Day 3140 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

John 14:27 NIV

Life's most priceless gift was given through the heaviest cost, something this world cannot give as it cannot understand.

This peace we've been offered to share is something in dire risk of dying the death of a million momentary concerns. It's hanging completely in the balance between the endless choices from which we're pointed and told to pick in this place. But often times, all the time in fact, seems that our peace, the version given us of Christ sadly isn't seen nor considered among the options from which we're given to choose from the world in which we're walking.

That's a bit of what we talked about yesterday, this world doesn't know peace because they refuse to know Christ. Despite all of our 'progressions', kindness and humility are entirely not among them. Technology? Sure. Social interaction? Most definitely. A mingling of the two into a platform from which each of us has a digital voice allowing us to add our proverbial two cents to the senselessness of it all? Absolutely.

Which is absolutely the problem.

I've a deep and descending disdain for social media. When I graduated from high school this world of facebooks and myspaces was all this new novelty that seemed to offer an opportunity to further relationships that were finding themselves harder to maintain due to the differing paths that life leads us along. It was a chance to stay in contact with, to connect with, to continue to share life with those with whom we'd already formed those friendships.

But then the world does as the world does and they hijacked it. This platform for connection devolved into a connection to a personalized platform upon which all of society stands isolated screaming at one another in regard to the pettiest of differences. What could have been, should have been a viable outlet for the sharing of all that we find of meaning in life has become a lifeless threat to life itself.

Because there's no peace in it. There's no compassion in it. There's not a shred of humility to be seen within the trends and the trials they ignite within us that should never have been welcomed into us nor the lives we’re living. We've been duped into a sad dropping of our guards, and with those protections lazed, our peace it seems has managed to pour out leaving only a void now filled with contempt and confusion.

I use social media as an example to point closer to my point as it's something that all of us are well aware of anymore. Everyone has more connections than AT&T as they used to say. Everybody these days has more friends than they know what to do with, even though they've nothing much to do with any of them because nobody knows anything about anyone anymore other than the highlights we scroll through whilst sitting next to the people who are actually in our lives still.

But this isn't just about social media, again, that's just an easily accessed example of the large scale issue. The issue that I'm aimed at today is the great letting go of that which is too priceless to get rid. Peace is a gift that we've been both given and given the opportunity to both seek and choose. We talked about the seeking of peace yesterday and how we're called to make every effort to find it.

And that's kind of the point I want to make today. I fear we're crossing a line in this digital way of life that has us convinced we need to find it no matter what. This is evidenced by the fact that the world around us only offers us peace in pieces. We find bits and bobs of it in the groups we're in, but those groups aren't at peace with others who are different. We glean some peace from the prosperity and popularity offered by our semblance of an outreach offered by social medias.

But even that, though seemingly limitless has very clear limits. Folks won't listen to anyone who says anything they don't like. They won't like anything that isn't popular. They won't share anything that exists outside the commonly agreed upon trends of the day. Because there's seen little gain in it. In fact, there's far more risk in it as whenever we share something which might gall or grate, we face a great chance of being lambasted in the comment section.

Which just goes to further prove my point. We're told that we must live these lives in a certain way for them to matter and that in agreeing to do so we’ll find the peace this world claims the power to offer, but the choices we're given from which to choose offer us nothing we need and in fact only risk everything we've already been given. Because they convince us that what we already have isn't enough and that we therefore must venture out into this incessant seeking of a greater measure of all we don't need.

And through it all, the simplicity of God's greater gifts falls through the cracks created by the calamitous climate of this cantankerous culture.

Indeed, I'm afraid we're forgetting we've already been given perfect peace because we've long listened to a world that pretends to offer a more perfect presentation of it. We're told that to fit in will bring us greater tranquility. To be liked and adored through likes and applause, albeit digital at best, is now the standard search area through which we're pointed and told to sift.

But in my own personal experience, the more peace I try to find wherever the world points only brings less of the contentment true peace ought to provide. Thus I think it safe to say that this world doesn't actually have anything we need in regard to our inner need for peace and contentment. And this ought to have already been obvious as this world didn't welcome He who brought us His perfect peace and taught us the pricelessness of the contentment offered therein.

Indeed, we've been given what we shouldn't allow to be taken, because what we have the world doesn't understand, and therefore nothing they have to offer in exchange for our taking what we have for granted should ever be worth even considering.

But therein lies the problem that I fear we're all either facing or at imminent risk of finding. We are considering it. We are in many ways choosing it. In fact, most days we wake up and grab our phones or turn on the news before we remember to talk with God. We begin our days scrolling through a phone's feed rather than feeding our souls upon the living Word. We post far more comments than we toss up prayers.

Yes, by all accounts we're all well connected, but I contend that's it's all just a great disconnect from what we're looking for. See, all of us want to be at peace. I firmly believe that to be among the most common pursuits in life. Peace. Calmness. Contentment. We all want to simply be allowed to live life, doing our best to do it well as well as doing our best to enjoy what little of it there seems left to enjoy.

And that's the downside of it all. Seems most days bring us less of that which seems enjoyable. No, anymore it's all negativity. It's who's angry with who and what started it all and this assumption that we need to be wrapped up in it so that we don't risk falling outside the know. And yet we wonder why peace seems to be so hard to find.

Might it be that we've forgotten we've already been given it as we've been living in search for it? Because honestly, there's not much more foolish than continuing to look for what's already been found. And I find that we only feel the need to keep looking for peace because we've not yet found peace with He who embodies it.

Because how can we? How can we understand peace when the world is still the place we're looking to find it? How can we experience peace when our priorities are improperly placed amongst the places it can't exist? How much longer can we forget what we've been given while allowing the world to continue threatening it through these endless chances to remain distracted by all that destroys it?

Peace is being destroyed in this place. Politics. Pronouns. Protests. That's what the world offers, what the world wants. Is that what we want? Is that what He wants? Is that what He deserves, a people with eyes fixed all around them and therefore unable to see the peace He tried to place inside them?

See, that's what He points out here. He left His peace with us when He left us to go prepare a place for us. He gave us His peace when He placed us upon a path that leads to that place He's prepared. But the challenge for us is that we're still in this place, and therefore at grave risk of remaining of this place. And again, this place doesn't know peace. They don't want to.

Because they know that they have to know Him to know it. And to the masses, well, He just presents too many affronts to pride and vanity for His peace to be worth the trouble.

Do we agree? Do we lower ourselves that low? Do we continue to settle for a passing semblance of the real deal just so we don't have to deal with what the world can't deal with? Or do we shake this world off our backs and leave the dead to bury their dead?

What He gave, what He gives, isn't what we find here. It's different, exponentially different, undefinably so. It's something finally perfect. It's a gift without downside. It's a promise which can't be taken, but sadly, if we're not careful it can be lost behind all these other concerns we're taught to worry about. And I say this from experience. Talked about that a great length of late.

But I for one am taking it back. I'm going back to the simplicity of godliness with contentment as it is indeed the greatest of gains as it reminds us only of the greatest of gifts. Christ came. He healed and redeemed. He taught and tried. He gave us His peace, left behind when He died the death we owed for all our attempts to find peace in a selfish place it couldn't exist.

All I want to know is only Christ and Him crucified, because through that I am dying to this world and this world is dying to me. And there's simply this peace in that that renders everything down here without merit and therefore unworthy of our attention.

Yet I know that there's this now engrained fear of falling away from the ways the world works. We'll be forgotten. We'll not know something that someone might ask us about. Heaven forbid, but we might not even have an opinion pre-formed in regard to the latest headline or outrage. Yes, we might become unpopular, unseen, unknown, unappreciated and unacceptable.

And we might therefore lose all we've seemingly gained as a result of our having made every effort to force peace in this place that won’t allow for it. We might lose the fans, the followers, the feeling of fitting in and flourishing in the fountain of friendship and folly. Yes, we well may sink so far from the radar that nobody knows we're here. A great travesty to be sure.

But yet, we might finally find peace in no longer trying to prove that we are here to a people and a place that couldn't care less.

Because that’s what I worry we’re forgetting in all this: His peace doesn't allow for fear of failure or falling out of the good graces of a place that doesn't know good nor grace. His peace provides a promise which frees us from having to hold onto all that's kept us in this place so lacking in goodness and grace. His promise of eternal peace when we're finally in that place He's prepared lets us finally find the choice to let this place go and walk away from all that everyone else is dying for.

This world brings only heartbreak and hassle. They choose only turmoil and trouble. It confuses and loses and asks that we smile all the while. It points us to everything that doesn't matter only so we'll stay obliviously distracted from the fact that we've already been given all that does mean something. Because this world wants to take away what He gave so that they can be the ones who dictate our lives.

I'm done playing into their hand, because I know without question that there's no peace in it. Tried to find it only to find out they lied when they said they had it to offer.

Friends, we have to break from this world and its ways before they break us apart as they insist on scattering us apart from Him and His way. Make no mistake, this world will take from us all we're willing to give, to let them have. But for too long we’ve allowed our peace to be added to that list. For too long we’ve given way to the fear that makes us forget that they can't lessen His peace He placed inside us.

For too long we’ve forgotten what we already have because the world’s convinced us to look for something different.

He didn't give us what the world says we should be looking for. He didn’t promise prosperity or popularity. He doesn’t promise a life free from hardship and filled with friendship. No, He gave us only what we need in order to make it through this world that isn't looking for any of what any of us need. We need Him as He's the only place where peace exists. You're more than free to keep on looking down here, but wars and rumors of wars and hatred and persecution and irresolution is all you'll ever find.

That's all I ever found. And that's why I'm not looking here anymore.

I don't want what this world has because this world ain't headed where I want to end up. And I'll not agree to miss out on living in peace along the way by remaining distracted by only everything that detracts from it.

Yes, this world will steal our peace as long as we agree that peace must be what this place pretends it is. It isn’t. He isn’t. He gave us His peace, so we don’t need the world to worry us with the giving or taking of their hollow version. Nor should we allow ourselves to be troubled when it inevitably doesn’t come as we rage against the path they’re telling us peace must be found along.

It isn’t. Never was. But it’s only once we’re in Him that we can see that. Don’t wait another day. Please. I promise you that it’s worth letting this world go and walking away from it all. And I can say that because I’m not the one who made that promise, nor am I the one you have to rely on to fulfill it.

He is and He already has. Stop keeping yourself from peace by allowing this world to keep you from Christ.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold