Day 3410 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Hebrews 13:5 NIV

Money, as has been made manifest in the manmade idol of mammon, has indeed become the root from which grows greed which plants the seed that makes us see only that we need what we don’t yet have, a lie leaving us thinking that life as we get to live it in the light of His love isn’t enough.

Thus forsaking, perhaps even forgetting the beauty of all we do have as defined by all He did to give us what we know now to only always take for granted.

That is the heartbreak of what we’ve socially and selfishly and so spectacularly forced into this existence excited by, existent in only this sense of entitlement which breeds this idea seeking always the enhancement of all experience considered able to somehow expound upon the provision we’ve had to come to see as standard assumption in order for us to always want for the more that this world says we need to ensure is always in store if we’re to know the very limits of a life’s enjoyment. Yes, we live full speed in search of something, always craving a new concession.

Never then able to consider the gifts we’ve been given as we’ve been given over to a mind that’s made to believe that we’re to leave those blessings behind as they’re not at all where life is found, at least not in the fullest measure for which mankind insists it must exist.

Yes, to take life itself for granted has grown into something shown on every screen and in every scene we see anymore. Life here is lived lost in love with all that can’t or won’t love us back, at least not enough to give us life. No, that’s what we discussed a bit yesterday in another 2,000+ word approach to hoping somehow to approach something of some sort of meaning that might make us more aware of the rare air we breathe and who we’ve always to thank for such an opportunity as this is to simply be here with the hope of there.

Indeed, I think we’ve so vastly forgotten God’s goodness as found within this one simple promise that we’ve too come to overlook the rest of His works as done to keep us going under the sun, striving toward the Son who came to save us from us and this life we’ve wanted for us, won for us in which we war only against all He is as we forget all He’s done so we can focus instead on our not feeling bad about all we’ve done and do still to steal our story as if such is in any way even possible.

It isn’t.

And yet such an obvious evidence is evidently not enough for many. For again, we live as if contentment is almost contemptable. We live as if what we have is no longer enough for us to be happy with, to hope in, to have around. Yes, we grow so violently displeased with our days and our lives as lived within what we’ve come to do to them that we seem to always see that there’s something more we don’t yet know that would offer us a greater grip, a grander grasp upon this gift that if a life we’ve long lost to assuming life needed more to live for.

As if living to honor God and revere God and respect God and fear God were all of the sudden something, some things that simply weren’t enough to measure up to all this that is so eternally lesser than the love He literally poured upon this ground to call us to find in Him that same willingness to lay this life down so that we don’t lose what we cannot afford to live without.

Such as the free gift of eternal salvation as achieved in the Son of God who came as the Son of Man to save man from their not living for more than whatever happens to catch their eye and find their fancy focused perpetually under the sun.

But perhaps that’s one reason so many find no worth in His win over the war coming in His wrath for all who refuse to lose their lost way of life. It can’t be bought, free gift as it is. Indeed, Christ gave, and in that giving He staved our getting of any other way by which to accomplish the same outcome with a far bigger share of the glory for which we’re all so undeniably greedy. Yes, greed, again the seed which says we need and shows the scene in which those needs find themselves held always alongside the hope we just continue to assume isn’t already here.

It always been my friends. For that gift of God’s grace which came and took our place and overcame our grave, it all happened long before you and I fell for the fall away. Christ walked this earth a couple thousand before our 70-80 began to count down. And thus the gift came before and lasts still long after all those who came before we got here and did what we’ve done to only continue what they lost along the way.

For such is the gravity of going with the grain. We’ve become a people not at all different from those many generations before us who likewise didn’t get the hint that hope isn’t held inside what we have but that it is always rather had, and then only best beyond the horizon as anything found before there is just something that will inevitably stay here. That’s the message I’ve been hearing resound in my mind for days, weeks, years in some ways I think at this point. It’s something that God’s taken from a faint whisper into a faithful roar over these years of trying to find Him and share His Word in the process.

That if it’s here, so it stays. And too that thus we cannot live to lose what we were never able to keep, but should instead do as He did and embrace our share of a loss of life as if nothing but dust to be shaken from feet walking a line so thin that not even such a hint as a grain of sand from this soiled society can be allowed to remain upon our thoughts nor their thinking beyond the disbelief which defines this downfall fallen for down here.

Why do we continue to fall for it all? Why are we so visibly scared, shaken to our souls at the thought of the loss of this life we’re losing either to Christ or from Christ? Yes, which is it? Are we losing it all to Christ as He takes the place of all the space we’ve otherwise filled with all that’s only here in this place? Or rather are we doing as all others seem content to and losing Him for the simple sake of having something we can hold without our having to hold to the hope that He says only starts in the grave?

Ah yes, I know you hate the grave for the whole world does as to the whole world it’s nothing but the decimation of our chance to design something that does something that gains us something while in this world in which we’ve come to enjoy everything. Indeed, we live as if the only possible purpose of life, the only enjoyment we might ever find in life, of life is to be found only here, only now, and thus only soon before we’re not here no more and then lose our chance to enjoy this dance with all the doubt we’ve designed that’s defined our dire indifference toward the better God gave.

For honestly, what is better than His mercy? Really, is there anything of any comparable beauty to His benevolence? Can we, any of us, point to anything around us that’s of a similar worth to His welcoming us into as share of His Son, the same who won our eternal redemption? Yes, what here is there to have that’s of enough value that it can or could or, and as some, many in fact, say should replace our reverence of His sacrifice as chosen so as to save our lives?

Because that was done to bridge here and home, and so what here is worth our looking not to that hope of that home?

There must be a lot, and in fact I know I’ve gone after a great share of such spoil as a life lived spoiled upon the spoils of this soil spoiled to assuming something here is worth wanting while His promise just keeps waiting for our attention to turn outward instead of the inward we’ve always known. Indeed, we’ve lived a long time looking only inside for the source of life as design by desires that we decide define the direction we’re supposed to descend.

And yet we never really seem to have noticed the light getting darker as we drew deeper into this drawing of our desires which can only lead us always away from His design.

For we here know only to want what’s here, because that’s just how we think life is supposed to lived. It’s always been our looking to blinded eyes to lead us through clouded skies to the assumptions we assume are to come through the other end of our insistence upon this sense of senseless entitlement. But such blindness has become to us an inability to understand that contentment and entitlement cannot exist together for they are enemies from long ago who will never see eye-to-eye.

And thus we cannot anymore remain blind to the simple beauty of God’s benevolence simply asking us to appreciate His goodness in such a way that leaves us not looking any more for any more of anything that we only assume we might need because we can’t see the beauty of all that He’s done and does still to meet our needs every morning. Every single day we are taken care of from up above.

How much longer can we afford to forsake that fact, to forget that gift, to force our God to step aside while we reside inside this idea that there’s here a better ideal than that for which He died only to rise again to life so that we might too follow Him through the end of this loss to the start of His hope as held inside the letting go of all that isn’t leading us closer to Him?

Can we still not see the difference? Paul tells Timothy that godliness with contentment is great gain. Why? Because when we're content with living to honor God, to revere God, to respect God and fear God, we're gaining what can't again be taken. Nothing in this world nor anyone around us can steal Christ from out of our hearts once we've opened that door upon which He's been knocking ever since that stone was sent rolling. Nothing can take Him away, because He promises that very hope right here.

Never will He leave us. Never will He forsake us.

Perhaps never then shall we leave Him. Never again shall we forsake Him. Yes, never ever let us ever again forget Him for in Him is found the contentment with what we have and thus whose we are and then what that means for who we're to be and where we've now the chance to go.

Because you see, that’s yet another lesson we learn from what Paul told Timothy in just a few verses after that of 1 Timothy 6:6 as discussed above. Verse ten says, “For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.” Thus we find the difference in directions as defined by a difference in devotions. And then too a personal responsibility to decide now where we’re going and just how adamant we are to get there.

For the truth is that God is as close as He’s always been, just a humbled prayer away. But yet to we who’re so usually lost inside that sense of selfish entitlement, humility is a heavy burden to consider. What choice do we have friends? He’s promised that He will never leave, and thus that His promise will never fade. What more does He have to do to prove to us that He’s worth the risk of losing a life we can’t keep anyway? Is that really even a risk? Losing all this unhappiness and unrest and disquiet as defined by all these desires we’re designing and demanding be met before we leave here?

I don’t know about you, but as the world around us grows cold and crazy, I want only peace in my life. Not prizes. Not profit. Not popularity or some praised platform which I perform on to the applause of people following me, listening to me, loving me. I don’t want any of that as I can do nothing for anyone. Expect tell them about Jesus as He’s who frees us from such a wasted way of life as one we’ve all lived looking always for more and never then having enough to know the peace that’s already all but impossible in this place.

I just know that it’s not impossible in Him, for what is impossible with man is possible with God, much of it already proven by God, provided by God, promised in Christ. And so why look anywhere else anymore? Seems to me just more wasted time looking to a world that is what the world wishes to remain. I want no part of remaining anything anywhere that isn’t in Christ nor working for His will. That is my only last outlook on life, the only hope I have left. It’s just to honor Him as if such can even be done by someone like me.

It just so happens that I’ve found that a faith’s found me that says He can use me, that He does love me, that He has forgiven me, and that He will continue to so long as I lean on Him and stay in Him rather than turning and returning to always trying for something more of something else. There’s just this inescapable hope in knowing that while yes, we can always have more money or power or possessions prized and prioritized by this world, so too can we end up having less of it all as well.

But in Christ, while we can grow closer to Him and thus have more of His hope and His peace in our lives, if that is our heart’s insistence, then more of Him is all we can have and we will never then know less of His love. His mercy only shines brighter by the day, and to me, that’s reason enough to stop looking to, sifting through all this darkness and indifference trying to find a reason to live.

For He is the reason we’re alive with the hope of that life living forever in a place so perfect we can’t even begin to pretend we can perceive it. So yeah, I’ll personally worry no more for the money or materialism of this world as I know that neither can afford me a faith that’s grown closer to Jesus. Because He asks not for money to ride this rail home. Just asks that we believe, and well, I don’t know how we can if we’re still worried about whatever’s found only here.

No, seems we’ve yet again another choice to make. And thankfully, as with all of them, He died to make it pretty easy to figure out which is the best option. And it ain’t money as it never was.

Nah, give to Caesar what is Caesar’s. I am Christ’s and so whatever I do will be done unto Him, and I’ll learn along the way to smile as the wealth of this world fades, for in that I can be content as I know His love never will.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold