Day 3374 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Ezekiel 11:19 NIV

A promise so crucial as the expanse between Heaven and hell demands an undivided devotion given unto the hope of the first, not this indifference we tend to show toward the second.

And though we do try to deny that we live inside such eternal indecision as deciding every day to descend again into the darkness of sin, such is the very danger designed inside our taking so lightly the gift of eternal salvation from the sinful damnation we’ve all but demanded. For that all but infernal negligence is seen when shown alongside such obviousness of our obliviousness to the true gravity of our disgrace being thrown in the face of the One who embodies such grace as to take our place in our grave.

That is what Christ did, and since He alone now sits on the other side of our chosen death at the right hand of the Father, it matters not how desperately we deny our indifference as He’s already paid the cost.

Just a matter for us to now determine what is lost and when.

For the mercy of the Messiah is made manifest within us within that He came for us to save us from what we’ve at least agreed to have made of us, madness made in us. Indeed, we are but monsters, the very legion of those so lazy and lackadaisical that we look upon the hope of Heaven and see still scattered around us, often times within us, a rampant hesitation to humble ourselves to that hope for we’ve come to equate hope with a prize won not in humility but rather in hostility.

Yes, we live in a world in which hope is had by those who fight for it. And while such is indeed the design of this hope to which we’ve been called, a hope held within new hearts belonging where the old ones once beat to the tune of tepidity and its turmoil, I think perhaps we’ve misunderstood the opponent against which this fight must commence.

Because we’re a people who fight people. We argue and bicker at the insistence of such unintelligence as our still assuming we know what we’re doing when our very lives are lived inside such a sorrow that shame falls in rains that never seem to stop pouring for more than a day or two at most. We complain and whine against those who make our time more begrudged, more belittled, more baffling in their audacity to deny our beliefs and our need to have such weakness as belief validated by another.

Side note, why do we still see belief as weakness? Another day perhaps.

Anyway, back to our need of external validation. For indeed, such is one of only two outcomes of our opinions. Others can either agree with them or argue against us over them. That is it, and that is why I feel that few need to know my opinions, as I even find myself asking God all the time to help me see past such preconception so that I might see instead for once His direction as given from that hope of Heaven toward which we should be fighting, not merely hoping.

I’ve hoped in Heaven for a long time, imagine we all have. How couldn’t we? Why wouldn’t we? It’s the promise of a peace impossible in this place. It’s the joy we’ve long sought, found finally in perpetuity rather than in the pieces promised and promoted from within popularity and profit as preferred by this world. It’s the reward worth losing for, and yet we’re a people perfectly positioned to never lose anything so that we’ve not any risk of increased need.

For we hate needing things as that agreed insufficiency to our life’s outcome shows only our inability to be or do who and what we’ve long said we’ve done and been.

I reckon it’s just rather humiliating to have to admit that we’re not good at this, so bad in fact that we’ve betrayed our souls at the inspiration of these wayward hearts so lost in want that we don’t realize how bad we need that hope of all things made new. No, rather as a people of vanity and pride we live as if our lives need only a facelift so that things look better, so that our eyes which tarry upon the surface of our existence can see a better show and thus assume a better purpose.

But what if we allowed ourselves to believe beyond the surface? What if we agreed with God in that we need to hope beyond what we know of hope as had inside something we’ve held or hope to hold? What if we could see that the sort of new we need is not a matter of the changes of scenery for which we struggle and strive nor the addition of some other inspiration begun by some new update or progression as chased by a world lost assuming that such is the best way to prove improvement.

No, we need to be made new, ripped away from the oil that is our old so that we might now blend into the Living Water that came to pour such goodness into us that we live never again as if we’re unsure as to what matters most in life but that we might see finally that there’s but one matter that could ever mean most in life:

Jesus Christ and the promise of all this newness offered unto us from a passage like this one.

Alas, the sort of new nodded to in verses like this from Ezekiel are speaking of a novelty so nuanced that literally everything changes, everything. For that is truly what we need entirely if we’re to know that hope of eternity. And see, that’s the sadness to all this. We think, much like hope is something to fight over rather than fight for, we too think it a matter only able to be imagined. In fact, we live as if we can only imagine hope, as if hope is something far too imaginary to be something of actual substance.

And thus hope remains an idealized idea, an ideology in which we imagine rather than foundation upon which we build. All because we’ve become convinced that hope is a matter for the mind rather than the home of our heart. And granted, we’ve fairly stumbled upon such an assumption due to our having lived in utter disregard to both God’s design and Christ’s death as died to redefine what should matter inside.

But that’s never to say that it’s within such insanity that we should stay.

No, in fact that’s what we see offered us here. Everything new. From life to death to our understanding of their specific meaning, everything is changed in Christ. Everything. But still we seem assumptive into almost certainty that He doesn’t need to do such radical change as our actually undergoing heart surgery. For again, we’re a people who live upon the surface of everything, a people lost inside the superficiality of society. And so we think that all we need is God to grant us our wishes so that our lives look like the better we’ve imagined.

But in truth, a facelift won’t fix our problem.

We don’t need our lives to look better. We don’t need our bank accounts to show a better number. We don’t need social media feeds to prove our existence via a higher amount of followers. But mostly we just don’t need, not anymore, to allow our hearts to grow so hollowed and hopeless as assuming otherwise! For that is how we’ve lived, how we live, but please help me see where the life is.

Because it seems to me that anymore all we are is just a people of repeated pasts proving we’re incapable of moving on. We’re stuck like glue to all we’ve been through, afraid then, afraid now of what we might need to go through to get through to the better we once imagined. Indeed, we’re all but afraid to imagine having given so much of that sort of hope to so many things that proved so hollow in the outcome that we have no reason left to even believe in our idea of best.

We’ve lost so much to following foolish hearts destroyed by desire that we’ve all but decided to die where we are just so we needn’t risk losing what we don’t want to keep.

Is that not weird to anyone else? That we’d rather not lose what we don’t like just so we don’t have to fight for what we know would be better? That we would just as soon live a life we know is miserable than to die the death needed to revive our hearts to living for, fighting for, moving toward the hope to which we know we’ve been called? Why are we afraid to answer the phone?

If not because we know He’s calling from within a tomb?

I think that, as hopeful as someone like me may happen to see it, this verse is likely one that instills a great deal of doubt and worry in others. Because we’re afraid of losing everything, and that’s fine, I get that. But all of us know what happens if our hearts are lost, and I don’t mean to mistakes made nor desires directing us into more disasters. I mean that we all know what would happen if our hearts were taken. Just as a car doesn’t drive without an engine, nor can we live without ours.

And so when we see here that He’s going to remove our hearts, many likely hear only that He’s going to end our lives. And for once they’re right!

Because friends, that’s what we need more than anything. We need Him to end us. We need Him to put an end to our destroying of us. We need Him to lead us into, unto the end of us so that we might see, finally, that our end is merely where He begins. And if He begins where we end, then so too is that the point wherein hope becomes something far bigger and far more real than just something we try and usually fail to feel.

No, when we find our end, that’s where we find that our hope is Him, and that He is so very real that from that moment on, all we really question is everything we thought we’d known of life before.

And to me, there simply isn’t a more blessed or beautiful gift than sitting inside all these changes He starts making once He revives our hearts to living for more than we settled for before. For that is all we’ve known of life, just to settle. Settle for assuming that seeing is believing. Settle for believing is best left to little kids. Settle for thinking that we know what we’re doing despite the way of life we live that says only otherwise as tears and fears stain our face into an almost palpable despair.

Settle for agreeing that hope is something subjective, a subject of perspective.

No, friends, hope is had in knowing Him. For in that moment when He finally becomes more real than everything else, that moment is when hope is no longer an idea, a theory, a distant desire always elusive and eluding. No, in that moment, hope invades our hearts, our new hearts, in such a way that we feel nothing else but hope. And that brings about the kind of change that we’ve sadly agreed to deny.

And there is no greater sorrow than knowing so many will deny His hope simply because of their fear of that change. For in truth, this change that He begins becomes so amazing that we ache to rid ourselves of everything else that has or is or could possibly keep us from knowing more of this One who came to die so that we might live the kind of life for which we’ve always hoped, a life lived in peace, a life lived in hope, but a life we’ve never been able to know.

That was before. This is today. And while that which has come before tends to define the outlook of today, let the world settle for that if they so choose. Dare to choose something different. Dare to do something different. Dare to ask yourself to ask Him to make something new in you, no matter what we might know that might mean.

For while His kind of new is usually kind of drastically done, I think we could all agree that we need something drastic done if we’re to find what we’ve not found before. Because while it may indeed be far easier, feel far safer to just stay the same, all we can find along that line is the same. And if you’re truly okay with that, fair winds and following seas my friend.

But if you’re like me, and I’m willing to bet that you are, and you want more than the nothing you’ve ended up with so far, then something drastic needs to happen. And well, what’s possibly more drastic, more hectic, more life-altering than new hearts that are designed as the first ones were, to remain undivided in their devotion to their Designer?

Yes, we blew the first ones apart in search for something to fill them with of this world so hollow as to hope in nothing more than staying here. Let us let Him teach us how to not do that again. For although He’s proven that He can overcome such a death, we probably shouldn’t push it. Especially since we seem to agree to what He said it took to give us this chance. Not worth taking this new hope so lightly as we have proven to take hope in the past.

For while He may not run out of ability to create in us new hearts, He just might run out of reason to keep offering them should we keep destroying them to deciding that hope isn’t worth losing everything to find.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold