Day 3405 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Matthew 13:22 NIV

Of all the seeds of assumptive outcomes and outlooks I’ve sown throughout my life or otherwise has sown into my life from another’s outlook, I sure thought I’d have seen something of a harvest of by now.

But as it turns out, it seems that to be unfruitful is quite possibly the only harvest humanity can ever reap in regard to faith and our faithfulness to anything other than foolishness. For alas we do appear plenty content to grow in time, in tune with this world in which we were planted as if we’re pleased at the possible plausibility that so many other people prefer and pursue. Yes, we seem entirely okay with this outlook of such meager expectation of having the whole world always at our fingertips, hands then never grasping beyond the held.

Indeed, all our life we look to what we have and hold to hold the hope of our lives looking as if they have meaning enough to leave us leaving here feeling like we meant something somehow.

And yet it seems to me that all we care to try and mean is whatever means most to those thorns among whom we grow within this wasteland so wealthy in wants and thus destitute in devotion. For the two must exist together, as neither can truly break apart as truth cannot stand against itself nor apart from itself. And thus, where there is wealth so too is there poverty nearby. Much the same, wherever we find or feel a lack is likely overlooked by the plenty we have in our preference to peruse our prizes as won in lives that haven’t been lived to add to that which is lacking.

No, again we’re plenty content to leave things lay, a life at laze always looking away from what needs our attention if our intention is to actually become the better for which our mouths believe beyond hearts that are hardened to such a hope as something better than we’ve been or been known to be. Indeed, we live amongst such noise that we ourselves never dare notice the silence of our souls starving inside a way of life we’ve never found the courage to live as it’s lived lonely and looking elsewhere for the hope of a life bettered by the best of company.

Perhaps it’s just because we know the odds of finding such a rarity as another bent on our mutual edification and how much rarer such a reward is becoming in life. And yes, the truth is that we are scattered among so many who just so clearly have not a care about any other and so we have every right to assume that the thorns among whom we grow are only going to keep doing as they been losing and letting go of all hope in anything that could and would be better for all.

No, this world is anymore so divided and distracted that the chance of enhancement to this experiential outcome is much the same as it’s always been.

Thus the need to choose for ourselves what we win and when we lose for those are again the only two guarantees of this life as lived within a world gone cold.

All shall win, something at some point, but then too all will lose everything eventually. It’s this truth that shatters our preconceptions of a perfected path paved toward a profitable and popular life. But what we seem to always insist that we fail or see is that it must be that way. The truth has to offend if it’s to offer. Otherwise it’s nothing but yet another lie levied at leaving all who hear it no better for it. And well, I just can’t consider how the Word might be of such tepidity when Christ died to bring it.

Makes you wonder then why we who’ve been given it seem so scarcely bettered by it. Is it not only because of the fear of our being lonely? Our worry over looking weird? Falling once more into this failure to realize that it’s not human eyes which perceive all there is to see of eternity but rather the One who came to see through our stains to save the souls inside that understands the truest purpose of life and thus the necessity of a solidarity as spent upon the Rock which offers our hopes a solid place to stand?

Yes, we do indeed need just such a foundation of faith if we’re to ever be made back into who we were at first created to be, a people who walk by faith and scorn the suggestion of sight ever again daring to define or determine where we go, who we are, what hope is or why it’s worth the wait. For that is the truth which sets captives free, prisoners such as you and me. Because we are indeed those who forged our own chains or grinned as the world got theirs sunk into these souls we’ve left starved for meaning among the thorns thriving in this world.

We just so happen to have at the same time become entirely, eternally blind back here behind those blind leading our way, living our lives, looking out for their best and insisting that such is the same as ours.

That is a right tragedy in life as life has sadly come to be nothing more than a bunch of blind guides telling broken souls that hope and meaning and joy and reason are all held only within this world so filled with hurry and hardship, hatred hustling humanity only heavier into the want of having something to hold, as we’re told that holding something is all we should be hoping for in life. As if life is actually able to be housed inside something made by thorns that know only to choke the chance we’ve all been given at something undeniably better.

Yeah, seems that everyone down here knows the way and we’re all in a raucous hurry to hear someone else justify, verify, magnify our mishandling of life as made within our making what we assume still is our way toward our will. And while we’re all well willing to go out of our way to get our way, well, all that does is lead to what we already have and more of who we already are. And all we already are is just a malnourished mankind, a community of chance choked by choice.

Because that’s all that matters to thorns. It’s this idea that we have a choice as to what life is meant to mean. That we can make something, make our way to something, make ourselves into something that somehow says we knew best what our lives were meant to be. As if we could ever possibly see anything beyond the barricades of the choices we choose only for the chances they give that we assume leave us nothing to lose. Yes, we’re a people safe and scared, unwilling to suffer for the sake of something such as salvation.

All because that’s not what those around us choose to do, and as nothing but the seed of sorrow which is what we’ve grown to be as those who agree to never try for more than whatever this world has in store, so too have we agreed to have our potential pruned into our becoming nothing more than whatever everyone else chooses to say is best.

Yes, always looking to the world to tell us what’s best as beheld through blinded eyes as always something with a price tag proving a wealth of worldly worth to all those who assume that such worth is where our real wealth is proven. It isn’t. Never was. I mean, as we talked about a few posts ago, God’s made it clear that He desires mercy and not sacrifice. For He came in Christ just to help us see that this world has nothing we need as He laid down a worldly life to inspire us to do the same.

Because He knows that a life lived choked in a worldly way will only ruin our hope of ever having any hope of anything after here.

And yet we’re a people still proving the past perfectly repeatable. We spend our days replicating and repeating the rebellious revelry of our ancestors. We do so in that we, as they, still equate richness to righteousness and thus assume ourselves safe from wrath because of our self-perceived worth as proven, according to the thorns we grow among, upon bank accounts and our ever-growing following on social media feeds.

Indeed, we think that our money can buy mercy, that our goods are equal in trade to grace, that forgiveness is found by those with the fortunes that we believe can afford favor as found within favorites founded within a friendship with those foolish enough to think God cares how many followers we have on facebook.

Yes, we’re a people wealthy in many things, but all of them worldly, and friends, God has no need for worldly gain. We’ll not impress Him with our affluence as assumed within things we own or could otherwise afford. We shall not please Him with our pitiable proof of power or prestige, the profits of people who equate themselves prophets who peddle lies that keep people building such lavish castles as the lies of sand we dwell within. No, we’re fooling ourselves by thinking that our lucrative advancements are actual achievements in which He’s to be pleased or impressed.

No, God is pleased by a broken heart, a broken and contrite spirit, giving the Kingdom of Heaven to the lowliest of all.

For as we’ve so clearly forgotten at the suggest of a world which claims still they never knew, the first shall be last and whomever lives coming in last will indeed be first. Thus what we have isn’t who we are, and nor then are our riches of comparable worth to the righteousness in which God deals. And such is why the call to sell all you have and get wisdom. Give all you have to the poor and then follow Christ. Let us aim for the eye of the needle, not to remain within the eye of this storm of selfish gain we think will earn us a seat on the last train out of here and heading home.

Because against the arrogance of man, the reality of eternity is that we can’t buy a ticket nor barter for first class along the way. No, all we can do is lose this lie we’ve loved in life and realize that Christ did just that for us. And He did it not asking that we first be popular nor have a wealth of personal or public profit with which to pretend we’ve earned our welcome where He is. He laid down His life not merely for those who had it all figured out as proven within worldly wealth or a plethora of friends or a title that inspires all who hear of it to walk away in awe of how awesome we are.

He laid down His life for the meek, for the humble, for those who are ready and willing and somehow miraculously able to have in this world of blindness and deafness rather eyes that see and ears that hear and hearts that are open to humility as they come to know that within such is the only place where hope is found. And yet that’s a place we always look last as the world leads us on a never-ending wild goose chase going after gaining the world at the expense of the souls we starve along that way.

That is the foothold we give the devil each day. We talked about that just yesterday, the call to not give the devil a foothold. But I fear we fail to understand just how hard a calling that is in this world as we are so surrounded by those who not only give him a foothold, they insist he have a footrest while they too rest from trying to live upright and responsible lives within this land we’re leaving.

And yes, I talk of such an exit all the time it seems. But that’s only because it’s one of the heaviest of life’s inevitabilities, and also the one we all tend to ignore or deny more often than not. But we can’t afford to do that forever, even if the world around us insists otherwise. For one day our eyes here will close, and so it won’t matter what we’ve seen but rather what’s stolen our focus. One days our ears will hear no more the lies of this land living like we’re not leaving but instead the truth we either lived for or lived against.

Yes, a day is coming when the harvest will be ready as the opportunity at growth comes to a close. And upon that day, He has said that the weeds will be gathered and thrown into the fire while the seed He sowed will be gathered to Him and taken home.

That is why I’ll spend my every remaining day fighting however I can against the common complacencies of a world lost and living as if there’s no beauty in believing beyond this life we’re leaving. Because I’ve lost enough of who I’ve been to finally realize that this life has nothing to do with what we have but rather where our hope is grown. And so I know the danger of growing hope among thorns, and too I know the pain of being pruned and watching my life as I knew it ebb away without having any idea how to keep going without all that I spent all that time knowing.

Yet therein lies the beauty of dying to a world walking always away from the Way. We find in Him a faithful friend who offers to walk with us not just to what He says is best for us, but as proven with a cross and a tomb, so too is He willing to walk us through the worst that will come along the way there.

But friends, please don’t live your life trying to pay Him back with the profits of worldly wealth or public praise. This world may be filled with many who think such things mean something, but truth is that they’re the only ones who think that such things matter. And you are welcome to go along with them if you think such are what He’s looking for. But judging from the way He walked this earth, I think they’re not at all what He’s looking for from us. Not even close!

No, I don’t think He’d have planted the seed of truth which is meant to grow differently from the world in which we’re sown until finally blossoming into a beauty so incredible that it needs all of forever spent in peace in His presence to embrace the gift that life has always been if life was meant to only be what so many here have allowed it to become. Don’t settle for living a life like those who are fine staying here. For He didn’t create us to exist in a land so polluted, so corrupted, so calloused and cold as this world has chosen to become at the insistence of His, of our adversary.

Rather He created us to be His, to remain His, and to do so forever, a hope found only in Heaven. Please don’t miss that just because a world filled with thorns and weeds and wickedness thinks it not worth the wait or the war it takes until then.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold