Day 3411 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Matthew 23:16 NIV

As it was then, so it remains now. For we’re still but a people so blinded by the presents that we can’t even begin to pretend we appreciate the presence.

No, it’s quite amazingly tragic, a true horror story of old, this story still told of just how tarnished our devotions have become as they’ve been nothing ever but a replica of the revolting irreverence of all those degenerate generations who’ve gone before us. Indeed, we know only to rinse and repeat nearly all of life. Sure, we tout our technological advancements and boast about our bravery in this so called and self-perceived assumption of our having progressed something. But there remains this underlying reality in that we’re nothing at all any different than the blind who’ve always looked only to follow those who likewise will not see.

For the truth is that we’ve all eyes which could but yet we’ve hearts that won’t simply because to care is to fight but to live is to buy and you just can’t buy belief nor the courage it needs to consider a life beyond that seen by eyes blinded by the disbelief of glittered gain.

Yes, it really is incredible just what ideas and idiocies we can invent when at first we agree to see nothing any differently than those who’ve taught us how to live our lives so vastly lost in always looking for ways to win at life as won by the lifeless who live only for that which is lifeless. Never then seeing the palpable irony of such a magnificent stupidity. For as it turns out, we indeed are very much defined by where we allow our treasures held, a fact found in Scripture as it were.

Asked therein to store for ourselves treasures in Heaven, for where our treasures are is too where our hearts are. And thus the obviousness of the warnings against idolatry, for if our hearts are set upon the lifelessness of manmade material and mammon, then so will our lives become lived lifeless as we grow to go for only the gold which holds nothing but the most temporal of worth. Yes, so long as we look to, live for, live within these idols we’ve come to make of everything we’ve made, so too shall we be nothing more than whatever we might make for ourselves, of ourselves.

Indeed, we see this promise provided quite perfectly, quite profoundly in Psalm 135, verses 15-18 specifically. “The idols of the nations are silver and gold, made by human hands. They have mouths, but cannot speak, eyes, but cannot see. They have ears, but cannot hear, nor is there breath in their mouths. Those who make them will be like them, and so will all who trust in them.”

Voiceless, sightless, deafness, breathless, lifeless. Just an existence crafted, created, confined and curated as if we’re to never be nothing more than something fashioned to fit upon a shelf or spend its life in a box or appeal to a people simply because of the amount of digits in the price hanging upon the hole where the heart should be.

Yes, a people who live their life according to the gold which steals our sight will themselves sell whatever they have in order to hold whatever would never be able to return the favor nor redeem forever what we’ve all since lost to love what was never worth the loss of the life we’ve not lived.

That is anymore a fear of growing proportions within my considerations. It’s this wondering about what I’ve never wanted to know about, what I’ve always gone without, what I’ll forever here live without within my life as lived looking to the wrong side of wealth, worrying my worth for the worthless and thus winning a world I now want only to walk without, a wealth of mistaken concessions that have left me so eternally shaken that I feel I need now only to shake this place as if my time herein has been only a mistake of a life so misunderstood that I never realized I’d never stood for anything other than that which is drowning me in a doubt I can see some days more clearly than the belief for which I yearn.

Indeed, I find these days a rather foreign disposition in this interest in now only the dispossession of all that I’ve long been so very desperate to desire, so much so that I’ve decided on an otherwise undivided devotion to descend into whatever indifference might be demanded for my to dine upon the design of a lifetime I’ve long thought mine to make of whatever I wanted.

And idol in and of itself is all that life can become when we live as if this time is ours to value as we see fit, fitting our worth within the ways of a world wanting only what fits, what sits, what stays.

Yes, how we became so far gone as to go only after the gold which we hold in which is apparently held the very value of an existence, and yet found no sign of any life whatsoever as it always only sits wherever we set it, I don’t really know. And yet I some days wish I knew only to know that I do but that most days I don’t care that a fact to admit to. Because we all know, I know we do. We know why we agree to this outlook on life as one never looking outside of what we assume of life. We know well why.

It’s because it’s been agreed upon. Everyone buys it, everyone believes it, everyone receives it and so we can see it, we can taste it, we can try it and waste it and want it all over again. Yes, we live our lives locking our worth, our faith inside whatever we see that someone else says is worth enough for our worry to want for it alone. And we grow so very confined in our considerations that we become inconsiderate of anything, everything that not everyone would readily agree is worth the want or worry.

Thus the reason faith is a struggle most days. Far too few get it, and thus even fewer want it. Gold we can understand as there’s not a human alive who’d turn down such worldly wealth. Silver is acceptable as it’s accepted in stores which hold the things we want, even if it can afford a little less than the gold we’re told touts the triumph of a life well lived down here. We cater our cares to collectibles and sports cars. We lock our hopes inside houses and hope nobody breaks in to steal that which we hope in.

All of our lives are lived vicariously through the voiceless, the lifeless, the faithless. For as it turns out, 4K TV’s can’t see for us, but they can tell us what to pay attention to. Cars can’t drive us to Heaven, but our having them is to us a sense of freedom to go wherever we might want to be down here. Houses can hold a great deal of things, but to house a belief is to believe faith so trivial as to exist inside something temporal. Yes, we give our glory to gold and spend our lives trying to gain as much of it as we can want, and yet we become so blinded by the bling of it that we never see the gift that we can’t buy.

We’ve come to put so much emphasis on the voiceless that we can’t hear anymore. And that, no matter how you slice it, that is as sad an outcome as I can imagine. For God never stopped talking to us. Jesus never stopped showing us how to live better lives. His Word never stopped wanting for us to live for more than the worldliness we’ve settled for. His truth never agreed to contend against the lies we’ve come to believe. And nor has His promise ever proven one that’s willing to produce a sign we all can see as to see is not to believe but rather to insist that belief is as provable as the profit we know we can prove.

Yes, despite the Bibles by our bedsides and the power of a simple prayer and this hallowed hint of an impossible hope we know we shouldn’t have in a world that has none beyond here, it’s all become ignorable simply because some say, many assume it’s not possible for to blind eyes it’s not provable. Indeed, this twisted generation still seeks a sign to say to them that God is there and that He wants more from us, more for us than the gold and gain of a life lived in love with a world we’re leaving behind.

People want Him to slap them in the face and look them in the eye and scream at the top of His lungs that He wants for us to hope not in a life we’re losing but rather a hope held in Heaven with the appreciation that we even have that chance having given so much of this gift that is this life to the wrong side of right and most worthless kind of wealth.

For what need does He have of gold? He’s a kingdom lines with streets paved in the stuff. What use are our possessions to a King who possess the very keys to the line dividing life from death? What can Jesus do with a bunch of trophies or crowns or considerations when He considered the danger of our life as lived for trophies and crowns one so vile, so violent, so indeed very deadly, and eternally so, that He set aside Heaven and walked among us heathen so as to help us escape what we’ve settled for loving instead of Him?

And how can we even begin to say anything otherwise in our defense when our lives have been given over to wanting gold more than His glory? How can we pretend we’ve not lost this game when we’ve in fact lived as if life were a game in which we’re meant to win whatever we want within this world we’ve come to wish our lives might stay within?

For that is the hardest weight of living for the worldly kind of wealth. We don’t mind staying here. We don’t dread the thought of enjoying our lives as lived looking for gold and glory and the gain of everything we’ve come to want for ourselves, equate to mean a worth more than ourselves. Yes, we live life like gold is worth more than our souls, and we cannot say otherwise for how else can we explain our ability to spend more time worrying about our monetary wealth than we do about our eternal health?

It’s the same problem we see the people convicted of here. Back in the temple days, people grew to see more importance within what was brought into the temple than what was already there. And we do the same still today. We worry more about what we have to bring than the fact that He doesn’t ask for any of that. We follow a religion in which exists all these rules and all these expectations, so many in fact that it’s known as the prosperity gospel, a promise that if you’ll do all this list of rules just right, then you will receive whatever you want in this life.

Wealth, health, peace, power, prosperity. Yes, you’ll get it all if you’ll just go along with this idea that faith is all about only asking God to give us what we want while completely ignoring the simple beauty that is His willingness to forgive us for wanting what is so eternally worthless that is fits only within this world. Why do we want so desperately all that fits here and sits here and stays here? Why? Is it not simply because to appreciate God’s presence asks us to actually believe?

Again, we don’t have to wear ourselves out believing in gold. We don’t have study in order to understand the worth of wealth. None of us need to pray for the ability to comprehend what we can see and hold as all that’s held within this world in which we stand. We can do that. We can see the visual presence of something worldly. We don’t have to believe in whatever we see or agree to see is worth whatever everyone else agrees it’s worth.

But when it comes to faith, our sight is about the last sense of them all that’s in any way helpful. This rings true even more so today than perhaps ever before. Because we don’t see the Temple as built all those centuries ago. We don’t witness things like seas parting or the ground splitting or cities being destroyed by fire raining from the heavens. We don’t see prophets working miracles as much anymore. Not that God stopped doing any of those things, we just lost the ability to believe in them.

Because we’ve found only a furthered ability to believe in whatever we can buy.

And so faith remains an afterthought. Belief is to us a burden. Prayer is a time spent laying out lists of our wants and wishes, nothing more. We don’t live like we’re thankful that God hears our prayers. We don’t speak like we’ve got to tell Him just how grateful we are for His willingness to forgive us. No, we don’t even seem willing to make any changes, just keep doing what we always have and, like everyone else, just assume our riches will buy our way out of trouble.

But they won’t. For again, God isn’t impressed with gold. In fact, considering the whole golden calf debacle, I think it might be a bit safer to assume He’s probably kind of tired of our trying only to worship such elemental nonsense. Because we never stopped. Sure, we don’t have little golden cows sitting in our homes. We don’t bow down to little statues we’ve gilded, at least not all of us. But gold, money, manmade material, idols in whatever form or fashion we’ve made them and made room for them, it’s still unacceptable.

Because whatever worry, whatever concern, whatever focus or faith we place in the things we have, the things we want, the things all this world wants to have, it could all be given to God instead. But we continue to miss the gift that is His presence because we’re still blinded by the glitter of all that can be given as presents. And friends, that’s gotta stop because the simple fact is that we’re running out of time to run out of this world like we’ve somewhere else to be.

Or do we even believe in that anymore?

The point is that this world will continue ahead placing value in things that keep our focus here. But everything that God has created, designed, defined, done, it was all meant to turn our focus back to Him and help us remember that we won’t be here forever. We have to stop wasting our lives looking to the wealth this world thinks matters. It doesn’t. Just like those back then, they got lost focusing way too much on the gold that people brought to the temple, so lost that they forgot that the temple was where God met with us.

We are the temple now as we, if we’re in Him and He in us, we are vessels carrying the Holy Spirit, the very awareness of God’s existence inside our hearts. Don’t make Him share those hearts with anything that keeps us focused here. He deserves our fullest appreciation, and we just can’t even begin to pretend He has it if we’re at all worried about whatever this world is doing, or saying, or wanting, or holding. None of it matters.

For there is still no other Name, and that Name came not to ask us to gather up some gold or worldly riches to afford our entrance into His presence. Rather He died to live inside, and that promise is worth more than everything this world has settled for. So stop settling alongside them. If people want their best life here, wish them well and pray they’ll see the pointlessness in that before it’s too late.

Because it doesn’t matter how great or grand or glorious our lives are lived here, for they still end. And so please don’t live them heaping up what you’ll leave behind. Because if we do, as we have, we just might end up missing the presence of God behind the manmade pretense of gold.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold