Day 3407 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Hosea 12:8 NIV

For a people who propose their purpose is proven via profit and prize, the popularity of personal possession then purchases only an indifference toward anything other than prosperity and politic.

And this outlook, as outlined here within Hosea’s warning of such worthlessness as worldly wealth and its ability to make one believe themselves better than they are, well, it’s one still rampant within our world today. Slow learners, as it seems we’ve chosen to stay, find only reasons to refuse the lessons not learned by those who’ve already proven within the past a pitiable life perfected by personal preference as opposed to eternal effort simply for the sake of such effort being needed for us to be anything more than we’ve been, which many if not most within this place still today say is more than enough.

Yes, we think ourselves more than enough, a lie given life by the cheers from crowds wasting in awe of the crowns of crayons we color upon our caricature of an existence in which we’re already extinguished.

Yet we never seem able to see through blinded eyes believing only in the disbelief demanded to keep deciding to keep descending into that indifference I spoke of up above. For I fear that the glow of gold and the glory there told is to us the more than enough which we’ve come to believe is worth all a soul should care to know. And so we sit here inside these little castles, entirely content with the conceded contemplation of our caring only to keep counting our coins as if they can buy whatever we may want or need in life.

Indeed, we live as if we can afford life itself, and why should we believe anything less as thus far we’ve done just that. We’ve lived a life buying time as if time is sold in stores or held in that which is held by hands that cannot prove a grasp upon the gravity of their own existence when such is considered so feeble as to be found fully within the futility of our fumbling through fragments and figments frantically trying to find our favorite way to define ourselves.

As if a soul can truly be defined by what is to be proven soon nothing but dust and disaster.

That is what life here has become, has seemingly always been, at least to the billions of blinded eyes that never could believe beyond the barricades of bank accounts and bottom lines. In fact, that is why we assume life so simply afforded that we sell it off days or decades at time, time given then in exchange for some pocket change with which we buy beliefs in the form of mansions and mindsets. Yes, we’re a people who prove ourselves daily to have a price in mind that’s worth the time we don’t care that we can’t get back nor the coming days for which we’d simply rather not worry or war.

No, we have no willingness to want for more than the world and the wealth won within.

For we’ve so sadly come to assume ourselves worth nothing more than all the world has in store for all those who store their treasures, and thus themselves, within the soil and upon the shelves which line the walls of this prison we’ve been building with all the billions we’ve bought at the expense of the souls we’ve sold. Going so very far as to selling off salvation in fact if such means we might afford an affluence that achieves for us, in us an insistence that our life’s substance is such that it can be contained inside that which is forever confined to a life in a world lost in a way that’s fading faster than we can figure.

Alas, that is just the problem. We’ve found ourselves focused within factors and figures figuring we’ll find the foundation of our meaning and therein where we should place all our trust, fame and fortune the favorite among most. But then what most never come close to caring to know is that it’s not our wealth of worldly worth that can win for us a welcome toward where we’ve never wanted to care to be. For sin has earned well a wealth of death as such is its due, the very wages of its workings in fact.

But the bottom line is that if we never find any reason to reach for more than the working wages we’ve sinfully settled for within the wicked ways we’ve settled for, well then nor shall we ever see the inside of those promised gates which wait at the end of a line so narrow that the only way to walk upon it is to walk away from the wasted life that’s not welcome into it. For sin is not at all welcome where He is, for it’s those sins for which He died.

How dare we decide to live as if we can do what we want and assume our wealth can buy our welcome despite our doing what killed Him?

No, no friends, such is as unfair, unjust, unreasonable and intolerable as anything we ought to be able to imagine. To think that our glittering gold and these treasures we hold can equate to the life He laid upon that cross and emptied inside that tomb, no, I dare say that such an idea is perhaps worse than the wickedest things mankind has designed and done. For here we steal and kill and destroy, the children of chaos we’ve become.

But to press such a wicked insistence upon the sort of love that gave Himself for us so that we could then come to see beyond such a disheveled darkness, as if money or manmade material might be the light which can instead lead our way, no. That is as disgusting a thought as I can consider.

Which then leaves me only to consider why we do it so often. Why do we continue to live as if His love isn’t worth more than what we’ve won within a world that assumes wealth within what’s left behind? Why do our days seem so vain unto us that we give them unto the pursuit of prizes with prices that we can pretend prove our worth is worth enough to be welcome where all of this doesn’t belong? Yes, why do we live so lost inside the assumption that everything in this world is worth enough to exist forever?

Or perhaps better, why do we settle for such an assumption when the place He’s promised and prepared offers a peace this place can’t even pretend?

Yes, how on earth can this life on earth be of any worth when held against the hope of a home inside a joy that doesn’t end? I for one cannot find, and look I have, anything that manages to last beyond a day, a week, a year at best. For here is found only all that fades, as such is in fact the fate of a world that’s passing away. Why then build our lives, our selves, our beliefs within a world that one day won’t be? Why deny that we’ve tried?

Why deny that we’ve succeeded?

Is such not all we’ve all always wanted? To live a life lost inside our selfish assumptions of doing something, having something, knowing something that someone else says makes our lives a little better? That is in fact what we’ve all long lived for, but we cannot live like that for long. And that is the problem, and one which poses an eternally impending predicament.

For here we can point to all this tangible evidence of our existence. We can show off our trophies and triumphs as if all the effort and toil for what is nothing but foil is worth the time it took to achieve them. We can give the community a tour of our best efforts, our wildest imaginations, our grandest of intentions and all the inventions we’ve invited to define our existence as one of a substances housed in only what we hold. And we can indeed hear the roar of applauses as the crowds of crows stand in rows regaling our regality as if our vanity is validated in our victories so vast we need reserves to hold them all.

But who’s to be impressed when all this dust has settled again?

See, that is the kind of question the cross asks us to consider. What will any of it mean when we’re found no longer living within a world that keeps pretending that all this mammon and mayhem means anything? Is Christ to be impressed with a wealth of worldly riches? Shall we indeed please our God with great amounts of gold had only because we sold our souls to get it? Will Heaven’s gates fly open should we aim our lives as lived for private jets at them with an insistence that such investments prove our being worth being welcomed?

No.

For just as the foolishness here in Hosea, the reality is that no wealth can erase our wrongs. We cannot buy benevolence as it is always the choice of the other party to offer it. Mercy isn’t made manifest by money, for if it were then it wouldn’t be mercy but rather just another currency that could be traded for. And why should we want something so easy as something traded, something sold, something bought, just more gold?

Yes, what could salvation be worth if it could achieved by so little as a little money or a mansion we live in that keeps us lost looking at all we have, forgetting then all we don’t?

See, this world has a lot to offer, and we do indeed do all we can to gain as much of it as we can. But the danger in such a design as that sort of lifetime is that we’ll be left only looking to what we have or might hold if we had just a little more time in this life. We don’t get that though. We don’t get more time. We can’t buy more life. We cannot prove we’re worth what is only worldly wealth, for to do so as we’ve so done only shows God that we still don’t get it.

Because Jesus didn’t come to show us how to live an affluent life. He didn’t walk around wearing crowns, was only given one at what this world assumed what His end, and even that made of worthless weeds twisted to mock. Rather He came to His victory lowly, riding upon a donkey, a beast of burden bearing the One who bore our burden. Shall we continue building it? Shall we continue earning it? Shall we set our sights upon all that shines as if such is worth as much as what He gave when He took our place, paid our price, saved our souls?

Many sadly will simply because that is the way of this world so lost in the wrong sort of wealth. This place loves things that tarnish and stain. We’ve come to live for nothing more than that which can gather dust or prove itself prone to rust. Yes, the entirety of this side of eternity is spent inside the futility of finding wealth as won within a world that we’re leaving, never agreeing to seeing the pointlessness in gaining all the world only to lose it anyway.

I guess the question then, one we should consider now, is just how much we will actually lose upon that day when this world is lost from our lives that we’re only meant to start here, not stay here. Yes, how much will we leave behind, and along the same line, how much up ahead will we find?

That is the heaviness of hope, something far too massive to make ourselves assume should fit down here. How dare we do so so very boldly so very often? Confining our hope into what we have only says that what we have is worth our hope being held in a place that isn’t home. And I cannot think of a more heartbreaking message to send our Messiah than that. Because He gave His life to prove what life is worth. And it’s just never been worth only the sin that God paid for in the Son.

Friends, what we have isn’t who we are nor can it change what we’ve done. And we cannot afford to live our lives assuming otherwise because God will not be fooled by all our fool’s gold. Thus He sees past the shine and knows the souls that we’ve hidden behind. And though the world thinks that way will work, it won’t. For in the end He will weight not what we have but who we’ve been. So who have we been and is that who we should stay?

The Bible defines us all as sinners who’ve collectively fallen well short of the glory of God, glory we’ve given instead to gold and gain. Is that who we want to be? Shall such remain our identity, proven upon Judgement Day? And if you don’t mind that thought, do you then honestly think that He’s going to forgive all you’ve gotten wrong simply for the sake of all you’ve won?

No, rather let us come to see the necessity of laying down a life as lived within the wrong kind of wealth. For the truth is that nothing here can be worth anything anymore as all it’s always been is but a distraction which keeps us from the fullest of devotion given unto the Son. Do not live your life devoted to things under the sun, because Scripture tells us that one day that sun will stop shining.

Will there be anything left of us when it does?

#LeaveNoSoulUntold