Day 3392 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

1 Corinthians 15:53 NIV

To achieve such a dire difference from what an inevitably ending life deserves demands an undivided devotion desperate to do whatever needed to become what’s never been, knowing that within the novelty of such never is found the only measure of hope we’ve never known.

For as if moths cast blindly into the graven gloom of a world gleaming all aglow with the deceptive luminescence of lights pouring from neon signs and nifty little screens each screaming out a fake freedom found in the forsaking of the Consuming Fire in exchange for forging fellowship with the worst kind of forever’s flame, we’ve become but a continuation of what humanity has always been. Blinded by our beliefs in only that which is skin-deep we seek without ceasing the pleasing of eyes and ears at the expense of safeguarding the soul which strives below the superficiality of our every assumption.

Thus we know not what new might be needed as the old is so repeated that we’re all eternally terrified of rocking this proverbial and pathetic boat in which we boast because we know we’ve never learned to swim, much less become able enough to reach the shore upon which hope is held just beyond the horizon of a life we deny is coming. Because to agree that such a gift truly waits at the end of all we’re getting and gaining in and of this life would demand that we’d thus understand that all we’re chasing in and of this life is only to be lost when the rest of forever is found.

And to a people who, again like moths, flock foolishly to the fakest of flames in search of warmth and worth, we’ve exchanged our welcome into such hope for a measured indifference that’s defined by a willingness to deny the dismissal of all that’s otherwise dissolving us, even if such a relinquishment might indeed set us so free as the Truth has promised to.

For yes, the truth sets free in ways that no amount of shadow can competitively conceal. Sadly, that is for a fact the only recollection of freedom this forsaking humanity has ever known. Because we know only to forsake, to forget, to fail and fall and favor all that’s fake for the sheer sake of never then needing to embrace the grave that would permanently prove the holder of life rather than the apparent ender of such. For that is how we see this most dire difference demanded.

It is just a loss of life and thus all we’ve long lived to live for, look for, want for.

If only we could see that it was merely the end of all that we’ve so sadly settled for.

Because the truth of creation is that settling for such mediocrity as superficiality and self-assumed identity and this publically praised audacity to contend that the meeting and mingling of the two, self-assumption and superficiality, is somehow supposed to become more than the both simply because of our elementary understanding of mathematics. For we seem to see this life as if the adding together of multiple things only always multiplies the outcome.

But the problem is that multiple negatives cannot negate the negativity which defines each.

Such is the precise predicament of sin. For sin is indeed a problem of exponential and only further expanding efficacy expounding eternally this almost enigmatic enmity against reality, against reason, against reverence and the rewarding of a true sense of royalty revealed unto only those with such courage as to count all things lost in this land of such losing as this lascivious finding of favor and fortune to be of enough value to discount the hope held inside the last place we’ve looked.

And it will always be the last place people prefer to peer as to pursue such a path promotes at first a demotion from this way of life’s design demanding we devote our time, our effort, our everything to assuming we’re actually here for nothing more than all that’s here in this rental so temporal that it’s a farce to seek to force something so joyous a hope to be housed here.

For again, as I’ve asked frequently of late, what is hope if hope is had in something we can hold or in something we can have in this half of what isn’t in any way even a fraction of forever?

Trying to wrap my mind around the concessions we’ve made thus far is an undertaking most spiritually unraveling as it asks of us to consider again the fearful misconceptions we’ve considered acceptable. I spend a lot of time reconsidering the mistaken path I’ve walked that’s led me and left me here today trying one more time to find a little more of Him within the audacity of thinking that I might somehow understand what He’s said through His Word after a life through which I’ve lived only the counter.

Because that is indeed the dilemma of our descending so deeply into the darkness of selfish desire. We’ve, again like moths, learned to love only the wrong sources of light assuming everything from love to a life’s very meaning is made within the glow of a world giving off this shine that seems to burn so brightly that nothing else ever known could ever possibly warm our souls so much as a life lived assuming that life is had only here.

And within that saddened outlook is found this reason to run wild and experience as much of this land and its way of life as we can before we can’t. And in that we find ourselves only increasingly willing to do whatever anyone, everyone else says might bring us joy, offer us enjoyment, contain some sort of entertainment able to continue the distraction dividing our attention away from the fact that that whole ‘can’t’ part is coming precariously closer every second we spend breathing air that’s fading faster than our lost minds might imagine.

Because that’s the gravity of this gift of life, one day we can’t live it anymore.

But yet if we’d had the courage to consider beyond our concessions, we might be able to see that such gravity is only outweighed by the outpouring of such a grace as that which gave His life to enter our grave so that we might follow into that one place we’ve not looked for the hope we claim we want but have yet to find.

We talked about that a while back and it’s still one of those confused misunderstandings that I just can’t seem to understand. We claim to be a people who want such good things as hope and peace and joy and purpose. And those things are all indeed encouraging signs that we’re not yet so far dead that we can’t imagine a life lived better. But before our ability to always imagine better there becomes this question as to why we always stop at only imagining what we never have found.

Are such things as hope and joy so non-existent that they simply cannot be found? Does true joy and life’s real meaning just not exist anywhere? Because we’ve been looking all our lives to all these lights shining so bright listening to the sound of a society saying that inside such selfishness as our assuming that we know what we’re doing that we’ll find our favor. That we’ll find that hope, that joy, that purpose and its peace in the place we pave with a path proven in personal perfection in regard to our ability to imagine big enough to encompass those things so beautiful as peace.

Yet we find them not, not even because they’re not available in at least some measure in this place, but simply because even that demands we do something new. For to find something like peace in this place so bent toward war and hatred asks that we no longer assume that the rest of this wicked world knows what we’re looking for. We have to stop letting this land of the lost lead us toward only more of what we’ve already found and felt if we’re to ever find or feel anything better. And while such seems blatantly obvious, it’s apparently not for some reason.

Perhaps just because we’ve become so defiantly blinded by bashing our beady little brains into these lights of this way of life so lost as to again believe only that our best existence is held within an existence that’s ending.

Which forces a mind like mine to stop and wonder why not now?

And agreed, as read from within these words scattered upon this digital paper every day, it’s no secret that I’m trying to be different. And yes, I want to be as different from this world as I can because I’ve been understood and understandable for far too long, and it’s left me only still looking for what I know now was never here to begin with. And so my personal pondering has indeed become in regard to why any of my effort or intrigue is left to be stifled by such a life given to such concession as this world considers acceptable.

How is this outlook that humanity shares in any possible way so wonderful as to have become so preferable? Seems the very epitome of insanity to me. And yet I find a strange new hope in that estimation!

For it seems to be to me a step in finally the right direction as it’s one taken not toward the lying lights nearly everyone else is flocking toward but rather one taken into the light that few here follow. For this light, His light, is the one which promises to lay open our every deed as done in the darkness of self-delusion. His light is the one that lays bare all our blasphemes and the disbeliefs that designed them. His light leaves us losing this life and how we’ve lived it in love with all that knows nothing of love.

Yes, His light leads into the darkest of destinations, asking that we walk by faith into that forgetting of our fellowship with sin so that we might find relationship with the Son, a gift found only in our sharing of His sacrificing of a way of life that was never worth living as it only cost us what He carried for us toward that last place we’ve wanted to look for what we’ve claimed we truly want to find. Thus faith begs the question:

Just how desperate are we to find that hope and healing and joy and meaning that’ve thus far seemed always to evade our every effort given only unto avoiding where we know He said they all wait?

For how else does one clothe themselves with the imperishable? How do we mortals take upon ourselves immortality? How does that which is inevitably ending find the gift of life unending? Where does the one who craves the gift He gave in that grave find a share of such substance as what He’s proven was worth suffering for? Yes, where can we find what He died for us to have?

The answer is easy and entirely obvious. For to grow beyond perishing demands perishing. Mortality cannot become immortal unless and until that which is mortal has finished the temporality of mortality. Unending life, thus known also as eternal life, cannot be lived unless and until the ending life is ended. See, there are plenty of ways to speak of the gravity of the grave as proven beautiful in His grace taking our place without having to say that most dreadful ‘d’ word we’ve all come to despise.

Despise it all you want friends, just know that in despising this temporal life’s design all we’re doing is ignoring the fact that He didn’t design life to be something that ends. We brought that on ourselves. We’re the ones who chose the wages we’ve earned from the sins we’ve loved. We did it. And thus we’ve no one to blame for what we’ve become other than ourselves.

And nor do we have any other to be thankful for, grateful for, faithful toward than He who did what we’d never do to help us find what we’ve never found in all this time spent following our way always away from where He told us new life was waiting.

Yes, He showed us personally what must be done with this life for us to find the one we’ve spent this life not caring about. The perishable must clothe themselves with the imperishable, and we mortals with that which has been proven immortal. And thus Christ has become our life, leaving us now free to leave this one behind simply because He’s proven both that such is needed and also that such is in no way the end we always knew it to be.

No, He knew we’d struggle to see life beyond death, and so He came to prove that the right end to the wrong life is in fact just the beginning of the kind of life He had initially created us to live. Not one lost in the blinding glow of a world gone cold but one lived rather in the permanent peace of a place this place doesn’t care to consider calling home.

So don’t be afraid to lose this lost way of life, for in Him it’s been proven that such is the only way to find everything we’ve been looking for. No, be bold enough to hide your life in Him because we cannot do without what He’s already done. For He has become imperishable, immortal, and for some reason He offers still to welcome us into sharing His unending, just beyond the agreed unraveling of what we’re already losing.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold