Day 3266 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Lamentations 3:24 NIV

Having been handed the win, I don't care what I might lose walking home.

Because I've lived long enough worried about walking away. We've all been commandeered into this concession that has us racing to the finish afraid of the end. It's this idea that life expires, fades away, a candle with only enough wax for us to barely figure out all we want before our time burns down and we've left this story behind without the happily ever after we'd otherwise insist upon.

A life filled with only all we want mixed well with absolutely nothing we don't.

As if that's even the best course along this chance? To focus so fully upon our folly that we feel it most faithful to find faith in only ourselves and this insatiable ability to always idolize something else? A life given to worrying only about all we hope to gain? What is a life if it's only ever given over to a singularity of success?

For what will any others gain should I lose my soul to wasting any longer ignoring the call resounding from the cross?

No, again, having been there, I can say today that I don't understand that. Because I walk daily through the aftermath. Still combing through the ashes of my "best life" looking for anything I might have reaped that's worth equal to the regret it left. Ain't finding much! No, seems all I can see in that old me is just a dumb kid who had cravings bigger than considerations.

And yet, it's truly a strange thing, a personal table over-turned as it were, as it is. Because as it is, I wouldn't change it. Insanity, right? To look back upon a past so utterly misspent that I'm honestly amazed that I'm not dead? I literally had that conversation the other day with my family. We were talking about diet and the things people eat here in this land of drive-thru windows and excess.

But as I sit here clicking away on this keyboard I can say with full sincerity that I had never weighed over 300 pounds, I'd not appreciate the changes God has inspired that have led to down 185. Had I never ate like a toddler without a care about things like heart disease, obesity, the two combined into the potential for "increased on-set fatality", I'd not have learned to enjoy the ability to cook healthier meals for myself.

Had I never become all but addicted to screens and the sickening scenes which flash upon them carving scars that became nightmares upon my memories, I'd not know to fight so fervently for the freedom that's found me in the midst of such foolishness. If I had never walked along not knowing God, I wouldn't be able to sit here for the 3266th day in a row trying to find the words to describe Him.

Because patience, contentment, hope, humility, honesty, they're all honestly not traits or trophies we're taught to try for anymore. This world has hurried us into this haste in which we waste these days trying to convince ourselves we've plenty left to afford the lazy luxury of blowing a few more of these blessings. We hear constantly all these messages from all manner of mixed and maniacal medias making it seem like life means to hurry up and have some fun.

Pharisees putting on a performance that's sadly selling out night after night, life after life, all assuming there is not life after this death we've designed down here in our depraved declaration of doing this our way so that it all goes our way always.

Indeed, we're a people who, though failing to see the many failings we find every single day, manage to always find something to boast about. We're very much a "look at me" world anymore, always were. It's perhaps the most obnoxious symptom of this fallen human condition. Vanity, pride, an ego the size of Pluto, still a planet to me (always cheering for the pint-sized underdogs!).

But the problem is that between our impatience and our pride, we've no time to live life anymore. Always running about heaping up wealth not knowing whose it will be. Seems I've heard tell of this tomfoolery somewhere?

Oh how little we learn when at first we learn to not try anymore!

Because we then learn that we don't have to. We don't have to settle for self-control, not in this world freedoms finding for us everything a glutton could agree they need. Don't have to slow down and think through the choices we make, full speed into the chaos and make changes later if needed. Who needs to be able to be thankful for the little things? Little things won't impress this world we're living to please!

Yes, again, Pharisees! Matthew 23

“Everything they do is done for people to see: They make their phylacteries wide and the tassels on their garments long; they love the place of honor at banquets and the most important seats in the synagogues; they love to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces and to be called ‘Rabbi’ by others." 5-7

Life is a stage, or so we're told. Come up with a show that will fill the seats as such is the standard, and thus the only story worth selling. Yes, selling, saddened souls that are good with selling themselves so long as any should find any use for us. Make someone laugh. Leave someone in awe. Flash a stack of cash that makes a millionaire blush.

But how much attention and applause do we need? How much praise and appreciation will finally be enough for us to move on to bigger and better things? Or is perhaps the problem that behind these masks and their making for masquerades making a mockery of our making before Maker that we've managed to make ourselves actually believe that there is nothing better than everything down here?

I fear that such is exactly the case. That we've actually agreed that there is nothing better for us than to be noticed as we're seeing daily that notoriety and its novelty is nothing to take lightly. It's able to afford anyone everything everyone else has come to need more than wanting to live life. Yes, we are caught in a world caught up being completely convinced that what we want is more valuable than what we need.

Simply because it always seems that are needs are taken care of, obviously then freeing our time to dive so deep into our wants and wishes that we never stop to wonder why we needn't worry about our needs.

That's the sheerest tragedy of all this time we wretched are wasting down here. It's that we take so much of life for granted that we just assume tomorrow's a guarantee. And entwined inside that entitlement is the equally egregious ego-trip which tells us that, well, since tomorrow is going to come, why worry too much about getting today right? Why worry about getting right today?

No, we'll worry about responsibilities such as those tomorrow. As for today, back to the show.

But friends, this show we're selling won't get past the pilot. We're destined for the discount DVD bin. It's such a pathetic plot that nobody else will give us a shot as stealing some of their shine. After all, they're all busy shooting their own stories in the foot. No, we're just a mass of people making such an utter mess of life that it's no wonder at all that we've missed the point and He who proved it so perfectly.

This life isn't about us. Not about us. How could it be? Why should it be? Why do we still so insanely insist it be? What's the meaning if it means what I think it should mean? Can such a beautiful opportunity as this blessing of life truly be so subjective? A collection of years for everyone who gets them to figure out for themselves the best way to live them?

No, I just can't buy that, because I can't afford it anymore. My account has been running in the red in regard to reason and reality for far too long. So long in fact that I'm terrified that He's going to repossess this house of sand I've built before I shake the last little bit of dust from this struggling soul!

And yet such doesn't seem a worry shared by all that many. Don't get we wrong, we see plenty of hurry, just not all that many in that big of a hurry to leave this world behind. We don't see this rush to log out, sign out, clock out, walk out. There isn't some massive movement to move on from the mundanity of this misery we've made of making ourselves replicas of a spiritually retarded society.

No, seems most, for the most part, mostly still agree that it's the seats of honor toward which we should aim. It's the attention of others we ought to live to gain. It's our time to shine so bright that social media sends us some awards for being so stinking awesome at living what plenty of other would agree is a "best life".

Yeah, we just want the trophies and stories of how awesome we had to be to get them. Such is life, a time to win as much as we can before we lose it all in the end. Chasing after the wind? Anyone? Can I then get an amen from the crickets please?

That's the oddity of this objective truth that objects to the objectified way I've lived, we've lived. It comes crashing into our concessions and calls us to collapse this calliope to the ground. He asks us to sift through our stupid to find those crosses we've buried beneath more blasphemes than we remember becoming. Demands that when we finally find them from under all this junk we've become that we then take them up and let them do what crosses are known to.

Kill. Destroy. Finalize. "It is finished."

That victory confirmed by Christ upon our cross is over every sin ever made. Not just the big ones like murder or lust. He didn't just end gluttony and greed. He overcame far more than foul language and filthy habits. It was over laziness, laxity, levity and the lunacy that's long laughed at taking life lightly. He finished our avoidance of reason and reality and responsibility.

Yes, He indeed put to death our depravity but so too our stupidity.

Friends, upon that day He showed that to not care and do wrong is wicked, but as an equal evil is this idea that to do what we selfishly care about is wrong as well. Living to be seen and known and loved and followed by the masses is a mistake. Giving our lives to looking for ways to win approval of people or make people jealous of our accomplishments is unacceptable.

Because such is the way of the world, this world which killed our King. How dare we remain as we were, as they are, as this place will be until this place isn't anymore? We're not to be the same, live the same, want the same as we have in the past. Not if we know what Christ did and want now to know the fullness of where that narrow leads. Not if we want that place He promised us in Heaven.

No, we can't live like those who deny hell and expect to be welcome up there.

So something's gotta change. We have to change. A bigger change than losing weight or changing diets or quitting jobs or cutting ties. No, this road home calls for burning bridges, waging wars, admitting addictions and sinking the ships that left us sunken in our sins that we can never again agree to go back to who we’ve been. Since the promise is far bigger than we can imagine, our response should also be far better than we can offer.

That's what I think most fear about the fullness of this faith. They know the fullness He deserves for all He did. Christ doesn't deserve to look upon a people claiming themselves among the saved still living like the swine. He doesn't deserve to have endured that cross for a people who won't endure sound teaching or shoulder the transformation His truth is meant to ignite inside.

He deserves to see a people dying to self just like He did upon that cross. He should see a world waking up to the reality of our fall into an immorality so vast that we tremble at every realization of who we've been. He should see hearts on fire for Him, burning so hot for the hope of Heaven that nothing we once lived for matters anymore. He should witness a people who got the message and agree to what we read here in Lamentations.

That He is our portion, our percentage, our prize. He is our place, our purpose, our passage to the promise of both combining into a peace perfected forever. Yes, I want to reach the end of this imperfection with the ability to say that Christ has become my salvation, my shepherd, my support. That I don’t need the praise, the popularity, the profit. I have no need for the applause, the adoration or any attention whatsoever.

No, I personally do not feel the need to be noticed nor do I need to make a name as I have His making up my identity now. I can’t do anything more meaningful were I to sit in the highest seat of honor or impress the world with the eloquence of my voice nor the perfections in which I can only pretend to perform whatever prose or position I think might impress His opposition.

I've come to find that down here has nothing for me because as I’m not me anymore but rather an emissary, a messenger, a representative, a herald of our lone hope, all I need, all I want is just more of Him. Because as time fades away, I see more every day that He is my hope, my home, my healing. He’s my job, my judge and my jury. He is the Name that is above all names, and yes, that even means mine.

And so too does it mean yours.

And that means that I cannot live to impress anyone anymore as they can't get where He can. Perhaps that sounds selfish, and maybe it is. But with Heaven on the table, I'm going for it whether it makes sense or not!

Friends, this world has all sorts of pretty amazing things to offer any and all who do it their way. Or so it's been made to seem. Sadly, it does seem that things like popularity and fame and fortune are not only acceptable priorities in life, but to many they're worth more than life itself. I just can't agree to that. Can't get there again. Because again, already been. Had the friends, had the attention, had the achievements that I was told were important.

It's all become a fading memory or massive regret at this point. And so I can't do this that way anymore.

No, I'm narrowing it down. Reeling it in. Searching for every speck of dust left of this world in my life that I might have nothing of here found when awaiting His decision as to where I go from here. I want Heaven, and so I can't agree to settle for living a life that doesn't belong before Him.

I will wait for my reward, my recognition, my rest. Sure, life might be easier here if I hurried to find them before forever. But no, I want something that lasts. And simply put, a life lived in a worldly way just can't. No, I'll take the promise of peace for eternity, even if it means living a life of what others might see as misery and emptiness on the way home.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold