Day 3228 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Isaiah 9:6 NIV

Whatever we may ever need, He is.

Wonderful Counselor. A trustworthy truth that cuts through, guides us through the countless lies that lie in wait for us to wander back into wondering about all that isn't Him as it's only found down here. An unwavering honesty that refuses to pull the punches as He knows bruises heal while hell can't. A steady place to go when we've left no idea what's going on nor what to do.

Mighty God. The Almighty authority that renders all worldly counterfeit instantly forfeit. The Divine that needs not this wicked world to help design the line between right and wrong, light and dark, here and home. The Creator that created a creation that considered forgetting Him a reasonable accomplishment, yet still filled with such a love that refuses to lose what we've already agreed is loss.

Everlasting Father. Unending wisdom being poured out from He who is Wisdom, a gift given in increasing fullness for all who might dare die unto their false image of what is a corrupted understanding. An endless provider pouring provision upon a people who praise Him rather than all that never was. Infinite direction given from a Father that wants only the best for His children, so much so that He'd humble Himself unto a cross by way of a manger in order to prove that none are too far gone as not even death is the sealed door we've long assumed.

Prince of Peace. An impossible find in this world rife with chaos and noise coming from billions of clanging symbols living without a shred of love left in hearts so hard that to die would be closer to living. Tranquility as embodied in He who promised that all that's waiting up ahead is rest and hope and the ability to actually enjoy what He began for us, in us without a wicked world wanting to steal it away.

Indeed the only thing which seems to halt or hinder His all-encompassing existence from stitching His impossible peace into the midst of our mess is our acceptance of just how much of Him we truly need, a misunderstanding made understood among a world that mishandles everything possible. Because sadly we've become a people who carry ourselves as if we needn't a thing, wearying ourselves just to portray as much. As if life is best lived behind an appearance that's adequate, even if the truth underneath is everything but.

Yes, everything but, that's all we are.

We are everything but good, everything but pure, everything but innocent, everything but sufficient, everything but satisfactory. Thus He came to be all we are not, all that though we were created to be has only become all that we stopped aiming for so long ago our memories cannot reach it nor our courage care to try.

Because we don't want to be what we've become. It's a truth you'll not hear many speak as it contains a violent lack of pride, this appearing of ours to be in need. To be lacking. To be lazy. To be addicted. To be scared and sad and stuck inside this swishing and switching only between the two. Sadness and unease, sorrow blending inside an already disquieted soul unsure of what happened but daily aware of where we are being nowhere close to where hope resides.

All we know is the night, fearful runs into the shadows seeking somewhere to shelter our sins so they're not seen. Yes, our lives have been lived running ourselves so ragged we're nothing but weary, leery of this what is entirely an epitomal too-good-to-be-true opportunity. Indeed, the consternation of this contemplation caused by a consideration of a Savior taking our decimation so that we might now know no hesitation to hide ourselves out in the wide open.

It's insanity personified. Confessing what's been hidden? Admitting what we've concealed so well that, well, we assume no one knows? Laying our real out for all to see through eyes peering as if they've not a plank skewing their understanding? Agreeing to address our own misgivings, missteps, missed opportunities? No, insanity, so much so that to consider this a truth let alone THE truth is something done only by those already gone in the head.

But therein lies the beauty of how He began. He showed that we don’t need the show. We don’t need the glory, this gory gain of applause from those who’d still even today choose to be among the crowd cheering on what came to do through a pain He didn’t deserve. Indeed, Jesus came to show that what we know is all we shouldn’t, and that through where He calls us to follow, we can leave behind a life He came to leave behind.

There is no need for right-mindedness in all of this. Because simply put, outside of Him, out here where we've built a passing home void of any actual hope, what we know of right has only left us in the wrong. Sinners scattered only inside themselves, ourselves, seeking something that isn't there but adamant to keep going despite the obviousness of our chosen obliviousness which has us having found only a dance with oblivion coming soon to final breath we breathe.

Yes, just like the inn keeper turning Mary and Joseph away, this world will turn us down too if we actually dare confess that He is life and that our sins have only kept us from living therefore. But there again is a beauty found in this story: This can be the only death we'll die, this life spent living apart from Life Himself, making instead every mistaken choice that chases everything He is, just forever unable to find any of it because our arrogance won't let us look where He's proven that wealth beheld.

Everything we need, He is.

That’s the proof of Christmas. A King born a kid so ignorable that His welcome party was a bunch of farm animals. A Savior come to Shepherd His flock who'd all forgotten that they, that we need such guidance and protection, provision and promise. A Son born of the Father through a virgin proving that God cares not what we know to be possible, almost as if to show that what we know is more limitation than freedom.

No, we've known so little freedom here lost within our replicas that it's absolutely a wonder, a true Christmas miracle that any, yes any of us might dare venture toward a manger looking for mercy. And yet, like those wise did then, so can we now too do what this world says not too, because as they were deemed wise, wisdom is shown to be seen not through what our eyes have come to know. No, wisdom is found only in so fully trusting something so impossible that we'd bring whatever gift we could afford to lay before a baby that nobody else wanted to welcome.

Why? Why do we need to flip this Christmas script into a time of giving rather than all this receiving we're conceiving? Why is this time of year a celebration of love shown in the exchange of gifts given as opposed to one spent in selfish expectation?

Everything we need, He is.

As we talked yesterday, this verse too was written centuries before Christ came to fill it. A promise that wouldn't be proven for generations, and yet one proven generations before our lives began. Because God doesn't change like these shifting shadows we've come to assume we ourselves should be. He doesn't promise and then fail to fulfill like the many guarantees we've let go unfilled. He doesn't give then take away.

No, that's what we like to do, and just like everything that we do get so wrong, so upside down, this too He does the right way around. He takes away and then gives. Asks for a price up front and then comes through in the end with more than said price could afford. He has His demands, many of them in fact. But in response to the humility needed from us to agree to give Him what He deserves, He gives us everything we don't.

And unlike Christmas in the way we've come to celebrate it, He doesn't spread it out among different boxes all wrapped individually and opened in succession. No, His gift is literally one and done. One Way. One Truth. One Life given unto all who agree to lay down the mangled messes they've made of their own ill-gotten attempts to gain something worth having within a world we're all leaving behind someday.

One Name. One Voice. One Hope so unfailing that He can simply be leaned upon as if a promise unbreakable. Because that's what He is, what He showed Himself to be in that ultimate scene of distress and dismay, a death died for all mankind, even all who've not yet chosen to live.

See, that's the true gift of Christmas. It's that God chose in Christ to live for us a perfect example of how to live a life that's pleasing to He who made us in His image, an image we've since made only a mess of inside our many wonderful ideas that only turned out to be horrid regrets. Yes, He came to bring life to all those who were tired of failing to find it inside the endless death that is sin which separates us from all He is.

Which is everything we need.

But how do we get there? How do we accept all this? What is needed, what change inside, change of mind is mandatory for us to finally have all we need, all we've long lived to find but only failed to come across? Notice if you will the part speaking about the government being upon His shoulders. That's where we find Him and everything He brings, everything we need. Place everything on His shoulders. Everything.

Every mistake. Every failure, every flaw. Every stumble into yet another stupide decision. Every hope, every ounce of humility that's willing to seek it in someone else, somewhere else. Every choice and every action taken in their wake. Every word we speak and every work we attempt. Every moment we're given and every regret for all the ones we missed or misspent. Every reliance, every regulation, every responsibility.

Not as if to shirk any of the above, but simply to do all the above with Him the only well of wisdom from which we draw all the decisions that we need to make going forward.

Yes, we will find all we need in Him when all we do, all we want, all we are is only here for Him, sought in Him, given to Him. When He is our everything, we'll have everything we need. When He isn't allowed to be, we'll forever know need without the slightest chance of ever finding enough to fill all the holes we have inside.

That's why He came. Tired of watching us lose, our minds mostly. Tired of trying to get through to us by means that spoke through others that we'd have to love enough to listen to, let alone actually trust. Tired of watching us work for everything we can live without, a life so busy that we're missing all that we can't live without.

So Heaven came to earth in order to point earth back to Heaven along a path that proved this life we know has to go before we can go home. He chose the manger, the danger, the pain and the path. Because how else can we see that what we know is worthless outside this world? He had to prove it, because let's be honest, us trusting Him enough to walk by faith just wasn't working.

Thus the cross. Thus the cost. Thus the Christ that brought all we need, only found when we let go of all we don't. That's the point. We have so much in this world, this is true, but all of it is meaningless, a chasing after the wind as the wise have been known to say. It's us chasing wealth inside all that's worthless, placing hope in only what keeps us hollow, praising people that can do nothing for us but will happily take everything from us.

He came to show us that He is all we need so that we can begin walking away from a world and its way that's only been pretending to take His place. See, He's never relinquished the throne of Heaven. We just need to realize that He has a throne in our hearts too, but that for too long now, it's been filled with folly finding us falling further into faithless failure.

What’s so strange that it continues to inspire doubt is that we have failed so much that it’s easy, but to find victory is actually even easier. So easy that we never had to look as He came to us, came for us to make it so easy that only those blind of belief could miss it. It gets no clearer than the cross. And this day today is one in which we celebrate the beginning of His final offer to make it clear to see just how much we've gotten wrong, but so too just how much He's willing to do to achieve the forgiveness we need, the forgiveness that can we finally find in the last place, the last face we've chosen to look.

Christmas is the day we set aside to rejoice over the arrival of the One who came just to leave so that we could leave and start heading where we shouldn't have the opportunity to be. He opened Heaven when He came to earth. And the greatest gift ever given is in the victory He won upon the cross that covered the cost of the journey.

No matter where you are, how you feel, what you've lost or failed to find, remember the manger reminding us that we don't need as much as we think. In fact, all we need is the baby that had far more to do than worry about being turned away. That's kind of why He came, to prove that it's okay, in fact, that such is needed.

Because we need to stop seeing this as our home, filling it with stuff we'll only leave in it. No, we need to move on, and the best way to get where we've the opportunity to be is by following the footsteps of the Savior who came just to lead the way.

And we can get to going toward that impossible promise knowing that we’ve the promise already proven in that whatever we may ever need, He is. Always was.

Merry Christmas everyone!

#LeaveNoSoulUntold