Day 2809 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Jeremiah 2:21 NIV

How?

How did we get here? How did we become who we are? How did we reach this point of seemingly no return? How did we take something designed to be so beautiful, so magnificent, so unique and turn it into something more akin to a dumpster fire? How did we witness the perfect example of how to live only to turn back to doing what we'd always done? How did we devolve into this mindset where all that's evil is considered good and all that's truly good is villainized?

How did we grow to despise truth and righteousness and morals and values and decency and responsibility and the opportunity that we've been given to get our act together and live like we're above the filth that's consumed all of humanity?

Or maybe the better question is why? Why did we obviously just choose to give up? Why did we settle for less than what we were made to be? Why did we fall so hard for sin? Why do we just not care?

You see, Scripture tells us that we were created in the image of God. We were created to do good things. We were designed to bring praise and honor and glory to our Father. We were placed in a Garden to care for it and to experience all that God had designed. But somewhere along the way, all of God's providence and provision just became boring and insignificant in our eyes as our attention was shifted to what we didn't have and learned to crave.

And so we left the safe confines of God's design to follow our hearts in their search for self-indulgence, personal satisfaction, and sinful pleasure. We turned away from His design and began coming up with our own. We rejected His gifts, His blessings, and His promises because they came with His commandments and requirements and expectations. We grew to loathe anything and everything that told us we couldn't do something. And our hearts found this unquenchable desire to do it anyway just to show that we could.

Humanity has been running from God since He fashioned our legs. Our desires have long been to display our contempt for His creation. We simply do not want to entertain His law as we believe it to be highly limited and controlled when compared to the sense of freedom we've found in living as if nothing matters. Society looks at faith and religion and the like as unnecessary hindrances to a life filled with enjoyment and gratification.

And so we've arrived at our destination. We're a billion miles from God's intentions. We're a society crumbling and yet smiling all the while. We're a people with hearts darkening and being destroyed who somehow manage to twist that sad reality into a hopeful expectation of a life filled with everything we desire. We're a world on the brink of obliteration who continues to live as if we hold the keys to our own destiny. We're a people with blinded eyes that remains convinced we know where we're going.

It is rather impressive, in a very depressing sense, that society largely remains fully capable of spinning sin to seem righteous. That we continue to live life as if it's all a game in which we get to make up the rules so that we can never lose or get anything wrong is both mind-blowing and heartbreaking. There just seems to be no signs of slowing down, reconsidering, or let alone repenting of the wayward wrongs in which we've chosen.

No, the world just keeps on chugging along like the little engine that could, or perhaps that stubbornly wouldn't quit. We refuse to look back to see what we're leaving behind as we remain convinced that our way and our path and our dreams and our goals and our ideas and our ideals will be incomparably better than anything that may lie behind us on this journey. We don't care to remember who we were, where we were, whose we were. Our eyes can only see who we want to be and the lives we want to live and this desire to be our own divine design.

Friends, no matter how far or how hard we run, we cannot outrun who we were made to be. One day, we'll all stand again before the Potter and account for the destruction we caused in our pursuit of everything but Him. We'll face the One we turned our faces from in a radical fall back into a reality we had convinced ourselves wasn't real. We'll stare into the eyes of truth and be left with a terrifying realization that we didn't actually get to author our own version, or at least that our own version is meaningless in the court of eternity.

We may think that we've completely uprooted ourselves and shaken all of God's ideas and designs and desires out of our way, but try as we have, we'll someday understand that we could never lose Him. Instead, we simply lost ourselves. We lost the only kind of hope that will matter in the end. We lost the only joy that was meant to last. We lost the only promise that will not be broken. We lost more time than these temporary lives could hold. We lost.

All because we lost sight of the fact that God really does know best, and that no matter how awesome we think we are or how grand our goals seemed to us, they could never possibly compare to His purposes.

Thankfully, we're still here. We're still walking upon His earth breathing this temporary air with lungs made by His hands. And since we're still here that means we still have a chance. A chance to remember. A chance to turn around. A chance to find humility before our hubris brings our humiliation. A chance to dig back down under the piles of filth we've filled our lives with to the roots of who He made us to be. A chance to stop running from the truth and instead begin building the rest of our lives on it.

In truth, how we got here or why we gave up so much opportunity for so little return along the way doesn't really matter. At least it doesn't matter as much as our decision as to what we do about it. We've made an absolute mess of what He entrusted to us. Where do we go from here? Do we continue digging our pits deeper thinking that there's something beautiful beneath a few more years of muck? Or do we start looking for the ladder?

Considering all that we've done and just how badly we've botched all this, it's truly amazing to even be able to hope that He would forgive us. That we have the audacity to hope for His forgiveness is despicable considering how we've treated Him and what we've done with His creation. But that's the gift of the cross! That's the gift of Christ! That's the gift of repentance. Yes, changing is a gift that we've been given because without that we have no hope whatsoever. If we don't change and reform and return to His plans and commands then we'll one day bring annihilation upon our own heads.

Doesn't have to be that way. He doesn't want it to be that way. But He also doesn't make that choice for us. We have to be the ones who look in the mirror and hate what we see looking back because we see a reflection of everything we never wanted to become.

This all began in a Garden, and one day it'll end in a Garden. Please don't find yourself among the pile of the pruned that are thrown into the fire where they no longer pollute His design. What we've been and what we've done and what we've destroyed is what it is. But it doesn't have to be what remains. We can change. We can turn. We can repent. We can surrender our pride and seek His mercy where we'll find a rebirth into a life spent doing more than deconstructing.

And we'd better do just that before we no longer have the chance.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold