Day 3249 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Judges 21:25 NIV

Wherever exists a vacuum of virtue so too shall be found a multitude of monstrosities.

Because a terrible thing happens whenever the reigns of reality are allowed loose or lax or laze. Seems that in any moment in which we're afforded freedom from leadership or legality we find instantly an endless reason to assume therefore our desires the only form of dominion to which we've to answer. Thus, whenever offered the option to do as we please, well, we show clearly that we shall do only as pleases us.

And then becomes a people a billion idols following a billion ideas in a billion directions toward an endless outcome of chaos and insanity as spelled and designed inside a rampant human heart so rife with inhumanity that we seek to see for ourselves only whatever might gain any sort of selfish benefit that leaves us assured of whatever we want while never once having to worry about any others nor their outcome being as safe or secure or assured.

Much like what’s seen in that scene of our being seen among those smiling as Christ was suffering in order to satisfy the cost of our choice to see Him as nothing more than man warning against all we’ve long gone to war to protect. We thought Him a fool for insisting upon a better way than this which we created on our own. And so we’ve shown that we don’t care what happens to any should they dare point out the flaws in our living to suit ourselves.

No, a lawless land leads only to society all altogether likewise assumptive of an authority our arrogance could only wish were ours to have and hold and mold into whatever monstrous meaning we seek for our lives to define. Masters of our own fate in the assumption gained when nobody's around to guide or guard. Just left to our own wants and wishes which always wander into wonder about which way we might find for ourselves the pleasure we prize.

And then a willingness only to find out where all we might go to find all we want so long as such aligns with all we’ve become. Building kingdoms of ourselves inside ourselves just certain that we’re where our hope can be found.

This verse is found at the end of the book of Judges, the very last point as it were. A book defining the calamity which ensued once the likes of Joshua and Moses had gone the way of all mankind. Indeed, it shows that in the wake of the non-weak leaving behind a people to at best hopefully just remain within the realm of reason, no, that's never been our means of motivation.

1 Peter tells us the way in which to use this gift of freedom we've each been given. But it appears that the whole 'don't look down' leading instantly to a person peering below has always been rather definitive of our dance here inside delusion. Yes, whereas told in 1 Peter 2:16 to “not use your freedom as a cover-up for evil" but to rather "live as God’s slaves" well our way has wanted obviously to go the opposite.

Indeed, wherever we might hear the sound of enslavement we run and rage and revolt in such a way as to show that that's not what freedom is. Freedom to us isn't conducive to oversight or expectation. It brings no instruction nor consequence for failing to uphold such suggestion. No, we'll fight to the end for this freedom we've assumed ourselves having found inside these lives we live as if on fire needing the next satisfaction to be our salvation.

Yes, salvation to us is secreted away inside a bottomless pit of self-indulgence of which we assume ourselves both the authority to dive and the bravery to bottom.

Such is the life that becomes a people left to choose for themselves. But it seems that the human heart's being deceptive above all things has long been the standard outlook beneath which we've looked for our own rewards as measured by the ideas and ideals cooked inside these hearts aflame with ego and the energy to serve it rather than the courage to sever it.

No, to do such would succumb ourselves to being wholly unable to decide for ourselves what's best, what's worst, what's worth wanting and what all we've wanted that wasn't enough. There is truly no rest for the wicked as we'll always want for ourselves a win of some new wind we've caught inside these ears always open for suggestion as to where all might be found something fun or fulfilling to the folly we've fallen to follow.

We talked several days ago about the rapidity of the depravity displayed inside the aftermath of Israel's first leaders leaving. Moses and Aaron fought continuously to lead the people away from their comfort inside the enslavement that we've all learned to settle for even since. Joshua took over and led the way through the nations which needed to be removed so that the people might have the fullness of the land God had promised them.

And yet, once those bold voices of faithfulness found in those very few who followed God as best a fallen man ever could had been gathered to their people, the fallen nature of man took over the helm and held the people bent toward hellfire and brimstone. In just one book of the Bible we find a people going from those learning how to please God through adherence to His Commandments alongside sacrifices for falling short to a people of very different interests and ideas.

In just the final few chapters of Judges as I finished last night I saw such amazing accomplishments found in the following of a people their own devices and desires and delights and delusion. You’ve got rape, murder, something that basically sounds like or akin to kidnapping, internal division leading to basic civil war among the people of Israel. There's homosexuality, inhospitality, the insatiable insufficiency of both greed and gluttony, and well, then there’s always a clear personal favorite of ours, graven images!

Yeah, no king, no rules, no limits, no interest. Just everyone set to do as they see fit, a favorite pastime of a people without need of these souls and their need of their Maker to make them something worth guarding. According to the last few stories in those last few pages of Judges, it sure sounds like we really know the way to create a veritable paradise on earth what with all the murder and dismemberment.

Knocking it out of the park when left to decide things for ourselves!

But that's the danger in this idea that tells us that it's better to live for our wants at the expense of our lives rather than follow the long way around toward a promise of something better given only to those random freaks patient enough to embrace the law of all humanity in that we're not the best source from which to glean meaning or purpose. No, when it comes to what life is and what best to do with it, we're not who to look to.

And yet that's all we want to do. To be our own guides, to find our own fortune of favor in favoring our fellowship with foolishness, to pour ourselves into these molds we've made making a mockery of the image in which He made us as we make for us instead all these gods of all these stomachs we've settled to serve toward enslavement to self.

Yeah, we never really see that do we. Mentioned above that whenever slavery is sounded in our understanding, we refuse, we recuse ourselves as we want for ourselves something more than more chains of expectation. And yet, blinded eyes don't see the shackles of servitude we've strapped upon our very own hearts in this audacious insistence upon our own satisfaction.

We'll do anything, lose anything to gain the grin that comes with the sin that satisfies and satiates the senselessness and insufficiency inside. Slaves to our own ideas lost therefore forever if need be looking for only better ways to ignore the finish line. Has that not long been the outlook of life down here? To live like both nobody's watching and that we'll not meet Him in the end?

That's the only way the things we read about in the Scriptures are feasible. To indulge in all these displays which are so clearly defined as detestable to God demands a sort of divide that no one in their right mind would seek from such a source of mercy and grace. To displease the very One who designed us and then designed still a way to lead us back to that beauty we'd so shamefully forgotten since that blessing of a beginning in a Garden.

This defines our understanding of life, to live in defiance of He who ordained our having the opportunity to live, let alone to do so with a meaning or honor that we couldn’t craft or create of ourselves as we’re simply not here of our own will.

And yet, because of God's giving us this freewill we've accused of false freedom to live so foolishly as well as His merciful patience wanting for us repentance, we've sadly assumed only weakness. We think Him absent or too busy to see all we show or otherwise distracted or disinterested or distant. Yes, this is the only way in which we find this increasing willingness to increase our wanton disregard for all He is and all He deserves in light of all He’s done.

The Creator of life itself doesn't deserve to look upon His creation only to watch us unravel into the very destroying of ourselves or one another. But a people each left to be their own ideal will find only reason to war against any other who follows a different line or serves a different idol or who simply calls attention to the insanity of it all. Yes, all we can be when we're the ones who decide what to be is nothing but blasphemous.

A horde of opportunities to show honor unto the Father all instead fallen like our morals upon this ground we've dug into oblivion seeking something from which to distract this heartbreaking reality we've resolved to assume revolves only around us. And so all we can ever be is our own along that path we've promised ourselves to pave. No, we can't let ourselves down by allowing our dreams and desires to go unknown, unseen, unfelt, unfound.

And yet when we're alone only our own gods, our own kings, our own kind, well then we'll never know anything of the kind of King who though was the only God chose to come and save us from such stupidity as assuming ourselves a better fit to lead than He who holds the map which proves the home we can never know as it was never to be found inside our own ideas.

No, Heaven is a reward for those who lose themselves and this incessant interest in serving themselves alone. It's a promise proven upon a cross, showing clearly the way up and out of this misery we've made of a life so utterly misspent and misunderstood that we assumed ourselves in the right killing the Author of the light which came to shine in this darkness we've designed to leave undistinguished our failures to be anything close to worth such love and mercy.

But still the chance stands to choose for ourselves which gods we follow and how fervently we refuse to fail to uphold all these monstrous ideals we've created inside ourselves. And because of this freedom inside this freewill granted us from God, most will do as all of us have and continue ahead as if we're the only ones who can truly decide for ourselves the determination of our eternal truth.

Yet having lived so lost in so many lies and losses as a result, I find that to place any more hope inside myself would be the worst direction to possibly follow. I look back at things I've done and the choices I’ve so clearly so sadly been known to make and the idiocy which led to them being made and I see my life as almost a stranger watching someone else make mistakes I couldn't imagine repeating.

Who am I to lead the way? Who am I to know what's right? Have I found any worth within my own delights? No, not that lasted long enough to risk eternity. Is there any hope of Heaven inside my hollow heartlessness that many days leads me to many mistakes which will soon be among those which seem as if made by another that define my past? Not at all because Heaven can't fit in my hardened heart so weakened by wants and wishes that never led me anywhere but further from home.

Friends, we have the opportunity make our choices and the ability to follow them wherever they might lead. But whenever contemplating the next direction in which you walk, please remember the paths you've found before and where they led. Please think back upon the mistakes made in the past and perhaps we'll find a way to not want to remake them again. Indeed, we might come still to learn the lessons not thus far among those passed down into our understandings.

Perhaps we've even a chance to find our way to repentance which achieves for us a furthered freedom, only this time from ourselves. Because in truth, that's ultimately what each of us need more than we know. It's to be set free from these cages of selfishness that we've built in order to seek for ourselves all that we want for ourselves. There is so much more to life and faith and forever than just the foolishness which so often seems sufficient to our satisfaction.

There is hope and peace and healing and happiness all waiting just beyond the barricade that is called our way. And though we might feel out of our minds considering the leaving behind of this way we've made toward all we perhaps still want, what if our wants only hinder our needs being fulfilled? What if chasing our pleasure only prevents our peace? What if living like we know what we're doing only kills our chance of knowing Him Who saved us from that insanity?

We can do this our way, a fact proven in that we already have. But He has made abundantly clear that unless we follow His Way, we'll never find His promise. And that is a promise. I just pray we don't live to make it an unendingly painful one. Because honestly, it will be just that for any and all who insist still upon doing as we see fit as they learn only once inside the wrong side of eternity that as we see fit doesn’t necessarily fit what we can’t yet see.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold