Day 3112 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Isaiah 43:19 KJV

Eventually all which has been lost, left set adrift atop a sea of uncertainty and sorrow, will wash up onto the beaches of what may well feel a war-torn reality.

It’s just inevitable.

Inevitable because it's promised by He who authored reality and the inevitability of eternity into being. Thus it's something that all of us either have or will experience for ourselves at some point. Problem is that that point seems to have at least some hinging upon the decision between our embracing the willingness to embrace it or our continuing to swing over onto the opposite path where we simply continue trying to avoid it for as long as possible.

Now don't get me wrong, I do understand why we want to avoid the crippling fall back into the reality from which we've been running. It's because it's crushing to see the many missteps and missed opportunities now forever a part of our story written by our pride thinking we had both the right and the ability to steal the pen from the hand of the One who wrote us into the land of the living.

And knowing now what we've made of the life He gave us to live, seems as though we've only given us a kind of guilt nowhere near as entertaining as the lies we've gotten used to living. It's not fun to sit with the torment we ourselves have invited upon ourselves by our having long ago accepted and ever since attended the party being put on by those who are more than fine with it all falling down.

Yes, it's all just fallen down, and as we've learned only to find ourselves among those determined unto the destruction of even themselves, we too find ourselves having now fallen apart into a mishandled life so mangled by mischief that our reflection is all but unrecognizable anymore.

And the sheer reality of that is just crushing because we know or have at least heard of the truth in regard to whose image in which we were made. Seems as though at one time we had hope, we had purpose, we had a value unable to be afforded by everything we could gain in this world. Alas, that's the sadness in learning the wrong lessons: We miss the warnings such as that which rhetorically asks what it is that a person can profit by gaining all the world whilst having to sell their soul in order to seal the deal.

And now, having washed up on shore of the mess we've made of a way of life we never knew to not allow ourselves to live, the instinct we've been taught tells us to look only upon what we've done which has led us here.

Thus we get stuck staring at the waves of regret still battering us as we feel ourselves lying helplessly hopeless up here on the dry land where we’ve sadly never seen fit to build our houses.

Simply because, having both learned to make mistakes as well as the excuses we think allow us the ability to deny having made them, a lesson taught us by a warped world that loves making them, we now constantly find ourselves falling back on the many other misconceptions that have manifest in our minds.

We look for those whom we can blame for the pain we now feel as we remember their insinuation that it wouldn't come. We search for reasons as to why we kept on racing away from responsibility now that it has indeed proven inescapable. We allow anger and frustration to further our dive in the wrong direction. All because that's all we know to do, simply because that's all the world around us has done.

But if we continue to fall for that decrepit deception designed inside hearts now disheveled by dissention due to external communication then we will miss seeing what God's doing to lead us back to the beginning.

And I think that's arguably the part of all this that we either misunderstand or simply miss altogether. We look upon this calling we've been given the chance to participate in and, in our minds, it just doesn't make any sense. It seems to ask everything of us that we either don't have to give or don't know we have to give.

Self-control, self-debasement, the letting go of the lives we've planned and the laying down of the guilt we're still not used to actually carrying. Taking up a cross we don't want to carry toward a tomb we don't want to enter carved inside a truth that's been debated and denied to the point that we ourselves likely even find it as impossible as every other fairytale we've ever heard.

No, to us it seems only the death of life, the end of us, the finality which cannot possibly be the beginning of anything. Because how can it be?

"But Jesus beheld them, and said unto them, With men this is impossible; but with God all things are possible."

You see, we've the opportunity to find that we’ve unfortunately been taught merely one version of what's possible. And sadly, that version is the one taught us by the same folks who now claim gender exists along a line of increasing fluidity, that men can conceive children inside wombs they don't have and that those living have the right to kill those they took part in creating. Indeed it’s the same version of possible that exists in minds alongside this mindset that has mankind convinced they can make God flinch.

Yes, what we know as being possible seems only the ideas that humanity wants to be possible.

And yet, still there exists a truth which doesn't rely on mankind's agreement or acceptance. God's Word doesn't ask us to understand it or to sign off on it. He simply tells us that His will will be done, and that therefore ours either will be too or won't be due to ours not humbling itself unto its only rightful place: under His.

The problem is that the way of life we've learned by watching the whole world mislead their own is one clearly built upon selfishness and the arrogance which serves as fuel to the fact that we've been setting ourselves on fire. All we know is to keep doing as we've done, foolishly thinking we'll manage to somehow find something other than what we've already found.

Indeed, insanity is the status quo that makes the world go round. But the question then becomes do we go down with it or instead go back to the beginning of something new?

That's the conundrum of all this: God's calling us back to the new. He's doing a new thing around us, willing to begin a new thing within us. Why? Because we're not the only ones who see what a mess we've made doing this our way! And so, out of His immense, to the point of endless, kindness, He pre-planned for our new start before we fumbled the first go.

The cross was endured before our first breath was breathed. His Word written before we ourselves learned to write a story that rages the other way. His purpose for us literally set in stone before we set foot on this rock. He's always known what He would do to make things new, because He always knew what we'd do that would need that renewal.

Back to the new.

Retracing the many missteps mistakenly taken down the wrong paths we've always followed others along. Resetting our hearts to once again beat both to life as well as to the beat of a song this world can't sing. Removing the sins and their stains from the souls we never had the right to tarnish or trade away. Resolving to be the better person knowing that we'd get old without growing up properly.

God is so incredibly good to us that He Himself planned to humble Himself to destroying Himself that we might see that we'd been doing the same, all so that we could do the same once more, only this time with the hope in mind of joining Him in the resurrection which can only come after the death of all we've known and known to be.

But will we miss it? Fact is that many are and most will, which is simply yet again another promise humanity doesn’t have the authority to overwrite nor overrule. Indeed, wide is the path unto destruction and many walk upon it. We have, but will we keep going or turn around? Will we spend the rest of our time falling in line behind those we’ve always followed? Will we therefore miss the new He’s offering to do? Or, now knowing we need that redemption, will we open our eyes to see the fork in the road?

If we don’t it will only be because we still buy the lies that blind our eyes convincing us to do as we’ve always done as we've always bought this idea that doing something new is just too hard to do. Indeed, we hate change down here. Hate admitting we need it. Hate realizing we'll die without it. But, alas, as that's what most have done, so too is that what most will do.

But again, will we?

You see, we've turned His garden into a desert. We've ripped apart His Word, some of us literally even to the point of setting it underfoot or indeed even on fire! We've gotten ourselves lost in the wilderness of our worldly wildness. We've just taken all we've been given and given it away, all because the world told us that it had something better for us instead, demanding ironically the surrender of all we once had, all we now know shouldn’t have been ours to begin with in light what we’ve done with it.

No, the world promised us everything only to leave us for dead, left to at best wash up on shore of what truly does now feel a war-torn reality. Only now we know that we've only been waging this war against ourselves as we've fought against Him. So, knowing what we now know, do we lay our weapons down or keep thrusting them into ourselves thinking we'll find life in the death of us?

As this verse promises, He will make a way through this wilderness of wickedness we've planted. He will carve a stream in the deserts we've learned to call home, so that we've a bit of refreshment as we hopefully make our way toward our true home. He will bring us back to life by doing the new that makes such a miracle possible.

In fact, He's already achieved all the above in Christ's victory on and over the cross. That’s the gift we find in Isaiah 53:6: “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.” Christ took the punishment we’ve earned for all we’ve done so that through His undoing of all the horrid things many keep on doing, all we deserved to go through is now just a door through which we can walk should we find the humility to share in the suffering which He’s shown leads to life.

But will we ever find and feel that victory ourselves? Or will we, like many around us, simply settle for second best as we go on living in the death He died to undo?

Friends, we have a chance right now. Indeed, this very day if we've the courage to step out of the known into a foreign and strange direction, we can be made new through His mercy giving us a new beginning. But that choice is ours, and it's one we can't make if we keep thinking along the same mindset made mainstream by the masses around us.

We have to break away from this place, otherwise we'll just end up broken in and by this place. Doesn't have to be that way, and even the God we've long gone against has proven He doesn't necessarily want that demise for us. He will give it to us if we so choose. He will leave us to rot in these deserts we've designed. He will leave us lost at sea if indeed we don't want to be found.

But that seems a truly foolish choice when considering the ultimate outcomes. In the end either we find life or we fall into unending death. Seems clear to take this opportunity to go back to the new He's begun. Might not be easy. Probably won’t make much sense at the start. May in fact begin with what seems the end of us, but only because in order for Him to lead the way we have to stop thinking we know where we’re going.

He will make a way back to where we should have been. Already has. We just have to begin the fight so that we don't miss it, because contrary to what this place thinks, we won't get another chance.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold