Day 3142 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Ephesians 4:18 NIV

Come to think of it, perhaps 'swine' is a bit too fine.

You see, we exist among a place dead-set upon not living. We walk amongst those who've no interest in moving beyond the interim. It's this mindset made manifest in most which only remains feasible as it demands so very little of anyone that everyone is therefore able to measure up. It's a great shifting of the expectations to the point where nothing is considered too low to be unsatisfactory.

Yes, the common culture of this catastrophe is one which clearly continues to choose everything and everyone but Christ.

How is that even possible? He is love! He is mercy! He is kindness and compassion and healing and home and a road home we don’t have to pave or ask for permission to follow. What is the world missing that has so many willing to miss that opportunity? Easy.

They’re missing their sanity.

This place has become so unsanitized and desensitized to darkness that eyes can’t see anymore. Everyone just gropes around looking for something onto which they can grab that might have something they want for themselves. Yes, everyone all around lives only for themselves, caring so little about anyone else that they simply drift by one another without so much as a nod or wave of acknowledgement to the other’s existence.

Why? Not why does the world insist upon living the way it does. Not why do so many so clearly contend that nothing exists beyond themselves. Not even why are we to be judged simply for believing in something that has us willing to do so. Those are all easy.

No, but why do we still care what anyone else may think, expect, demand or desire?

Why are we still willing to entertain a mindset that refuses to entertain the death we all owe? Why are we so willing to listen to every voice screaming around us as if they've the ability to define us when anymore they can't even seem to define the fundamental basics of human biology? Why are we willing to compromise with a world that can't even accept that the truth is uncompromising?

I'm afraid we've been sold this soulless outlook for so long that we've maybe grown to see our own souls as no longer worth all that much. I fear that we've existed in a place that assumes that this place is all that exists for long enough that we've perhaps just learned to let go what pulls us elsewhere. I think we’ve all just become conditioned to send our souls to the world for their education, and so we’ve become unable to realize that we’re living like a world that isn’t living.

Yes, indeed, this world's demands have demanded we let go of the desires of the divine, replaced by merely what's achievable according to social standards that no longer have any standards. Because the dead don’t care what the dead do.

But again, all of this is perfectly evident. The world's not hiding their foolishness anymore. In fact, seems each new day brings a new pain we ought to feel as we watch the world die at the wheel. People all around us are investing themselves into only things that are promised to eventually destroy themselves.

Scripture doesn't mix words or make it complicated. And the simplicity of His truth is simple for a reason:

It's so we've no reason to not get the point.

So why have we? Or better yet, how have we? How have we managed to entirely miss the message when He even boiled it down to two simple commands? Love God, love one another. How much easier could He make it? How could we make it easier?

See, that's actually just it: He did. Christ managed to go even a step further and take even more pressure off our shoulders. He promises to intercede on the behalf of all who accept His gift of amazing grace. It's like a buy-one-get-one that we didn't even have to buy. It's forgiveness wrapped inside a promise to still make up for all we might mess up.

And yet, we seem entirely too content to continue to exist as if we're entitled to do only everything wrong, simply because we live in a world that can't comprehend what's right. Because that’s what we’ve grown among, weeds choking the life out of us simply because they don’t want life in them. And so we just do as they do and demand because I guess we still find plenty to lose in letting go what we can't keep.

I ask again though, why?

Why look to a world which clearly has no idea what it's doing in hopes of figuring out what we should do? Why listen to a people peddling only deception due to their obvious lust for lies? Why allow ourselves to be lowered to the measly hope of appeasement when we've been promised acceptance?

Don't get me wrong, I do understand as I have lived lost within that outlook. All of us have. We've all lived to make others happy, to make others like us, to make sure we're like others so that they'll happily like us. But as Paul so eloquently puts it, "What benefit did you reap at that time from the things you are now ashamed of? Those things result in death!"

Like I said, I've done that whole people-pleasing thing. At one time I had a friendship with everyone it seemed. It seemed. Looking around me now, not much to be found in the way of friendship. But what's always struck me as strange is that I don't know loneliness on this “wrong” side of worldly recognition. I don't feel as if I'm going without in this life without companionship or relationship. I don't know what I'm missing because I don't feel as if I'm missing anything.

Why? Because I had it all only to lose it all, and now having none at all I can finally see that He's been enough all along.

I don't need the world to get me, honestly prefer they don't. I don't feel the need to say all the right things all the time anymore. Don’t feel this need to shop at the right grocery store or know the ballgame score. I don't have this incessant noise resounding all these varied expectations demanding I do certain things in certain ways around certain people so as to not lose what I thought I couldn't afford to let go.

But that's what's hit me over the years of wondering brought about by my wandering through the Word. I didn't actually even have to let go of anything, they all let go of me. No, all I had to let go of was the unnatural inclination to care about what others told me to. And having now felt a freedom not reliant upon a fabricated facade of friendship, I see now that it's all but impossible to find in this world anymore.

And that’s indescribably heartbreaking. Because He made us for so much more than selling ourselves for a passing percentage of popularity. Yet it would seem that that truth is largely lost in this land. Too many opinions. Too many groups and groupies. There's too much apparently on the line in this time, and I just don't know where it all came from or why so many simply bow down to it.

Fact is that we've been led to this lost point of worshipping people, politicians, popular performers. We're standing on sullen street corners selling our souls in exchange for this unneeded invite to stay welcome in a world we have to leave one day. Yes, ain't none of us getting out of this alive. So why continue to waste the little time we've left looking to the world to tell us what we ought to be doing with it?

As we see here, people here are separated from the life of God due to nothing expect human ignorance. The arrogance made arresting is preventing so many people from accepting a promise this place can't offer, and clearly can't understand for some reason too foolish for me to fathom. Here we have a cross standing upon a hill that for no reason but love now bears a Name not our own, and yet people still choose the darkness.

But how much longer will we let them lure us into that tomb when we've been offered the chance to choose to enter the other that has already been left behind?

My fear for all of humanity is that we blindly keep looking to humanity for help. Because this world can't offer it. Folks care not to even help themselves, how dare we expect them to help us? That's stupid. It's ignorance personified. Sure, it’s the status quo, but it’s got everyone going nowhere. Nowhere but staying here in this world that’s going down hard due to the willful hardening of hearts.

Guess it all just comes down to how much longer we do as we've done and let this world lead us away from the Son.

Friends, I know there are a great many messages spinning around us as we keep getting spun around this spinning ball. And that's cacophony of chaos is quite calamitous and concerning. Makes it hard to filter through it all to find the few scraps of truth we pretty much just have to hope are still there. But again, He's taken care of that. He's given us the truth by which we're held accountable. He's walked the path which leads to life.

I reckon though that’s just the problem. Just so happens that it's also the path of the rebellious.

We're called to rebellion against the commonalities of a fallen culture. We're asked to forsake our pasts as they were lived in endless sinfulness. And we're even given the cold-hard of it all in that it will be hard. We will lose friends and fortunes and our chance at fame. We'll be hated, rejected and excluded. But I promise that the scarlet letters we'll be handed aren't all that bad.

Because they stand as evidence that we're for once living our lives outside the confines of those assigned to death unending. It proves we've gotten the picture, and that we miraculously now have eyes able to see that we're not very good at painting. It just opens this door to help and healing, hope in a home that isn't sullied or soiled by sin and self.

For long enough we've lived as the pagans do, and make no mistake, paganism is still the law of the land. To be most blatantly and blindly lost is still what most are selling themselves to find. Why should we do the same considering the offer on the table?

Yes, we can make friends with the world. We can lose so much of what we've been given that we've nothing left but everything everyone else wants us to be. We can let go of any hope in anything more and settle for everything this world has to offer. But as yesterday's post requested, ask yourself what it is that you're getting rid of and what it is that you're really getting in return.

For what will it profit a man to gain the whole world and yet forfeit his own soul?

God gave us a gift in this gift of life. What we've done with it by allowing the world to tell us what to do with it is nothing short of disgraceful. And yet He offers us redemption. What does this world have to offer that's comparable to the getting back of everything you've gotten rid of in order to just become as lost as you feel now?

My point is that this place will never fear God, never accept Christ, never embrace truth, never know life. Do we want the same for ourselves? This is one case when it's probably okay to be selfish, because we're the ones who'll be paying this off in the end. Yes, we'll be the only ones answering for all we've done, regardless of who we allowed to convince us to do it. We will all find ourselves alone before our Maker very soon.

What will He say of the life you’ve made? Or better yet, what will He think of what you’ve made of the life He gave?

Contrary to what the wickedness warping this world can only hope for, nothing will cancel the cross. It stands. He stands. And because He stands, we will all kneel. Will we do so as conquered foes or as welcome children?

Please don't let this world drag you further down than you already are. They will as that's where they're going and they’re more than willing to make you entirely comfy all the way down. But to go with them only shows we're as ignorant as them.

Unacceptable. Everyone in their right mind should want better than what this world has been and will soon become. Because even though billions are just fine with it the way it is as it allows them to get their way, there’s One who isn’t.

And it just so happens that His is the only opinion that matters.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold