Day 3260 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

1 Kings 18:21 NIV

The indelibility of indifference.

An entire way of life lived as if life deserves no direction, devoid of devotion, always in motion causing inside a commotion able to disquiet even the ocean as the noise of our thoughts seems always instead torn between this tarrying between two trajectories, two territories, one terrestrial while one eternal. Yes, though we know the difference between both the design and the direction, still it seems we've found too little to inspire in us a choice we can only ever pretend to leave unmade as if beds we plan to sleep in again.

But there's a defiant inevitability to this life and the swath of time with which we've to live it, and that is that it ends and when doth come that day, our decisions will be made.

Perhaps the undertone of this eternal tragedy soon to be found by most is that most of us for the most part live mostly making most of our choices whilst arrogantly oblivious to our admitting that we knew well the other options. No, we've by all accounts settled upon this most satisfying assumption which speaks to our selfish inability to do better. It's not that we can't just merely that in order to grow we'd first have to agree that we'd not done well our way

Ego can't offer that.

And so rather than seeing grace for what it begins, we've already finished making up our minds in regard to this divine dilemma. We've chosen our path and already walked it worn by this time in life. Daily decision made upon indifference, an everlasting failure to care coming to a calamity upon that day when deeds are weighed and we're then found wanting, wasted, weary from waiting for someone else to both decide for us and then follow through on our behalf.

Yet He did. At least the follow through part. Christ came, He saw, or well, He saw and what He'd seen inspired Him to come. So yeah, He saw, He came, He sacrificed, He overcame, He went ahead to where, through Him alone, we've now the chance once more to belong. Yes, belong, not merely to be, not be found of hoping for, not beyond plausibility or reasonable doubt, no, we can belong with Him in Heaven as He died to live in us, the flawless Lamb of God adopting a pack of prodigals into the family once more.

The family of God, children choosing to chime in tune with the choir of Heaven singing hymns of hope aimed at honoring His most holy Name, a Name now and always magnificent in all the earth as well as revered well in Heaven above, and yes, feared fully in hell beneath. The two destinations decided upon by the actions and deeds which define our decisions as displayed and demanded in the gravity of life being a collection of a person's freewill finding for them the finality of where their faith is found.

And thus where we'll be found.

You see, that which we serve shows who we are. And in that we see, or should, the deadly despair we've decided upon here. We've set our souls to serve all manner of mammon and material, mankind and media, Mustang Fastbacks and beautiful Ms. Melissa down the street. Eyes lusting for everything, everyone, every idea, everywhere we've gone. A life so filled with only where we've lived it that we've lost it, right alongside the courage to admit that such is all of what little we’ve chosen.

Chosen to settle. To stay. To surrender hope in exchange for a measured entitlement. We've set aside the striving for something worth having for the comparable ease of having nothing that can in any way last beyond the limits of time and space and matter as defined by and demanded in this world where we've come to stay. This world where we've chosen to stay.

Serving only gods of our own creation, baals and ballplayers, ideologies and the idiots behind them. Unable to see ourselves among that number of those so morally insufficient that we're altogether intellectually embarrassing and thus entirely and eternally compromised.

And yet, it's been this way for all our lives. It's all we know, to wait or wonder, wander off into yet another worry when whatever next great idea comes to the dead end they've always been. Assuming for ourselves this strength of insistence that's somehow supposed to either scare God away or encourage Him to surrender yet another sacrifice, only this time not of His Son but instead of His will as we demand He meet us half.

Half home and yet halfway gone.

Stuck in the middle, in this middle, a middle ground of our own making, making choices seen as something not really beneficial to life itself. And as we've long gotten by with such belligerence, we've become all but entirely indelible here inside our indifference. We don't care, don't care to care, see no want or need, no benefit or profit in our caring. Because to care is to choose responsibility, a choice clearly not chosen by anyone, for obvious reasons.

Because to care and thus choose responsibility is to thus admit the existence of responsibility. And our selfishness erroneously admitting the existence of responsibility would then demand we agree we’ve failed before to agree back then when mistakes were made that we knew then, as we know now, didn’t have to be made, as again, we knew of other options and yet failed to care. It’s a cycle of stupidity, a god we love to bow before.

Complacent within a common catastrophe coming soon to head, and no my friends, not ours this time.

Because in all truth and brutal honesty, we've shown Him more than enough of what our heads can come up with on our own. Which is by and large how we've saw fit to live. Again, we don't want to care, a fact shown clearly in our ongoing emersion in sin so deep and disgusting that we've found ways to hate the Healer who offers nothing but forgiveness accomplishing eternal salvation. No, we'd rather stay lost than be found unworthy.

Because in our mongrel misunderstanding, if we can deny responsibility, then we'll never need worry of the consequences.

Assuming obviously God agrees. Which He won't. Because of the same Jesus who actually frees us from such foolishness. You see, that Christ died defines our need to decide as it displays that God already has. Upon that cross He proved once and for all that sin is death but that still He offers life for all, not some, not most, for all who put said sin to death before said sin demands it.

A day coming soon, the same as such upon which all our choices will be chosen, or rather proven for having been what we did choose despite living a lie thinking we didn't have to choose and thus weren’t along the way.

We are, every moment of every day, deciding who we serve and thus where we'll go when here is gone. The cross calling all to a crossroads, a corner we either turn or tarry on. Because the difference between life and death, sin and salvation wasn't all that was forever defined by His so selflessly taking our weight upon His shoulders, our place upon that cross, our guilt upon His head, our death upon His life.

He sealed everything, and in a far more solidified fashion than our egregious indifference.

You see, when Christ paid my debt, He defined me as not my own anymore. WHETHER WE AGREE OR NOT! We are not our own. I am not my own, been bought at a price. The discrepancy comes in that long ago I sold my soul to sin so that I might do all and only all that I please. Sold myself to serve myself in every way the devil said we could. You did the same. Sorry, truth hurts. Let us let it as pain is far better than the punishment we've incurred on part of our indelible indifference.

Because the Word of God, which as we talked about yesterday, is eternal, unchanging, unchallenged, and unwavering. He will not change His mind, thus, we should highly consider changing ours as we can't create life but He can take it. Forever. Safe to say this is something we should likely agree to take a little more seriously than this ongoing lack of urgency as offered inside our living like we don't care and don't then have to choose.

Because again, we have, we are, we will. But what?

Well, lust is our choosing what we wish to look at so as to please the eyes. Greed is our choosing what we want in and of life in and of this world, and then seeking as much of such as we can find. Gluttony is our choosing to never agree to satiety or satisfaction but to instead always find a way to want more.

Idolatry is our choosing to let the whole host of that which has been created become more important in our eyes than He who is the Creator, false gods such as the baals offered as an option here in today's verse. Immorality is our choosing to lose respect for the righteous responsibility to live upright and godly lives as defined in and then displayed by He who is the Christ.

Every vice, and every victory found in serving such personal preference and passion is the wage we’ve earned for what we’ve sold or traded or simply given away in exchange for a deeper measure of all the devil dealt and continues to deal with we who like his bargains. Yes, we’ve never been our own, bought at the price of our soul by the father of lies and destroyer of lives. Slaves to self, the story of the sinful who’ve made such perversions a way of life.

But thanks be to God above for His so kindly choosing what we never did, to value our souls higher than the sins for which we’ve lost them. Redemption at the price of His Son to take back what we sold away. Thus in Christ we’re still not our own, we’ve yet again been acquired at a price that means our enslavement.

Only now we’re slaves of the light which defines the love which bought us back from where we’d let ourselves assume we belong. Yes, bought at a price. Just that the value of Jesus’ blood outweighs the worth of sin. So, this time, we’ve been bought at a price against which even the devil can’t compete.

Perhaps we should stop then looking for competing offers to consider in place of God’s grace. Yes, perhaps we should learn the gravity of that grace saving us from that grave and show it in our gratitude to He who achieved our salvation. And perhaps we can only do that by actually putting Him alone as our soul’s sole priority. And perhaps that can only be accomplished by humbled hearts agreeing to choose, both for today and thus for forever forward to serve Him alone rather than the empty vessels we’ve bought and become.

Because again, for far too long, though we’ve known, as He made sure we would, the difference in both design, direction and therefore destination, it seems we’re otherwise well content to waste our lives waiting our time to decide what we can’t possibly ignore forever. Every soul will choose, problem is that such personal involvement is shown in the ways we already have chosen what we’ve already served as what we serve shows who we are. And so at the end of the day, at the end of these lives, who are we?

God's, baal's, America's, China's, TV's, Social Media's? Who or what do we serve? Who or what have we served? Who or what can we serve that can offer us a change of outcome such that seen in our Savior? Can anything, anyone in this world, of this world give to us what will last beyond this world? Is peace to be found in plastic? Can lasting meaning be bought with money? Is there something akin to the hope of Heaven found in the hollows of here?

It's for each to decide, and so I can't choose for you. All I can do is all I'm trying and point to the fact that in fact, we're all choosing already. Every day. Every second. We are constantly choosing that upon which we focus. So, where are you focused, and is there forever in it? And if there is forever in it, is that forever fatal or faithful?

Because the definition of inevitability in regard to our faith is that Christ showed us who God is. Time for us to now show God who we are, whose we are. His or hell’s?

All told, seems a no-brainer, a rarity in life, a decision so easy that to even think of it demands a measure of insanity which shouldn’t be possible. Heaven or hell? Where the debate? But the problem is that such insanity isn’t merely possible, it’s promised. It’s happening, this loss of mind, loss of life, loss of everything we are and all we could have, could be, could find up ahead. It’s the way of the world, this world that’s lost its way.

Because here surrounded by so many living still as if they refuse to lose this lost life we’ve all found in this world’s way, we need to be careful as to that last little line which comes after calling attention to the question. “But the people said nothing.” Nothing to say, a history that will in fact repeat when upon that day it becomes that none of us have any words left by which to absolve our guilt or assuage His wrath. All that we’ll find when our time is done is that promise of our own knees bowing and our own tongues able only to say that Christ is Lord, that God is good, that we have failed, and that as the fallen, we’ve earned a forever apart from the Father.

What will our choices made before that moment say to Him who will then hear nothing else we have to say? Are we His, and is such seen in our lives, in our choices? Or are we not as seen inside the same choices made in the same lives lived in the same place at this same time? Because it’s not the time or even the manner that matters. Do we do as everyone else does or as He calls us to? That is the entirety of our responsibility. Live to serve Him or sever our ties to Him.

His kindly giving us of His Word and His Son has taught us to choose wisely. Stay or go? Here or home? Heaven or hell? Now or never? His or not? He will oblige.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold