Day 3398 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Micah 6:8 NIV

It seems to be that we’ve sought so severely to muddy the line of mercy in order to avoid the responsibility that we’ve otherwise lost sight of the whole point of His purpose.

Looking around and even considering within, you’d think that what God asked in exchange for this gift of eternal life as found within our salvation defined as the atonement of our sins and the refusal to allow them to so easily continue determining our thoughts and words and actions going forward, a newly minted mindset achieved by our saying we’ve seen and understood the suffering and sacrifice of His Son, was something so incredibly intolerable, so veritably impossible that none could even consider it.

Indeed, we live like a people who can only consider the countenance without ever nearing a contemplation of the cost. For we do indeed love the idea of eternal peace and, as found within such a joyous hope, a present purpose. Problem is that it does give us a purpose while in this place, and it’s one that this life as we’ve lived it just can’t uphold.

Meaning then the utter end of who we’ve been so that, in Christ, we might now be something far more than ever before.

That is the purpose of His coming to free us, save us, enroll us into Him as once within we’re only then back where we should have been, always could have been. But rather we’ve been most busy betraying such hope, lambasting that identity, denying His call to remember we were made in the image of divinity, an image otherwise tarnished and torn here inside the fallout of our having so lost our minds that we seem entirely able to only seldom consider the cross and still almost always turn away for the simple sake of His asking us thereon to change our ways so as to evidence that we agree such was needed.

It’s just that we don’t want to agree. Because to us, change is a close cousin to death itself as it seems to blinded eyes only to mark the beginning of the ending of everything we’ve always been, the missing out of all we’ve always wanted, the relinquishment of all that we’ve already found and the undertaking of a sort of selflessness not known of along this ground so paved with politic and pride pretending us a people of perfected power posed upon our play of pretend in which we perform as if unable to err.

Oh, but we have!

For to err is to breathe unto us most fallen of creation. Indeed, considering how we were at first given charge over the rest of God’s inception, the only part of His invention that was bestowed with His very image, given the authority over the entirety of His workings, no, we’ve indeed fallen farther from the first than any other of God’s makings. For maybe animals make mistakes, birds could perhaps fly into wrong winds of want, fish might swim into sin, but I dare say that even then none have so perfected the art of walking away as we have.

No, we’ve long been a people who know only to follow the wrong leadings in this world. We look in fact to this world to lead us as if such might free us from the sheer misery we assume made within responsibility and reason. Indeed, we live like we can always offload, outsource our living of our lives to whomever seems to have a better idea as to what to do with them, as if any of us might actually command the audacity to define such a reason as a person’s life and their having not given it unto themselves.

That’s the realization that seems to always undermine humanity’s arrogance, and thus obviously the one most entirely ignored and fiercely debated whenever approached by any. For we must retain this sort of spiritual retardation in which we believe only in ourselves as being the lone source of what we’re to assume as best. And despite our having walked in every direction looking direly for such a dream as that we’ve all had, we’ve had alas nothing but mistakes made in every choice we’ve tried.

Which should inspire us to try something different, so much so that anything involving ever again any of us is never allowed upon the table from which we discuss what best to do with us, what best to do for us.

For life is not, as we’ve so solemnly and stoically assumed via the arrogance always alive inside, a matter meant for our putting ourselves first in such search as to what we want done as defined by what we think best. Rather our lives are themselves a gift given meant to then be given away back to the Giver for the particular purpose for which He designed them. Thus meaning all our plans and purposes are merely distractions demanding we remain apart from the only hope that might hold us together long enough to get where we’ve otherwise no chance to go.

Because that reward which is the most hopeful promise of a place prepared in a home called Heaven is entirely too good for a horde of heathen like we’ve been most adamant to remain. Indeed, just the very thought of peace, of rest, of calm and tranquility and the sheer possibility of a time without weeping or hurting or walking in fear always afraid of living life any way other than our own, such is in itself an idea entirely beyond what we should be able to comprehend.

And yet we not only seem able to comprehend, to consider, but indeed some have found in Him the very ability to believe!

Thus He has become unto us the only source of all that’s good, as such was always the designed intention of the Good Shepherd humbling Himself to the taking on of mortality as ruined by us so as to redeem us from such ruination as this sinful inclination as inspired within hearts so deceptive and minds so depraved that life itself has become disheveled and debased into an utter disregard for the hope He is in exchange for the ideas we have.

As if our ideas might actually find themselves so comparable to eternal life that we can waste this temporary trial upon every death-giving venture that we might crave, assuming at best all along that He might say that such is okay, that we’re welcome where we’ve never wanted to even pretend we might want to be. Come on home anyway, even though lifetimes have been spent unto the sin which says only that we care not to consider what is good as we know only to revel in what we can only assume to be good enough.

Yes, we’re a people so measured in our faith, in our lives, in our minds that we live as if the pinnacle of our potential is always held within that which is good enough. All because we know that the risk of trying beyond our best may indeed prove the very death we’ve always assumed as merely the end of life. And so we live as if our very best is as far as we can live, never then knowing nor ever caring to consider what might be better.

Because let’s face it, He showed us what is good, and what did He get?

We don’t want that. That sort of brutality. We don’t find the need to embrace such disgrace as what the cross says He took in our place. But friends, that’s just it! He took it in our place. He took our place. He paid our debt, died our death, ended our lives, and in that, while yes, we die too, in Him we also live again! Graves are emptied as pasts are wiped away. Mistakes erased with help offered to keep from making them in such number as we’ve been known to before.

Yes, before. That is the most wonderful working of His will into a life so wasted in our living it our way. He’s bestowed upon us now the opportunity to have a before without the brutality He endured to achieve it. He died that we might leave behind the belittlement known as our best as He always had more for us, put more in us than what we so selfishly assume to be the best we can be. Life isn’t about our assumptions trying to account for our reason for being here.

Rather life is about our unraveling all we’ve thought we understood about what might indeed be good so that He can instead remind us of His will for us, as His will is for the good of all those who love Him.

Can we say we do? Can we, in any measure of honesty, say that honestly, yes, we love Christ? And if we think we can, how can we when still we tarry between the cost of the cross and His call for us to take up ours?

See, He has truly shown us what is good, laid down His very life so that we’d have no way to say we’d missed it. No, He didn’t leave it to words He’d have to hope we’d heard. He didn’t write His will only in some book that He knows many will never read. Nor does He stand only inside church buildings, giving His hope only unto those who boldly admit they need to be near Him, and then seek out a steeple as if the Shepherd is held inside something made by man’s hands.

No, He showed us what is good in pouring out a love so vast that even the grave couldn’t hold it all.

And what does He ask in response, a request again that we all seem so violently shaken by having to consider? To act justly. To appreciate justice. To live in such a way that is as just as He is. Oh the horror! Indeed, He goes on in asking us to love mercy, how maniacal! To be merciful unto one another, to appreciate His mercy in such a way that we walk not in our way anymore but rather embrace the miracle that is His mercy that’s made a new Way into a new Life lived by a new Truth, the Truth which defines the mercy which faith says saved our lives.

Such a soul-shaking request indeed!

No, no I actually don’t think they are as we are a people who at times approach an appreciation of justice and living justly. Sometimes, not often at all by any means, but at least the idea is there from time to time. And nor do we seem to mind mercy as we know well that often times we need it as found in the forgiveness of saying something we shouldn’t have that hurt someone we care about or our having done something that cost us something. We don’t really mind mercy, at least whenever we need it.

Reckon then it’s the last part of this verse here in Micah that leaves us at a loss in regard to our cost of the cross. To walk humbly with God. For indeed, humanity has no want for humility. Pride has so ruined us in that regard that we all writhe and wretch and wrench our teeth at the very mention of such mediocrity as humility. For we can see no gain in letting go, no, such is the antithesis to our very existence as we’ve chosen to waste it.

And that is exactly why He did what He did to show us what is good.

From His Word being breathed for our benefit to His Son coming to seal such a benevolence, we’ve no room to anymore wonder as to what is good. Guess we just need to maybe start wondering as to why we still at times seem to care so little as to live our lives still not trying for the better for which He gave His. Yes, why, or rather how can we look at the cross, consider the Christ and still come to any understanding, any conclusion other than humility allowing our walking now wherever He leads no matter what we see in and along the way knowing that in Him mountains might move and giants might fall and graves might open meaning then that life may never end?

Because friends, if He is so very good as to lay down His life that we might not lose ours eternal, what makes us think we’ve anything to lose of this life He showed us how to lay down so as to leave behind the sins which have always kept us apart from Him?

No, He has shown us what is good, and all He asks is that we live within a new way of life that shows Him we understand it. For He is just, He is merciful, He is humble, and He is good. And He’s proven them all by taking our place so that we can run for the place He’s prepared on the other side of all the little that He asks of us in response to all He’s given to help us see that there is indeed nothing to lose but only eternity to gain!

Please don’t let your fallen understandings and fearful failings convince you to think that He’s asking for something we can’t give. Because all He’s really asking for in return for His laying down His life to achieve our eternal salvation is that we too lay down the life we’ve lived that made such a sacrifice such a necessity.

Surely we can muster that.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold