Day 3412 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Mark 12:17 NIV

The calling that considers to reconsider where our allegiances lay, and just what that means for every single day that we’ve still to live before we leave.

Because be it attention or intention, investment or enhancement, it seems that to live a life is to owe a debt as none can craft themselves but must themselves praise the means and Maker by which they’ve been made to live this life we’ve all likewise lost in lust for what is not but dust gathered from the ground which just happens to look a little different from the dust from which we came. Indeed, down here some of it glitters, some of it’s considered valuable, some is even rarely priced as it’s seen as too precious to be anything but priceless.

And yet despite our decision to define our direction as determined by the destinies we’ve long assumed money to make manifest ahead of us, none shall avoid the simplicity of a life’s outcome:

From that which is taken is the same to which all returns, for such is the circle of life, a cycle of losing what is found back to the ground from which all of us came. The same to which all of us will return.

Problem is that we spend this meantime so vainly blind by what we have and hold and the silver and gold that we lose sight of the souls with which we’ve been entrusted. Yes, we’re so engrossed, engorged, engrained with the way of life as lived within this land of the lost that we too have agreed to go along with the giving away of what is a gift we are oddly enough meant to give, just not that way. For God did create us to be things such as generous, loving, merciful and kind, all of which ask that we give a measure of compassion and humility at least.

And yet compassion has no income, at least in the ways in which we measure such worth as a whole world’s wealth. Humility is at times a hostility as it seeks in us for us a loss of us so that another may be held higher. And that too is a sight in which we see only that we lose a chance to either gain or at least retain our upper hand over those in need of help. Indeed, we line our pockets with preference while those walking beside are left to dine upon the crumbs that we sometimes just sweep away into the haze of another day spent worrying about only all the wrong things in life.

For that is all we know of life. To focus on the foolish. To be faithful to the faithless. To live for that which is lifeless. Blind leading the blind and both ready to both bestow or betray, depending largely upon the day. For we mind not another leading us in whatever way they’ve chosen to go so long as there’s in the way a win for us in whatever measure we might be or become convinced is worth the time and toil we try to ignore that we’re ignoring. Nor do we mind the loss of said life so long as we gain what is widely agreed as worth a life lost.

Mammon makes man do some funny things, and the horrifying part of it is that there’s nothing funny about it.

Because we’ve become a heap of billions blinded by billions which all belong to the villains who’ve taught us how to care about what we shouldn’t at the expense of understanding what we should, mixed maniacally and mysteriously with just enough of the shiny kind of dust to keep us convinced that the rich know more than we do, better than we do what a life is worth as their wealth is held in such regard that we’re resolved to lose our minds and leave our lives to be lived by another’s ideals, simply for the sake of some passing success.

Yes, it’s amazing how we measure such things anymore. To be successful is proven only in portfolios which prove, apparently, a person’s entire value, their whole life’s worth as if such is defined by what we’ve decided to have or heap or horde. To be powerful demands a platform that’s proven itself profitable in both popularity and politic, both of which require a rhetoric that revolves around at least some semblance of deception. Indeed, seems all we do is in some way done only to deceive.

Such as convincing the world, one at a time, that who we are is best contained inside what we have in which is contained no life at all nor even the ability to hint at the existence of the ability to create an existence.

For we’re all just certain that money is so amazing that it’s worth our living our lives for nothing else but to have more of what cannot help us do anything but buy something. And thus our lives revolve around what we have and either from whom it came or to whom it’s owed or in whom we’re told that we’re to hold all our hope as held inside what is held inside this world alone. And yes, I am harping on this it would seem, but friends, we seem anymore all but unable to see the writing in the sand.

Because the reality of life is that we are but sand being sifted from one day into the next, only so long as God agrees that we need one more chance to notice one more change that we’ve not made that might, in Him, be just enough to inspire us to walk away from this world we’re leaving and our living as if we’re not. Because we are, and the fact that we’ve today to talk one more time about just how blind we’ve always been, friends, that is a gift worth more than gold!

And so let us resolve to dissolve our delusion upon gold’s infusion into every aspect of our existence and its intentions and for once give to God what is God’s.

Because the truth is, we all are. We are a people who were all created in His image, the lone example of creation born into looking like their Maker, but born also into a world with no such intention of staying inside such invention as He at first insisted would, could, should be always and forever enough. For we need nothing else but the joyous presence of God. We just walk within a world enamored by the hopeless preference for gold.

It’s in everything we do anymore. There’s always a factor to figure, some finding of our favor as found in or founded upon some sort of figment of a fortune, fraction of a fortune. That is all our lives are worried about anymore. Increasing our fraction, finding our fortune, protecting our profits and ignoring that prophets who warned us against such a wasted life a one lived in love with a world we’re leaving behind. Just how much will we leave? That is the question that I couldn’t be more hopeful that everyone might consider.

How much will you leave, and just when will you walk?

Because the gravity of a life lived upon a ground that’s filled with those ground by greed and grinding for gold and greedy for gain is that we seek only to have and hold what can only be held for a few more days. But therein lies the issue. When we’re worried only about life as lived and loved in this world, we’ll only lose sight of that inevitability and just how imminent it might be, how imminent it must be. Yes, our last day must always be seen as entirely too close, otherwise we’ll be only everything but ready, and that sort of lukewarm laxity is literally the last thing He said He’s looking for.

No, He’d rather we be either hot or cold, for those on fire for their faith will not agree to let it wither or waste, and too, those cold and torn asunder can in turn be revived from such a frigid falling away by the faith that works still miracles such as that even still today. But those there in the middle, so mundane and mundial, they’re the ones who are both aware and at the same time able to live as if they just don’t care. And that’s something we’ve all done. It’s something we do almost every day if we’re to be honest.

For when’s the last time you got through a day unworried about something material? When’s the last time you didn’t check your financial situation for a second? When’s the last day you didn’t worry about whatever the world around you was doing, was wanting, was buying, was selling? Yes, when is the last time that you yourself didn’t sell yourself to something of this world as done by giving our time to trying to find whatever is here that we’ve not yet had but have always wanted to hold?

Better yet, combine the lot, when’s the last time you spent time with God and invited the world to only shove off for a second so you could spend some time with your Father?

Because all the questions asked prior are summed up in the one opposition found in that hinting at your degree of devotion and whether it’s a measure more divided than we might care to consider.

Where is our devotion directed? Where is our devotion period? Is it scattered across a sea of concessions? Is it worried about the world, the war, the wealth, the health of whomever the news says we should worry about or listen to? Is it given to getting something, getting rid of something? Is part of it here, part there, a fraction found in hope, another trying to hope in making this life here feel more like home? Is it all really nothing but death and taxes?

Sadly, for some, many at times, most at one time or another, yes, it most definitely seems to be all but those two concerns. But why do we so daily agree to that outlook, that outcome? Have we nothing to hope in, fight for, look for, lose for? Is there nothing in life worth more than whatever we’re worried for? Yes, is life meant to be only you and me worried together about living apart but yet for the same exact focus, a life spent faithless? Is that why we’re here, because it sure looks like it some days, feels like it most of them.

But why? Why are we so worried about what doesn’t matter to the heartbreaking point in which that’s all that’s come to matter? Money and material, the mania of mankind, the mischief and misunderstandings of those making this world darker by the day. Is that really where our focus should lay? And I’m not saying that there aren’t things in this life that aren’t important, many here are. But there still needs to be a line we shall not cross nor invite any invitation to ever reconsider such a stance.

Yet if we don’t stand for something, we can’t stand at all. Just don’t know how, won’t learn why. Because we know. We know why we hesitate to stand against the common commonalities of this culture of sheer insanity. We’re terrified of being different, of being alone, of being hated or judged or left down or looked at or locked out of the way of life that the world is living, because we think that it’s the only one that can be lived.

And thus we do everything everyone else does, worry about everything everyone else is, repeat and become what everyone else wants, and we just die a little by the day as we refuse to recuse ourselves from such a loss of life as one lived in step with a world walking away from God toward more of this blasted gold that we here can hold. All because to hold is to have and if we have something then we think we are something, and thus if we don’t, then perhaps we aren’t.

Proving that we’ve all but entirely lost sight of eternity and the gift that this life is that is our chance to find ourselves in Christ before He agrees that we never knew Him.

I cannot bear that thought, not for me, not anyone. Because it’s the very sum of our every fear as felt down here all rolled into one, set on fire, shoved down a hill that just drops forever into a sort of anguish that even our anger can’t overcome. For it’s being let down, locked out, looked at and turned away from the only thing that should have ever mattered. It’s our being denied hope, all because we lived our lives assuming it’s supposed to be found down here.

All because this is where nearly everyone else is looking.

Because that’s what happens when you send yourselves to Rome every day. So long as we continue to give our worries and concerns to Caesar, we will live only as Romans, because the old adage it entirely too true: When in Rome, do as the Romans do. Thus we’ll deny, we’ll ignore, we’ll destroy, we’ll debate, we’ll imagine, we’ll invent, we’ll insist that we’ve the right to do all the above and that we’re right to live only doing all the above as if this life is all only about what we have, what we do, and who we please with all of it.

It isn’t.

That’s what Jesus is reminding us here. To let the world worry about what the world has chosen to worry about, but, that for us, we’ve now something different to focus on. And it’s not the fame and fortune this place is festering with. It’s not the governments that define the apparent outcome of life in a particular land. It’s not the money we make or the money we owe. It’s not what we own or what we don’t yet have but really, really want. It’s not about what anyone else thinks, nor is it then about our living to please them by doing whatever they ask we do to do so.

This life is a gift that God gave us and we are to give back to God what is God’s. And I don’t know about you, but that is literally all I care to be, because that is the only hope we have. We are either His people or His enemies, and if you’ve read the Bible, it don’t end well for the latter.

You know, I’ve had a lot in this world, dreams and ideas mostly, but things and experiences too. And still there are days when those things seem to steal more of my attention than others. And yet no matter what I have, no matter what I lose, no matter who I please or who I offend, it always comes back to this right here being anymore all that makes sense to me.

Because I’ve not found hope inside something I’ve held. I haven’t felt my worth as won within the wealth I’ve spent on things I didn’t need and don’t have anymore. I’ve never seen love shown inside something that they sell in a store. I’ve never felt life beaming from something sitting on a shelf. I’ve never learned anything that stayed with me, that helped me grow, not in college nor in all the more years I spent chasing a doctorate in worldly indifference.

All that makes sense, all that stays with me, all that matters at all anymore is just that hope of hearing Him say, “Well done”.

But I know there’s but one path that leads to those words, and He said Himself just how hard it is for the rich to inherit the Kingdom of Heaven. Why? Because they’ll always try to buy their way, and this faith just don’t work like that.

For blessed are those who believe, for such belief is the very foundation of a faith that is counted to them as the righteousness of God.

Of God. That’s all I want in life for however long I’ve left here before I leave. I want only what is of God so that I can live as if I’m of God so that when I leave I know I’m going to God. Because only in His presence is found everything we need forever. And so friends, please don’t let yourself be distracted by what you don’t need now, such as gold or worrying about what to do with it. He came to make all of this easy, and died to prove the simplicity.

Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and please remember that you and that soul you carry aren’t his, aren’t theirs, aren’t this world. We are God’s children, and it’s time to live like it.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold