’t know what it can’t see. Proven in that we can’t see that we’re making all of these settlings along this way that is our own. Settling for the seen, the known, the heard, the held. Yes, we give ourselves to all that’s here because here there’s a lot more than we need. So much so that each of us have devoted our lives to sampling all we may like so as to find that which we like best.

But still of this land.

Of this life.

Of this time.

All things we will lose and/or leave behind.

And ironically it’s that simple truth that Jesus came here to prove. That every life, thanks to sin, now owes a death. Proven in that even should someone actually manage to live it perfectly, well, we’d find reason to kill them for their having come and become all we couldn’t be. Such as kindness, compassion, generosity. Yes, they, (we), killed Jesus because He was everything we wanted to be but couldn’t become.

All because we’d convinced ourselves that this vineyard were ours despite our having been hired here to work here for He who created it. A convincing that continued working away at us until we became of the consensus that we could kill their heir and become Him, taking then the vineyard all to ourselves as the Owner remains far away and seemingly either unable or just not interested in coming Himself to get His own fruit.

Rejecting then the Cornerstone and too then He who placed Him where He did which was in our way of living our lives still as if they’re our lives and there meant for us to live them however we want.

That’s not how this works.

Issue is that it works really well here. So well in fact that the majority of folks continue racing away every single day from He who is the Way and seeming to suffer nothing in so doing. Rather those denying Christ and clearly then living their lives as if He isn’t watching or listening or otherwise aware, they do really well here. They’re the ones who find all the fame and fortune and friendships and followings that our every ego wishes to know.

Indeed, we’re surrounded by those who both think themselves kings and queens and they’ve a world willing to play along as everyone else thinks the same and wants to never consider otherwise.

Because we seemingly don’t have to in what are lives we’ve designed to run so well on sin and self that now humility is seen as only humiliating.

Good news is that the Good News doesn’t care how we see it but just that we get there.

Where?

On our knees and that before He who truly sits upon the only real throne in existence. Sure, we’ve all made our own interpretations. We’ve all our own versions. We each have what seems a seat fit for again kings and queens inside these lives in which we live doing only all we enjoy.

But it will be inevitably proven that the throne of Heaven is the only one with any real authority and, well, we’re not the ones sitting on it. Mostly we’re only those who continue arguing with He who sits on it, denying then the authority of the same.

That’s the stone.

It’s God’s sovereignty, something seen in Christ as even being over and thus in control of death and life and that as proven in His now proven ability to turn the end into the start or to start at the end what will be the end that never will.

A promise promised in a place called hell which is reserved for those who refuse to be among those who find the audacity to at the very least welcome the theory of humility.

A choice we may or may not have. Which, granted, seems to us as unfair. But you see, He’s said He intends to make sure that everyone here hears of Christ because, well, once you’ve come to know of something you’re thus responsible for what all you do or don’t with that knowledge. And sure, His Word says that He Himself hardens the hearts of those who will then continue ahead in their unbelief.

But let’s be honest, it’s not like we’d turn away from it anyway.

Because, well, we like it. We enjoy it. We’ve in fact found so much worldly success in it that to lose it remains the last thing we’re willing to consider. No, we’ll rather try everything else well before we even start to contemplate the calling of the cross. Because, well, it’s a call unto a life lost. And from where we stand it sure seems we stand to lose a lot should we welcome the loss of our lives.

It’s gonna happen either way friends.

That’s just the simplicity of it. We’re going to lose everything. We will witness our lives broken to pieces whenever we leave them behind, the hope being that we witness this whilst we’ve time to have Him put them back together again. But if we don’t, for whatever reason we go on thinking we don’t have to, we will then be crushed when the Stone we could have fallen on falls finally on us.

And it will prove a terrible thing to fall into the hands of the Living God having never found a willingness to get there voluntarily.

This life is thankfully our time to learn to volunteer to aid Him however we can in His getting us to where we’re going in as few pieces as possible.

And no, maybe we can’t do all that much. Perhaps we can’t do much at all.

But is there a willingness to try? A courage to lose? Any sign of the audacity that it is to believe?

Or are we to find these things only as powder that’s been crushed forever and there without the ability to be put back together?

Again, maybe we don’t get a say. But that He loves us all so very much that He sent His one and only Son to die for us pretty much says we have at least the awareness of Him and how He loves.

What we then do or don’t on this side of that knowledge is on us.

Perhaps not the humbling as it again comes for us all. But maybe we can at least pretend we’re at least interested in getting there willingly as opposed to Him having to drag us there. Indeed, I believe that humility is a choice as it’s something all of us can know, should know. But do our lives and how we live them show that we do? Or are we still living lives that continue asking Him for a sign of His authority, of His ability and where it comes from and what all it can do?

He’s shown us once what He can do.

Is it wise then to ask Him to prove it all over again, thus denying the first as if then Christ didn’t die, thus didn’t rise?

Doesn’t seem very wise. Seems rather a surefire way to find ourselves crushed whenever He proves once and for all what He can do and what He’s promised to in regard to sin. He will be done with it.

Will we done away with whenever He is?

Power or pieces?

#LeaveNoSoulUntold