When the Life You Built Cannot Save You

 

Ancient wisdom for the ache of arriving

Part Two: What Remains When Enough Isn't Enough

 

Part One ended with a fist closed around vapor.

The achievement, the pleasure, the possessions, the careful architecture of control. All of it real. None of it able to survive being held that tightly.

So here's the question Part One left standing open: if these things aren't lies, and walking away from them isn't the answer, then what are we supposed to do with them?

Maybe wisdom doesn't begin with finding something sturdier to grip.

Maybe it begins when we stop demanding that what is temporary become permanent before we're willing to call it good.

---

The Teacher doesn't tell us this once. He tells us five times, in five different places in the book, in almost the same words each time — as if he keeps arriving back at the one thing he actually knows for certain:

"There is nothing better for a person than that he should eat and drink and find enjoyment in his toil."

That's not indecision. A man doesn't say the same thing five times because he's still deciding what he thinks. He says it five times because it's the answer, and everything else in the book is the long road that keeps leading him back to it.

Pleasure, Received

Same room. Same quiet. Same glass of wine.

Nothing about the evening has changed since Part One. What's changed is the question underneath it.

Is this it? is gone.

In its place, something much smaller and much sturdier: this is good.

"There is nothing better for a person than that he should eat and drink and find enjoyment in his toil. This also, I saw, is from the hand of God."

The wine didn't change. What changed was the job it was being asked to do. In Part One, this same glass was being quietly interrogated, made to answer for whether life was worth it. Here, it isn't being asked anything. It's just wine, on an evening that doesn't need to justify itself in order to have been good.

That's the whole shift, if you can see it in something this small. Pleasure becomes vapor in a fist the moment we demand it prove something permanent. It becomes a gift the moment we let it be what it actually is: a meal, a glass, an evening, good simply because it's good, not because it's carrying anything heavier than that.

Work, Without the Weight

The same toil is still here too. Nobody's quitting their job. Nobody's walking away from what they built.

"There is nothing better for a person than that he should eat and drink and find enjoyment in his toil."

Notice the toil didn't leave the sentence. It's still there, right next to the bread and the wine. What left is the demand Part One kept quietly placing on it: tell me my life mattered. Prove it. The work doesn't have to carry that anymore. It can just be the work in front of you today, done as well as you can do it, enjoyed while you're doing it rather than cashed in afterward for a verdict on your whole existence.

That's a smaller ask of your work. It's also the only ask your work was ever built to answer.

Someone Across the Table

There's a particular kind of loneliness that only shows up after you've succeeded. You built a life impressive enough for people to admire from a distance, and somewhere along the way, you stopped needing anyone close enough to actually sit across from you.

"Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their toil. For if they fall, one will lift up his fellow. But woe to him who is alone when he falls and has not another to lift him up... A threefold cord is not quickly broken."

Achievement, pleasure, and status can all be pursued alone, and often are. This can't. It requires someone else in the room, which means it requires the one thing control was never able to guarantee: another person, free to come close or not.

That's precisely what makes it a gift instead of an achievement. You cannot secure it the way you secured the retirement account. You can only receive it, when it's offered, from someone who didn't have to offer it.

A Time for Everything

"For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted... a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance."

Part One was an argument against grasping. This is where the book finally says why grasping never had a chance to begin with. You cannot hold a season still any more than you can hold vapor in a fist. Summer was never going to stay summer. The success was never going to stay new. The child was never going to stay small. Ecclesiastes doesn't ask you to be at peace with that as a consolation prize. It tells you this is simply what time is, and that the only life available to you is the one happening in whichever season you're actually standing in right now.

That's a harder freedom than it sounds like. It means the good seasons don't have to be defended against their own ending in order to be good. And it means the hard seasons don't have to be escaped in order to be endured. They just have to be lived, honestly, for as long as they last.

Sometimes we grasp not because we are greedy, but because what is passing through our hands is precious. Ecclesiastes does not shame us for loving it. It simply refuses to promise that love can make a season stay.

The book's final instruction arrives here, and it doesn't tie the whole argument into a bow the way we might want it to:

"The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man."

That's not the same as saying everything now makes sense. The Teacher never takes back what he said about the wise man and the fool sharing the same grave, or about time and chance happening to everyone alike. Fearing God isn't a solution to those problems. It's what makes it possible to live inside them without needing them solved first. 

You don't have to understand why time and chance interrupted the life you carefully planned. You don't have to reconcile every hard season with a tidy purpose before you're allowed to keep living faithfully through it. The fear of God is not the last piece of a puzzle. It's the ground you're allowed to stand on while large parts of the puzzle stay missing.

---

Remember the woman in the doorway, boxes still stacked against the wall?

She was closing her fist around the house, demanding it tell her that her life had arrived somewhere. It couldn't. It was never going to.

Picture her a few weeks later. The boxes are mostly unpacked, though a few are still taped shut in the corner of a room she hasn't gotten to yet. The house itself is exactly the same. What's different is what she's asking it for.

She isn't asking it to be arrival anymore. She's just living in it.

She unpacks a box. Cooks dinner, badly, and doesn't mind. Calls a friend who actually picks up. Pours a glass of wine and doesn't ask it any questions.

Tuesday, received instead of endured.

The achievement was real. The pleasure was real. The possessions were real. Ecclesiastes never asked her to stop wanting any of it.

It only asked her to stop asking it to be God.

Because the meal was never going to save her. Neither was the work, or the wine, or the house, or the well-managed plan for everything that comes next.

They were never vapor because they weren't real.

They were vapor because they were never going to be held the way she was trying to hold them.

Open the hand, and there's still something there. Not a fist full of proof that your life mattered.

Just bread. Wine. Work worth doing. Someone across the table. A season, whichever one you're in.

None of it permanent. None of it worthless.

The gift was never meant to be God.

It was meant to be received from Him.

*****

 

If Ecclesiastes gave words to something you've been carrying, you might find something familiar in these reflections too.

The Holiness of Ordinary Hours
A reflection on discovering that the life happening right now does not need to become something more extraordinary before it can be received as sacred.

Resting Without Reaching
An exploration of what becomes possible when we stop living toward the next thing and learn to inhabit what has already been given.

Learning to Receive Without Apology
A reflection on receiving goodness without needing to earn it, justify it, or turn it into proof that our lives are enough.

The Life You’re Living Still Counts
An invitation to recognize the worth of the life actually unfolding rather than measuring it against the life we expected or imagined.

When God Softens What Once Felt Necessary
A reflection on what happens when the things we once believed we had to hold tightly begin to loosen, making room for a different kind of trust.

When Words Become Something We Owe

 

Why Scripture treats our speech like it's already an action

 

We tend to sort our lives into two piles. What we did. And what we merely said.

Actions go in the heavy pile. They cost something. They can be undone or they can't, and either way, everyone agrees they count.

Words go in the light pile. They were only words. We say this like an apology that doesn't need to be sincere, because the thing we're apologizing for barely happened.

Scripture disagrees. It disagrees from the very first page.

Here's what that looks like up close.

A man says, "I'll be there," on a Tuesday afternoon, already thinking about something else before the sentence finishes leaving his mouth. He means it, mostly. He means it the way you mean things you haven't checked against your calendar yet.

Three weeks later, he isn't there.

He barely remembers saying it.

She has never forgotten a syllable.

That gap — between how lightly we release a sentence and how permanently someone else can carry it — is where this whole piece lives.

Speaking

Open the Bible almost anywhere near the beginning, and you'll find the same sentence repeating itself like a heartbeat.

And God said.

And it was so.

Not God did. God said. Speech is the verb. Reality is what obeys it.

We don't create light by naming it. Only God does that. But we were made in the image of a God whose words become things, and maybe that inheritance didn't stop at Eden's gate. Maybe it just got smaller. Quieter. Handed down into ordinary rooms.

Say I love you, and something now exists that didn't exist a breath earlier.

Say I choose you, and someone has just been set apart from everyone else in the world.

Say I'll be there, and somewhere, a person quietly stops making other plans.

The sentence disappears the second it's spoken. You could never prove, later, exactly which words were used or in what order. But what the sentence built doesn't disappear with it. It stays standing in the other person's life like a room they've started living in.

Promising

You've felt this from the other side of the sentence too.

Someone tells you whatever you need, I'm here, and something in you exhales. You didn't ask for a contract. You didn't ask for a guarantee. Four words did something a hundred reassurances couldn't, and you believed it precisely because it was said so easily, like it wasn't costing the speaker anything at all.

Jesus, strangely, wants to make this harder for us, not easier. In Matthew 5, He looks at an entire religious system built around swearing oaths (invoking heaven, invoking earth, invoking anything solemn enough to make a promise stick) and He tells His listeners to stop.

"Let what you say be simply 'Yes' or 'No.'"

Not because oaths are too serious. Because they shouldn't be necessary. Jesus is describing a person whose ordinary yes is already trustworthy enough that no formal backup is required. A person whose word doesn't need witnesses.

That's a much higher bar than it sounds like. It means every casual promise (I'll call you, I'll help you move, I'll always have your back) is being weighed the same way a courtroom oath would be. Somebody may actually build on it.

Vowing

Ecclesiastes is less gentle about this than we'd like.

"When you vow a vow to God, do not delay paying it... It is better that you should not vow than that you should vow and not pay."

Read that twice, because it lands strangely on modern ears. We're used to treating unfulfilled promises as harmless: good intentions that simply didn't work out. Ecclesiastes treats an unpaid vow as a debt. Something owed. Something that doesn't quietly dissolve just because the enthusiasm that produced it has cooled.

That's because promises are cheapest at the exact moment we make them. The bill hasn't come yet. Saying I'll always be here feels like generosity, feels almost like love itself, and it costs nothing at all in that instant.

Keeping it is a different transaction entirely. It costs time you didn't budget for. Money you'd rather spend elsewhere. Attention on a day you have none to give. Freedom, sometimes, that you didn't realize the promise had already spent.

Somewhere between the saying and the costing, we find out whether we understood what we said.

There's a horror film that stumbled into this same theology, probably by accident. In Obsession, the main protagonist Bear breaks a novelty stick called the One Wish Willow and wishes that Nikki, the woman he's quietly loved for years, would love him back more than anyone else in the world. He gets exactly what he asked for. It goes wrong almost immediately.

Desperate, Bear calls the company's help line, hoping there's some way to take it back. There isn't. The wish can't be undone by regret, or by changing his mind, or by anything short of dying. When he recoils at that price, the voice on the other end of the line tells him something that could have been lifted straight out of Ecclesiastes:

"Sounds like you have a moral responsibility toward her."

It's a strange place to find that sentence. But it names exactly what the Teacher was warning about three thousand years earlier. Bear didn't understand the cost when he made the wish. He certainly didn't intend everything that followed. But intention isn't what creates the responsibility. Something he chose has become part of another person's reality, and now he has an obligation to reckon with what his choice created.

That's the part we resist.

We want regret to travel backward. We want I didn't know or I didn't mean for this to happen to return us to the moment before anything was said, promised, or set in motion.

But there is no return to that moment.

The wish has been made.

The promise has been heard.

Someone else is living inside what happened next.

Remembering

James doesn't let us forget how small the mechanism is.

A bit, small enough to fit in a horse's mouth, turns the whole animal. A rudder, barely larger than a hand, turns an entire ship through open water. A spark, invisible one second, is a forest fire the next.

The tongue is a small member, he says, yet it boasts of great things.

Words are like that. They vanish the instant they're spoken. Three seconds, and the sound is gone from the air completely. But what they start can outlast the person who said them by decades.

A sentence spoken carelessly on an ordinary Tuesday can be the sentence someone else replays at 2 a.m. for the next ten years. A promise made in a hallway, almost in passing, can quietly become the shape of what another person expects from love itself.

Invisible was never the same thing as unreal.

And there's something else buried in James's image, easy to miss the first time through. The person who strikes the match doesn't get to decide, afterward, how far the fire was allowed to travel.

We'd like to think we do. I didn't mean it like that. It wasn't that serious. I was just talking. All of that can be true, and sincerely true, and it still doesn't hand the speaker back control of the sentence. Once another person has reasonably built something on what was actually said, the words aren't only the speaker's property anymore. They belong, in part, to whoever is now standing on them.

That doesn't mean a listener can invent meanings that were never there. But it does mean intention was never the whole moral ledger. I may have meant well. I may have been sincere in the moment. I may have genuinely believed myself. And still, the words did something, out past the reach of what I meant by them.

Owing

Here is where it gets personal, because most of us are not liars. We are something more common, and maybe harder to see in the mirror: people who speak more hope than we later deliver.

I'll always be here becomes, in real life, I meant it when I said it.

And there is a real difference between two kinds of broken promises, even though they can look identical from the outside.

One sounds like: I promised, and then life made it impossible. Illness. Money. A door that simply closed. That belongs to human limitation, and Scripture leaves generous room for it. We are not gods. We do not control tomorrow, however confidently we speak about it today.

The other sounds like: I promised, quietly stopped intending to keep it, and let you find that out through silence. That is not limitation. That's letting someone stand for months in a room you already knew you weren't coming back to.

The difference isn't simply whether the promise got broken. Promises fail for all kinds of reasons. The deeper question is whether the person left holding it was told the truth, or left to discover the truth alone.

Returning

This is where grace actually enters the story — not as the idea that words stop mattering, but as the practice of going back to the person you left standing there.

I said something I couldn't sustain.

I let you believe something that isn't true anymore.

I should have told you sooner, and I was afraid to.

Confession is spoken. Apology is spoken. And forgiveness, however quietly it may begin inside us, cannot become known to the person carrying the wound until somehow it is given. The cure for irresponsible speech was never silence. It was truer speech, offered later, at the cost of admitting what the first words had done.

Which brings us back to the four syllables Jesus actually asked for.

Let your yes be yes.

Not a bigger promise. Not a more impressive vow. Just an ordinary word, from an ordinary person, that means what it says when it's said, and still means it on the harder day, when keeping it costs something the saying of it never did.

Somewhere, right now, someone is building a piece of their life on a sentence you said without thinking twice.

Maybe loving them starts with remembering that you already did.

*****

 

If this opened something for you, here are a few other places where the conversation continues.

 

The Spirit in the Descent: Truth, Confession, and Freedom
What happens when truth is finally spoken, and why confession asks us to face what our choices have created.

The Fifth Season: When Closure Never Comes But ClarityDoes
What happens when the truth never arrives from the other person, and clarity has to be found without the ending we hoped for.

The Heart Beneath the Psalms
A deeper look at what Scripture reveals about the human heart, especially the things we carry beneath what can be seen.

When Tenderness Disappears: What Hellraiser UnderstandsAbout Emotional Unreachability
Another exploration of how an unexpected horror story can illuminate something deeply human about relationship, suffering, and moral responsibility.

The Collapse of Performance
What remains when appearance and intention are no longer enough, and the life we actually live has to match what we say we believe.

When the Life You Built Cannot Save You

 

Ancient wisdom for the ache of arriving

Part One: The Things We Thought Would Be Enough

 

Hold out your hand on a cold morning and breathe into it.

For a moment, something is there.

Then try to hold it. Close your fist around it.

There's nothing left to hold.

That's the word Ecclesiastes keeps using for almost everything human beings build their lives around. Hevel. Vapor. Breath. Mist. Not worthless, real for a moment, while you're holding it. Just never built to survive a closed fist.

The problem with vapor isn't that it isn't real. The problem begins when we ask it to stay.

Here's what that looks like up close.

She stands in the doorway of the new house, boxes still stacked against the wall, and waits for the feeling to arrive. This was supposed to be it. The number that would finally be enough, the address that would say arrived. She has done everything right to get here.

The feeling doesn't come.

Not because something went wrong.

Because it was never going to.

---

Ecclesiastes gives us the voice of a man with access to everything human beings usually imagine will finally make life enough — wisdom, work, wealth, pleasure, accomplishment and lets him test each one, deliberately, one at a time, the way you'd test a bridge before deciding to trust it with your weight.

The book calls him the Teacher. Someone who gathered a whole life's worth of experience, and is now gathering the people around him to tell them what he found. Not a philosopher lecturing from a safe distance. Someone who actually went and tested it all himself.

"I said in my heart, 'Come now, I will test you with pleasure; enjoy yourself.' But behold, this also was vanity."

This isn't a book written by someone who never had enough to try. It's a record of someone who had all of it, and found each one real, and found each one vapor.

Achievement

The deadline finally passes. The project ships. The inbox, for one strange hour, is empty.

And instead of triumph, there's just Tuesday again.

"I made great works. I built houses and planted vineyards for myself... So I became great and surpassed all who were before me in Jerusalem. Then I considered all that my hands had done and the toil I had expended in doing it, and behold, all was vanity and a striving after wind."

Notice what he isn't saying. He isn't saying the houses were poorly built, or the vineyards didn't grow. He's saying he stood in the middle of everything he'd made and discovered that having built it didn't answer what he'd hoped it would.

We tell ourselves the next achievement will feel different. It rarely does. Not because we build the wrong things, but because achievement was never the kind of thing that could answer the question we were quietly asking it to answer.

Pleasure

There's a particular evening worth remembering: a good glass of wine, a quiet room, no one needing anything from you for once. It's a real pleasure, the kind you look forward to all week.

And somewhere underneath the enjoyment of it, faint but present, a question you didn't invite: is this it? Is this the thing that was supposed to make the rest of it worth it?

"I kept my heart from no pleasure, for my heart found pleasure in all my toil... Then I looked on all the works that my hands had done and the toil I had expended in doing it, and behold, all was vanity and a striving after wind, and there was nothing to be gained under the sun."

The Teacher doesn't ration pleasure to arrive at this conclusion. He doesn't hold back to keep himself safe from disappointment. He goes all the way in — wine, laughter, music, everything the senses could ask for — and comes out the other side having tested it honestly. The pleasure was real. It just wasn't the answer he was quietly hoping it would turn out to be.

Status

The garage holds things that were going to mean something. The closet holds more of the same. Somewhere in the accumulating, a second motive slipped in alongside the first one. Not just wanting the thing, but wanting to be seen having it, wanting the life to look, from the outside, like it had arrived somewhere.

"I made myself great, I built houses and planted vineyards for myself... I also gathered for myself silver and gold and the treasure of kings and provinces... So I became great and surpassed all who were before me in Jerusalem."

And later, almost as an aside, the quieter engine underneath so much of it:

"I saw that all toil and all skill in work come from a man's envy of his neighbor. This also is vanity and a striving after wind."

Not simply wanting more. Wanting more than. The possessions were never really the point: the point was what the possessions were supposed to say about you to everyone watching. And vapor can't hold the weight of being someone's proof.

Control

This is where Ecclesiastes stops being interesting and starts being difficult.

Someone has done everything right — the will, the succession plan, the retirement account, the careful, responsible arranging of a life so that nothing important is left to chance. And still, underneath all the planning, a fact no amount of planning can touch: none of it can actually be secured. Not really. Not permanently.

"I hated all my toil in which I toil under the sun, seeing that I must leave it to the man who will come after me, and who knows whether he will be wise or a fool? Yet he will be master of all for which I toiled and used my wisdom under the sun."

Read that again. It isn't only that what he built might outlive him. It's that it will eventually pass into other hands, and once it does, he cannot control what those hands will do with it.

"Again I saw that under the sun the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong... but time and chance happen to them all."

This is not a comforting verse, and Ecclesiastes doesn't try to make it one. You can do everything right. You can be the swiftest, the strongest, the wisest, the most prepared. Time and chance are not impressed. They happen to you anyway.

You built it. You earned it. You protected it. You planned for it.

And eventually, you have to open your hand.

Most of us don't. We close it tighter. We build more careful plans, more redundant safeguards, as if the failure were a lack of sufficient control rather than the impossibility of what we were asking for in the first place. Ecclesiastes doesn't offer a better plan. It just tells the truth about the one you already have: it was never going to be enough to keep vapor in a fist.

---

Every one of these was real. The achievement was real. The pleasure was real. The possessions were real. The desire to secure something lasting was not foolish.

None of them was a lie.

They just weren't built to carry the weight we were asking them to carry.

So the question isn't whether these things matter.

It's what we do once we admit they were never going to be enough.

*****

If Ecclesiastes gave words to something you've been carrying, you might find something familiar in these reflections too.

The Collapse of Performance
What happens when the identities we built around doing, achieving, and being enough can no longer carry us.

The End of Scanning
A reflection on what changes when we stop searching the horizon for the next threat and discover that vigilance cannot give us the safety we want.

The Holiness of Ordinary Hours
An exploration of the sacredness of the life happening now, rather than the life we keep imagining will finally begin somewhere else.

When Wanting Falls Quiet
What becomes possible when the constant reaching for something more begins to loosen its grip.

Life Without Self-Maintenance
A reflection on the freedom that emerges when we stop believing everything depends upon our ability to continually hold ourselves and our lives together.

The Shoreline Series: Session 4 - Learning the Tide

 

Faith That Doesn't Panic at Low Tide

Based on Ecclesiastes 3, Psalm 42, 1 Kings 19

 

Once we have learned to stay anchored, another question rises to meet us.

Not what keeps me from drifting?

But does the low tide mean He has left?

Life is not linear. It breathes. Joy. Grief. Closeness. Distance. Activity. Rest. We have learned to trust the shore beneath us and to follow the horizon ahead of us and to stay anchored within the storm. But none of that quite prepares us for the moment the water itself seems to withdraw.

This is the shift from stability to rhythm.

From does it hold to does it return.

---

I. The Sea Was Never Meant to Stay High

Every shore keeps a tide line, a pale ridge of sand and shell marking how far the water has reached before. It is evidence the sea was here. It is also evidence the sea will be here again.

Low tide is not the sea failing to show up. It is the sea keeping a promise on a different clock than the one we're watching.

We tend to panic at the ebb because we have quietly mistaken the high tide for the norm and the low tide for the exception. Scripture never makes that mistake. Both are the pattern.

And here the tide teaches something the anchor could not. We often confuse rhythm with inconsistency. But rhythm is not inconsistency. It is faithfulness expressed over time. Nothing on earth is more predictable than a tide, and nothing on earth changes more constantly. The two are not in tension. They are the same fact, seen from two different distances.

II. A Time for Everything

"There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens... a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance." (Ecclesiastes 3:1,4)

Notice what the Preacher does not do. He does not apologize for the list. He does not rank the seasons, placing dancing above mourning as though one were the goal and the other merely the cost of getting there.

Winter receives no less dignity than harvest.

A faith that only recognizes God in the rising water has not yet learned to read the whole tide chart. The Preacher already had. He had watched enough seasons turn to know that the turning itself was not the tragedy.

III. Deep Calls to Deep

"Deep calls to deep in the roar of your waterfalls; all your waves and breakers have swept over me." (Psalm 42:7)

This is the Bible's most honest tide poem.

The psalmist is not writing from the shore, admiring the water from a safe distance. He is in it — tears for food, memory as an ache, the low tide fully upon him. And still, in the very next breath: "By day the Lord directs his love, at night his song is with me." (Psalm 42:8)

The psalm does not resolve the ebb. It sings through it.

That is worth noticing closely, because it is not the same as pretending the ebb isn't happening. The psalmist names his own soul out loud — "Why, my soul, are you downcast?" — and answers not with an explanation but with a redirection: "Put your hope in God." He does not talk himself out of the low tide. He simply refuses to let it have the last word.

IV. The Whisper After the Fire

Elijah had just seen fire fall from heaven.

Carmel was his highest tide: prophets of Baal defeated, the nation watching, God unmistakably present in front of everyone. And then, within a single chapter, he is running for his life, collapsed under a broom tree, asking God to let him die.

High tide. Then collapse.

Notice what God does not do. He does not rebuke the crash. He does not remind Elijah of the fire he just witnessed, as though gratitude could talk him out of exhaustion. He lets him sleep. He feeds him. Twice. Only then does He lead him to the mountain.

"The Lord was not in the wind... the Lord was not in the earthquake... the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper." (1 Kings 19:11-12)

The whisper does not arrive at the high tide. It arrives after it: in the exhaustion, in the silence, in the very low water where Elijah assumed God had gone.

The low tide was not a detour from Elijah's calling. It was where his calling was fed, rested, and quietly renewed.

V. What the Tide Teaches Us

Session 3 taught us that hidden things hold us. Session 4 asks something a little different.

Not everything God gives us is an object. Sometimes He gives us a pattern.

The anchor is something we cling to. The tide is something we learn to trust. One teaches us stability. The other teaches us how to live faithfully within time, trusting that the water, however far it withdraws, still keeps its ancient rhythm.

We are remarkably quick to measure God's nearness by our own experience of Him. When the water rises, we call Him faithful. When it recedes, we wonder whether He has gone somewhere else. But the shoreline has never mistaken the tide for the sea. It knows the water still belongs to it even when it has pulled back beyond the sand we can see. Faith slowly learns to make the same distinction. God's presence is deeper than our perception of it.

Faith matures when it stops grading God's presence by the height of the water.

That's what the tide has always known, long before we did.

The tide that goes out has never once forgotten how to return.

VI. Standing at Your Tide

Where are you right now: coming in, or going out? Both are allowed to be named honestly, without shame and without alarm.

Perhaps the question is not, "Why did the water leave?" Perhaps it is, "What does this season make possible that high tide could not?"

Elijah was not fed and rested during the fire. He was fed and rested during the ebb, because that is where rest becomes necessary, and possible.

Storms reveal anchors. Tides teach patience.

And so, before you go, receive this as a blessing rather than a sixth movement:

"Because of the Lord's great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning." (Lamentations 3:22-23)

Not always high water.

Always the same sea.

---

Practicing the Presence of God at the Tide This Week

• Name your tide. Are you in a season of closeness or distance right now? Say it plainly, without judging it.
• Read the tide chart backward. Recall a past low tide that returned to high. Let it recalibrate what you expect from this one.
• Resist the panic narrative. Where have you assumed absence in a season Scripture would simply call rhythm?
• Rest during the ebb. What might this low season be making possible that a high season could not?
• Watch for the turn. Tides always change. Stay alert rather than despairing.

 *****

 

Continue Walking the Shoreline

The Shoreline Series: Faith at the Edge is a weekly devotional exploring the places where God meets us between endings and beginnings, certainty and mystery, grief and hope.

 

The Journey So Far:

Session 1: The Shoreline Where Life Meets God

Session 2: Following the Horizon

Session 3: The Anchor Beneath the Surface

Session 4: Learning the Tide (You are here)

 

If something here resonated, you may also enjoy:

The Place In Between Where Life Still Meets You

The Fifth Season: When Closure Never Comes But Clarity Does

Before Resurrection Was Recognized

A Voice Silenced

Just a few days ago the entertainment industry lost one of its brightest stars, Whitney Houston at the young age of 48.

Houston was an American recording artist, actress, producer, and model. In 2009, the Guinness World Records cited her as the most-awarded female act of all time. Her awards include two Emmy Awards, six Grammy Awards, 30 Billboard Music Awards, and 22 American Music Awards, among a total of 415 career awards in her lifetime. Houston was also one of the world's best-selling music artists, having sold more than 170 million albums, singles and videos worldwide.

On February 11, she was found dead in a suite at the Beverly Hilton Hotel, in Beverly Hills, California, submerged in the bathtub. The cause of death is still being determined.

Few people may know that Whitney Houston was raised a Baptist. She was born in a middle-income neighborhood in Newark, New Jersey, the third and youngest child of Army serviceman and entertainment executive John Russell Houston, Jr. and gospel singer Cissy Houston (née Emily Drinkard). Her mother, along with cousins Dionne Warwick and Dee Dee Warwick and godmother Aretha Franklin were all notable figures in the gospel, rhythm and blues, pop, and soul genres.

At the age of 11, Houston began to follow in her mother's footsteps and started performing as a soloist in the junior gospel choir at the New Hope Baptist Church in Newark, where she also learned to play the piano. Her first solo performance in the church was “Guide Me, O Thou Great Jehovah.” In addition to her mother, Franklin, and Warwick, Houston was also exposed to the music of Chaka Khan, Gladys Knight, and Roberta Flack, most of whom would have an impact on her as a singer and performer.

But as is this case with so many American pop stars, she chose a life of addiction at a young age. She admitted that she began experimenting with drugs during the filming of the movie The Bodyguard in 1992. When filming was finished she began doing hard core drugs like cocaine on a regular basis. It was also during this time that she met her future husband Bobby Brown formerly of the pop star band New Edition, who was also a drug addict himself. What ensued were many years of drug abuse that ruined her vocal chords and ultimately led to her death this past week. She is survived by her only daughter, Bobby Kristina who is 18 and was last seen checking herself into a hospital to deal with the trauma of losing her mother so unexpectantly.

Throughout her career, Houston often spoke of Jesus and her upbringing as a Baptist. Her friends said that before she passed she spoke about looking forward to meeting Jesus in person upon her death. I do not pretend to know when it was that Houston departed from the faith that she was raised with but it undoubtedly happened along the way to fame and fortune that led her to a life of misery and stole her most precious gift – her voice. The Bible talks about a path in life that many people choose that seems right in their own eyes but it ultimately leads to death (Proverbs 14:12).

Life is full of choices. One well known author once said, “In the end, our life will be a sum of our choices.” For Whitney Houston, she made far too many poor choices and reaped the cost at the age of 48.

Just a couple of years ago, Houston said on the Oprah Winfrey show that she began taking drugs not for fun but to mask her pain. It was such a tragic statement that it had me scratching my head as to what pain she was speaking of. But as I thought further, the answer became obvious. When a person is raised with the truth of the gospel and then rejects it, they spend the rest of their lives trying to fill the void that is only satisfied by a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.

Houston, of course, due to her fame and money had the opportunity to fill her life with things that most people can only dream about – a private jet, vacations to the most luxurious vacation spots in the world, access to the drugs of her choice with no limitations. This is why King Solomon who was the riches man to ever walk the earth and denied himself nothing that his eyes laid upon, said in the Book of Ecclesiastes 1:14, “I have seen all the works that are done under the sun; and indeed, all is vanity and grasping for the wind.” As he looked back over his life, he concluded the book with the following statement, “Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God and keep His commandments, for this is man’s all. For God will bring every work into judgment, including every secret thing, whether good or evil.” (Ecclesiastes 12:13-14)

Just two years ago, the entertainment industry lost pop icon and R&B king Michael Jackson at the age of 50. Jackson, like Houston, also died because of repeated drug abuse.

The story seems all too common in our culture today but it still points us back as believers to the words of Christ in John 10:10b, “I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly.” Jesus is not just offering eternal life but the abundant life right here, right now to all those who will put their faith and trust in Him. Within His commands one finds true liberty and freedom and the blessings of God. I pray if you do not know Him that you come to know the Prince of Peace today (Romans 10:9-10). If you do know him as Savior and Lord of your life, please make it a point to tell others to keep them off the broad road that leads to destruction.

As Iron Sharpens Iron

First, I hope all my readers had a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday. Personally, Thanksgiving has always been one of my favorite holidays as it is always so nice to get together with family and friends and enjoy good conversation and delicious food.

Of course, I have to admit that I did watch some football on Thanksgiving. I know none of you are surprised by this but I did want to touch on an interesting comment I heard from Jim Harbaugh, the head coach of the San Francisco 49ers whose team was playing against the Baltimore Ravens. Jim’s brother John is the head coach of the Ravens who beat the 49ers on Thanksgiving night. After losing the game to his brother’s team, Jim had this to say during his post-game press conference, “There's a saying that says ‘as iron sharpens iron, so does one man sharpen another.’ And let's say my brother, John, is the sharpest iron I've ever encountered.”

Jim Harbaugh didn’t realize that he was not quoting just some saying but the Bible itself. We find the quote in Proverbs 27:17, “As iron sharpens iron, so a man sharpens the countenance of his friend.”

The book of Proverbs was written by King Solomon, who when he first became king of Israel was visited by God in a dream. God said to Solomon that he could ask of Him anything he wanted and God would grant his request. Solomon asked God for “an understanding heart to judge Your people that I might discern between good and evil” (I Kings 3:9). This request pleased God so much that He said, “Because you have asked for this thing and have not asked for long life for yourself….behold, I have done according to your words, see I have given you a wise and understanding heart, so that there has not been anyone like you before you, nor shall any like you arise after you” (I Kings 3:11-12).

The Book of Proverbs is a collection of wise sayings that were penned by Solomon himself, the wisest man to ever live. They pass on a core of knowledge and experience that God says we must have if we are to live successfully. The proverbs are not mere old sayings that concern people in far-off lands, but universal principles that apply to all people of all times. Of course, we know this is true as Jim Harbaugh used this one in a football setting which I am sure was the furthest thing from Solomon’s mind when he wrote Proverbs 27.

In Proverbs there are many, many statements about how important it is for men and women to have companions. The most significant one is Proverbs 27:17 which Harbaugh quoted as it is basically saying that men help men. They increase their effectiveness and as indicated in this verse they even increase their satisfaction as it shows up on their countenance or facial appearance.

These kinds of thoughts are traced throughout the Bible. For example in the Book of Ecclesiastes, also written by King Solomon, chapter 4 verse 9 states, “Two are better than one because they have a good reward for their labor.” In other words, two can work harder and earn more than one. And verse 10 of the same chapter says, “If they fall the one will lift up his fellow, but woe to him that is alone when he falls for he has not another to help him up.” Again, if someone falls and has no companion to help him, he is in trouble.

It is important to remember that true wisdom does not come from educational institutions or old age but from God, “If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him” (James 1:5). God offers wisdom to anyone that asks Him. That is a powerful thought to allow to penetrate our minds and shape our walk.

I Corinthians 1:25 tells us, “For the foolishness of God is wiser than man's wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man's strength.” God’s Word contains His mind and heart. The more we know His Word, the more we will know Him. Might I encourage you to spend some time this holiday weekend getting to know the One who is the source of all wisdom.
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"God has many ways that He might use to achieve His ends, but His wisdom determined the best way to accomplish them."
- Samuel Willard

When Evil Triumphs

As I have continued to listen to the media coverage of the Penn State child abuse scandal, I was reminded of the famous quote, “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.”

This certainly appears to be the case as Jerry Sandusky, the architect of the “Linebacker U” defense for the Penn State football team, was charged last weekend with sexually abusing eight boys over 15 years. The athletic director and a university vice president were charged with perjury and failure to report a 2002 allegation to police, and Head Coach Joe Paterno was fired following mounting fury that he did not do more about the 2002 allegation when it was brought to his attention. President Graham Spanier also was fired for similar reasons.

As I begin to research this story, I found an amazing sermon on “The Forum Terrace” that addresses how sin is able to proliferate through a society that does not address evil practices. I willl share a portion of it here.

The Bible tells us in James 4:17, “Therefore, to him who knows to do good and does not do it, to him it is sin.” Unlike sins of commission, such as, adultery, murder, stealing, and idolatry, sins of omission are the sins of doing nothing. Sin is not just doing bad as many think. People assume they are good, simply because they have done no evil. They forget that goodness is a positive quality; not merely the absence of doing evil. Sin is more than just a transgression of the law (1 John 3:4). Sin is also a failure to do the law.

Sin can also be defined as a failure to do as you ought to do. For example, the one-talent man in Jesus’ parable in the Gospel of Matthew (chapter 25:14-30) did not do anything outwardly sinful. Yet, it is affirmed that he was “wicked” (Matt. 25:26). He could have defended himself by protesting, “Wait just a minute there. I will have you know that I am not an embezzler, I did not squander the money through riotous living like the prodigal son, in no way was I dishonest, never have I been a drunkard, murderer, fornicator or thief of any kind. I was entrusted with a talent, and it is a talent I have returned.” He was still condemned a wicked man because he failed to do as he was commanded.

R.V.G. Tasker wrote, “It is probably true to say that we more often leave undone that things we ought to have done than do the things we ought not to have done.”

God did not create mankind just to avoid doing bad things. We are not Christians just because we shun evil practices. We were created in Christ to do good works (Eph. 2:10). We live the Christian life in order to do those good deeds which please God (Col. 1:10). No one persecutes us just because we do not murder and steal. Christians suffer for doing good in the name of Christ (1 Peter 3:17). By suffering persecution for doing good, we confirm and promote Christianity before the world (1 Peter. 2:13-15). God has equipped all Christians for doing good (2 Tim. 3:16, 17). He rewards us for doing good (Rom. 2:6-8). Doing good as we have been commanded brings us happiness (John 13:17) and others as well.

What is tragic about the Penn State scandal is that it could have been stopped NINE years ago. I suppose it is easy to look at that university and point fingers but in reality as Tasker said, how many things do we leave undone that we ought to do?

The founding pastor of my church used to say that so many of the issues and problems we face in life would be avoided if we just lived more of what the Bible says. The wisdom literature books – Psalms, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes – provide practical wisdom to enable a person to live a skillful life before God and men. It would do us well to daily read portions of these books in order to equip our minds with the wisdom and knowledge of God.

Let’s also pray for the victims of these crimes as they begin to try to heal and piece their lives together and let’s also pray for Penn State, especially the football team who are unfortunate victims of this tragedy and yet still have to suit up and play football each weekend.
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"A person's character is accurately measured by his reaction to life's inequities."
- Author unknown

Defining the Abundant Life

In John 10:10, Jesus said, “The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly.” Throughout Scripture we find Jesus often speaking about the abundant life that He offers to all who follow Him. But this begs the question, what exactly is the abundant life? Is it more money? More possessions? More vacations? More status?

Just last night I was speaking to my brother about the Lord and he was saying that the world tells you to go to school, get a good paying job, save your money for retirement and then retire. But what about after retirement? What do you do then? The world never discusses life after death and what we should do to prepare. Of course, this is based largely on the fact that the world does not know God and is not concerned with the things of God (Romans 1). But this still does not change the fact that the one thing all of us are going to experience regardless of age, stature, or success is death. Yet, we spend so little time preparing. So much of Jesus’ teachings were based on the kingdom of God and designed to get men and women thinking about things of eternal value versus temporal value. God tells us in Ecclesiastes 3:11 that He has set eternity in the hearts of men. But, so often we push the things of eternal value to the back burner even as Christians, don’t we?

When Jesus gave His most profound sermon in Matthew chapter 5, He spoke of a way of life that was counter intuitive to the world’s system. The selfless principles He outlined that pictured the kingdom of God were too difficult for many to comprehend as He begins each point by naming a group of people normally thought to be unblessable and pronounces them blessed because of the presence and availability of the abundant life in God's kingdom to everyone, everywhere, regardless of status, circumstances, or condition. And this is the key. It is not based on what you have or don’t have or who your parents are but on a person – Jesus Christ. To further underscore this critical spiritual reality, Jesus told us in John 14:6 that He is “the Way, the Truth, and the Life and that no one comes to the Father but by Him.”

The abundant life Jesus is offering is attained on the inside not the outside. He is extending to us an internal peace that it is not found anywhere else. This is why the Christian is able to live above his/her circumstances because the focus is on the One who has overcome the world and ensures us we will too (John 16:33). Man is preoccupied with circumstances, God is preoccupied with character. And it is within the person of Jesus Christ that we are able to cast off the old man and put on the new man in Christ. (2 Corinthians 5:17)

Eternal life as opposed to this life is not determined by duration but by a relationship with God. This is why the Scripture tell us that once a person accepts Jesus as their Lord and personal Savior that he/she possesses eternal life already (1 John 5:11-13), though not, of course, in its fullness. For you see a Christian's life revolves around “growing in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ” (2 Peter 3:18). This teaches us that the abundant life is a continual process of learning, practicing, and maturing, as well as failing, recovering, adjusting, enduring, and overcoming, because, in our present state, “we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror” (1 Corinthians 13:12). One day we will see God face to face, and we will know Him completely as we will be known completely (1 Corinthians 13:12). We will no longer struggle with sin and doubt. This will be the ultimately fulfilled abundant life.

The true abundant life will display the fruits produced by the Holy Spirit - love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control (Galatians 5:22-23), not an abundance of “stuff.” It consists of life that is eternal, and, therefore, our interest is in the eternal, not the temporal.

If you do not know the Lord, it is my hope and prayer that you will spend some time exploring the abundant life that Jesus is offering right now. His Word tells us that “today is the day of salvation.” (2 Corinthians 6:2) And Romans 10:9-10 tells us how to be saved, “If you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.”

Hope Is a Choice

Dictionary.com defines “hope” as the feeling that what is wanted can be had or that events will turn out for the best; to look forward to with desire and reasonable confidence; to believe or trust. The Christian faith is based on a hope placed in the person and work of Jesus Christ. It is rooted in the One who called Himself the Alpha and the Omega (the beginning and the end), the Chief Shepherd, the Cornerstone, the Deliverer, the King of Kings, and the Almighty God.

Hebrews 11:1 declares that “faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen” (italics are mine). This is not the type of hope the world has when they play the lottery and hope to win, or when they make an investment in the stock market and hope their money will grow and not decrease. No, this hope is much surer than that. The hope the Christian has is established upon the Living God.

Psalm 146 tells us, “Do not put your trust in princes, Nor in a son of man, in whom there is no help. His spirit departs, he returns to his earth; In that very day his plans perish. Happy is he who has the God of Jacob for his help, Whose hope is in the Lord his God, Who made heaven and earth; The sea, and all that is in them; Who keeps truth forever, Who executes justice for the oppressed, Who gives food to the hungry. The Lord gives freedom to the prisoners. The Lord opens the eyes of the blind; The Lord raises those who are bowed down; The Lord loves the righteous. The Lord watches over the strangers; He relieves the fatherless and widow.”

For the Christian, our hope is based in a God who created the universe, not in a philosopher or religious leader who has returned to the earth and has no power to help us. Our God promises to defend us, feed us, free us, open our eyes, raise us up, watch over us, and meet us in our loneliness. Who else can make such a claim?

The Scripture states that this life is but a vapor and after death eternity begins. King Solomon, the wisest and wealthiest king to ever live, said in Ecclesiastes, after having indulged himself in all the world had to offer, (e.g. women, wine, money) that all of it was vanity and the sole purpose of man is to “Fear God and keep His commandments.”

Charles G. Finney, a prominent preacher during the Second Great Awakening, perfectly described the type of hope offered by Jesus Christ and how it is attained, “Many seem to have conceived of Christ as their hope only in His outward relation, that is, as an atoning Savior, as a risen and ascended Savior, but also as a factual, historical, concrete statistic. The indispensable necessity of having Christ within them, ruling in their hearts and establishing His government over their whole being, is a condition of salvation of which they have not thought. Christ cannot be truly and savingly our hope, in any degree further than He is received into, and reigns, in our souls. To hope in merely an outward Christ is to hope in vain.”

In other words, our hope is a choice based on a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. Any other type of hope is only grasping at the wind. This type of saving hope or faith is only for those willing to lay themselves at the foot of cross and present themselves a living sacrifice. (Romans 12:1) It is within the realm of obedience that faith becomes tangible as we see the hand of God operating in our lives – conforming us to the very image of His Son.

Hope is a choice. Won’t you choose the Living hope today?

"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His abundant mercy has begotten us again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled and that does not fade away, reserved in heaven for you, who are kept by the power of God through faith for salvation ready to be revealed in the last time." (I Peter 1:3-5)