Day 3226 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Exodus 13:21 NIV

As if no matter the circumstance nor ability, God's will is to lead His people to His promise.

This life is our Exodus.

But the tear toward tragedy comes in that we're so lost here we think ourselves home. Accustomed to the comforts, complacent and convenient, to step into a wilderness way is to ask of us a sort of loss that's considered too costly. Walking away, running at times, fervent and furious toward a hope unseen hidden persistently behind this veil of uncertainty as defined by minds divided between devotions.

Stay or go? What to pack? What'll it take? Can we make it? How can we when we've no map nor is there any mention of our preferences nor even our safety? No, along this desert road we're promised but few things: 1. Security. 2. Guidance. 3. Provision. 4. Promise. That's it. That is the entirety of this path and all we ought to expect upon it. All we ought to expect.

Until our misunderstanding of an understanding has us standing still unsure yet again as we'd like for something else, something more settled, something more satisfying in store.

That's the life we've learned here. It's this underwhelming outlook that's undermined His intentions to the point wherein we sidestep the responsibilities that He's due as a simple show of our faithfulness given excitedly in light of His faithfulness. We care not about faithfulness as it means nothing, amounts to nothing in this world, a world in this way. Here we can find new friends. Make new dreams. Plan new priorities. Plant new preferences.

Indeed, this life we're so sadly used to misusing is one seen as so expendable that to seek excess and excuse herein is simply the assumption most socially sought. If we're here to die, live it up until then. If this world is passing away, treat it like any mark we make will only fade into oblivion. If our existence is just the substance of something selfish, then this gross serving of self is then sufficient.

Why want for something more than here when there's something more still here?

That's how we see life, as this timeframe in which we do all we can to be all we can as defined by having all we can to show all we can that all we can be, all we care to be is just like everyone else living only to die while denying that that end is near. And so we stay here. We settle into this standard. We settle into this enslavement. Because we have something, and even if it's nothing we want, it retains the ability to find something else here that might be able to fulfill.

It won't. Can't. It's not Him. There is no salvation inside something of earthly substance. There's no salvation in something conceived inside worldly minds. From sports cars to shooting for the stars, we've all universally accepted that our hopes are best tied to something seen, something easy, something safe. Because the less it offers, the less it costs.

And as those spiritually bankrupt, we know well what little we can afford. Thus we sell ourselves for the least remarkable expectations, expecting nothing more than some existence which can only ever be filled with only everything fleeting, found by a life lived in one place convinced that it's the only one we'll ever see.

That's why God does what no eye has seen nor ear has heard. He's all about the new, a promise celebrated this Christmas season, a promise proven in 2 Corinthians 5:17. "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!" Just how new, just how revolutionary? Isaiah 9:6:

"For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace."

An undoing so drastic of all that's so done it's dead that it had to begin with a baby born into a world that proved from the very start to have no room for Him. Something that seems impossible, doesn't it? That an expectant mother be turned away, shoved into a stable leaving her to labor among livestock? A baby born with the weight of the world on His shoulders, shoulders that would one day feel the sting of our sins? See, God reveals Himself to us in ways that we know not to look for as they're unlike, again, what any eye has seen or ear has heard.

Such as a Shepherd being born of a virgin, sent by the Father to lead the lost into a place wherein all looks, feels, sounds as if loss. Because He knows best of all that it's only when all it lost, left behind, that all can once more be gained again.

Thus our Exodus.

This life, our exit from a misplaced existence into a new existence being rewritten into a revolution spent waging war against our past proclivities, present preferences, prized opinions. Thus the call to lose it all, life itself if need be, so that we can finally see the veil torn, a truth worth tearing ourselves away from all that's torn us apart and left us so dead we can only assume we know anything of life.

No, what we know of life is again, to gain. To have and hold, keep and carry. But having had so much only to find so little, we warriors of weakness weary our way to wasting away all so we needn't worry about the world seeing us suffer. No, we lie. We perform. We become these counterfeits we are that so fake that nobody sees the realness to our barren existence. We pretend we already have everything while ironically living only in want of more.

So Christ came with a message making mince of our madness. Mike Winger has this amazing quote I heard night before last that speaks to this insanity of ours in such a way that I can't keep from sharing it.

"You're like a dying man on the operating table asking for plastic surgery, you want a facelift but you need a heart transplant."

We want our lives to look full. We want our homes to feel filled. We want our bank accounts bursting with so many digits we can't fathom the wealth. We want our bodies to look like supermodels. We want our cars to be only sports cars. We want jobs with titles that sound so impressive we can't even look ourselves in the mirror without wanting our own autograph.

We want a faith that follows the plans we have toward the promises we've prized designed by these eyes that see so little of anything, to be blind would be beneficial. Indeed, we want God to make our lives altogether easy, simple, safe, satisfying. This is why our prayers are mere performances rehearsed to convey the preference, or rushed in moments of panic as life unravels, taking our peace down the drain as well.

All because we've believed so long this lie that has us consumed with gaining so as to conceal our guilt that we've become the lie. We're bound to the barriers. We're chained to ourselves, slaves at home seeking only what keeps us in place, in this place.

A place into which He came only to show that from here we'll all leave, but that because He flips tables, turning life so on its head that it changes people's names, because of His benevolence, we can live the Bible backwards. Not a creation created perfectly in a perfect Garden that made a mistake and was cast out into a fallen world filled with so many inspirations to make so many more mistakes only to die in a sort of guilt that made living longer unbearable.

No, we get to come to Him as the guilty, as the dirty, as the lost and destitute, slaves so selfish that we keep looking back wondering why He leads us away from all we've come to know, come to be, come to love in this place we're unready to leave. And though He part waters still in the form of trials we can't overcome but somehow still make it through, still we ask for water, meat and His meeting of our way along the way to where He's taking us.

Indeed, no matter the show shown to prove His prominence, the people then rebelled at a moment's notice. And yet, faithful forever our Father be, He led them all the way, kicking and screaming as still we do now. Cloud by day, fire by night so they could continue to carry on toward the home He promised, an ideal that they could see only as existing so far away from the one they knew fading behind, forfeiting their understanding of the future as their feet fell into the steps that led them further away from the good enough they already had.

Just like us here inside this Exodus of our own. He does whatever needs done. Proves Himself daily in provisional blessings that provide for us all we need, taken for granted behind things we've come to want instead. But still, faithful forever our Father be, He patiently waits for eyes willing to see so hearts can begin inspiring our feet down the road that will leave us free.

Cloud by day, fire by night so that, like they then, now we too can travel, move, moving onward, upward, up to the land promised on oath, a place He's prepared for us, a land flowing with milk and honey, a home with no more death or mourning or crying or pain. So well worth the wait and the wars along the way that we ought to lay down all we've held so high so that nothing of what we've done, where we've been, who we've become dares contend for any measure of the devotion He alone is due.

But still we pull back into doubt, worry that we know His path will ask us to move on without. Without all we know, all we've known. Without these homes we've made, these things we've achieved. Yes, He calls us to follow, but shows us a path that leads through a life lived so against the grain that the world couldn't stand it so that they, that we all agreed He must go.

Indeed, His path leads us first into the wilderness that breaks us, through trials that test us, along a barrenness that has nothing for us, straight into a tomb that will kill us. Who would do this, follow this road into the desert desiring to die to a life we've learned is so worth living that the world's made a way of it? Who would choose this? Who would want this, this faith that holds promises only up ahead, asking for patience until then?

No, the real question is who would choose us? Who would look upon a heathen and see hope in their becoming something more? Who would love we who are unlovable? Who would offer to save those so stuck in sin that they killed His Son? Who would lead to a promise so beautiful as Heaven a people so lost they could find only ways to doubt it, to discount it?

Who would humble Himself to leaving that beautiful home to come exist as one considered a vagrant, a villain, a varmint that would be hated by those very ones He came to help? Who would come to show the way by being the Way that leads to something so new, so impossible that it's worth is literally immeasurable?

No, we can't calculate the cost of the cross. Here we know only to hate the clouds as they bring the rain. We hate fire as it burns to the ground all we're trying to build. We avoid the trials as we know we can only fail the test. We deny faith because it doesn't involve a revolve around us. We refuse everything that doesn't profit us immediately, because again, if here is home, then we ought to gain all we can while we're here.

Knowing well we're leaving, only putting it off as long as possible as if we might prove the ones able to avoid the inevitable.

Not me, not anymore. I stay in the woods. Seek the fire. Love the rain, such beautiful clouds. If it will be lost, let me find the courage to lose it now. Get the death out of the way, get my fear of it out of the way, get myself out of the way. Walk in the Way, seek and speak the Truth, let go of this life that I might take hold of the Life.

This isn't it. This life in this world can only be what's allowed, allotted for within the limits of time, space and expense. Accept those limits if you'd like, but I see only chains when I think of staying here. Because this isn't home. Not even close.

No, this is just the land of our Exodus, a chance to leave behind all we've known in exchange for the One who came down here with a message so dire He chose to die in order to show that we know nothing of life as we've only just begun. Because faith is forever, forever isn’t final, but it’s found only in following what this world and this world’s way cannot begin to fathom.

Take the road that only ends at His promise because all others are only merely dead end streets filled with death masquerading as life. We don’t need to make a life here. He’s already got one waiting for us, waiting just beyond that first breath of forever within that Promised Land He’s still leading us toward.

And while it may take courage to agree to embrace the death demanded that comes in leaving behind all we’ve known of, made of this life thus far, said death has lost its sting. Don’t give it back inside a doubt that He doesn’t deserve having already proven not even the grave can change His plans.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold