Day 3441 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

2 Corinthians 4:4 NIV

To see hope beyond here amongst a world filled with those who can neither see why nor how is what will eventually become perhaps the greatest of separations, and one I don’t think any of us saw coming.

For there’s a certain degree of blindness alive in all of us. Now that degree of blindness isn’t as stagnant as life itself it so often allowed to become but rather ebbs and flows and grows and shrinks depending almost entirely upon nothing but the glory of God and His merciful decision as to who among us receive the rare ability to realize His mercy as opposed to those many who will never know it to exist. Simply because it must exist outside of us elsewise it wouldn’t be the gift that grace is meant to be.

No, if grace were truly something so mundane as all these other fragments and figments of what we’ve made which are but replacements of such things as love and hope and joy and meaning, if grace were too so subjective as to allow us to author our own fail-prone representation, then it would, like love and hope, become nothing more than yet another monstrosity as misunderstood inside these minds so mangled by misplaced devotions and indifferences demanding divisions that allow for nothing but such separations as our always seeking to be left alone to do as we please.

Leaning always then upon our own understanding as found in and formulated upon our desires and our denials.

And it’s indeed that blend of desires and denials that have come to define the disarray and decay of mankind. For each of us exist only to seek out that which we want for ourselves alongside a heaping helping of cheers and affirmation as won from among a sullen mankind likewise swollen with such selfishness that such is all we know to applaud for and approve of anymore. We’ve grown so monstrous within our selfishness that we know only to loath the very hint of true freedom as it asks us beyond ourselves to that place and time in which we’re not even bound by our dreams or ideals anymore.

But that is a place in which very few will ever imagine as again it exists only outside of us, for such an unbridled liberty as that purchased for us upon the cross we deserve at the end of the path we chose, it is found only on the other side of a tomb that defines the stench of death that this world so utterly denies so as to live their lives as if their lives are truly their own, only because that illusion allows for this confusion that leaves a soul so lost that they settle for a makeshift existence rather than a mansion eternal.

And it’s that makeshift existence in which we’re all living but never really alive that has come to define this discrepancy which blinds all to the light of life itself as we live inside what we can only assume has been a life despite it not being alive but rather bound still to the mortality of humanity as demanded of our indifference toward God’s initial design.

You see, way back in Genesis 6, God saw that this creation that He’d created to be His children, a people made in His very image, they’d since traded His intention for their own vile inventions. He saw that as mankind grew and multiplied that so too did their sinfulness, a symptom of their, of our, having forgotten Him. And in Genesis 6:3 the LORD said, “My Spirit will not contend with humans forever, for they are mortal; their days will be a hundred and twenty years.”

Indeed, in verse 5 of Genesis 6 we see that, “The Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time.” And what comes next has defines this fear that overwhelms all of humanity still to this day as it stands as an utterly undeniable display of God’s divine authority mixed with a wrath we cannot refuse nor refute as it is us who’ve so willfully wandered away from He who created us to be who we’ve not seen fit to remain.

No, in verse 6 God even regrets having made this now wicked creation. “The Lord regretted that he had made human beings on the earth, and his heart was deeply troubled.” So troubled in fact that He, in verse 7, arrived at this decision to “wipe from the face of the earth the human race I have created—and with them the animals, the birds and the creatures that move along the ground—for I regret that I have made them.” For creation was still lulled into lawlessness by the lord of lies who at first inspired Eve to learn what we didn’t need.

And the devil is also the king of greed as he never fills of whatever fools refuse to lose this lust of being lost.

Which is what still we remain even still today, only because so many still deny what God did when He’d finally made up His mind. You’ve heard of Noah, this one lone weirdo who started building a boat in a place where boats can’t float as there ain’t much water in a desert. Indeed, Scripture tells us that “Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord.” And the Lord told Noah of what was to come upon this creation who’d fallen into a sinful contention against His intention as we descended into indifference as to His design, what it determines, and so too what it deserves.

Rather we fell in love with the lies with which the devil blinds into disbelief all who’ve not eyes to see nor ears to ear the warnings written for our wealth within the Word of the One we’ve wronged, a gift given in grace even before Christ came down here to take our place and pave our way back to who we should have been but simply couldn’t see any reason to stay. No, such is the affluence of arrogance, it affords us an incessant insistence upon the substance of our assumptions, all of which are born inside these minds that are led by hearts that are deceitful above all things.

Hearts that we still follow toward what we can only assume is hope, only to find our way and only then realize that our way cannot hold hope as our way is held here where hope too was washed away.

It’s saying things like that that will cause a person to be considered a fool amongst those who find faith to be foolishness. Driving down the road this morning just thinking as I always do, likely more than I should or even perhaps not nearly enough, I had this thought hit me which seems one entirely contradictory amongst this rather civilized society. Get this:

My lone excitement in regard to this life as lived here in this world is leaving it.

How’s that for different?

For you see, what we’ve come to know of life is to assume that we’ll stay. That we’ll stay alive both as we are and too that such staying will occur where we are. Indeed, we assume societally that we’re here perpetually. I even watched a video of a man who is a self-confessed atheist who said the only reason he doubts in the Christian faith is because he loves life as it’s lived here. He loves his family, his friends, this world, this wealth as won within. He loves this life as it’s lived in this place where it’s lived.

And I contend that such a stance is one more widely shared than we might assume. For if you look around at the things people are doing and how folks are living, they’re indeed living it up. This place is what, for many, exists as some sort of playground upon which people just throw all caution to the wind and do whatever they want, whenever they want, for why ever they want to do whatever it is that they wish for in the moment.

But that’s just it, and the basis of the entirety of the devil’s dishonesty. It’s that he’s convinced people that this is all forever, or at the very least, that this is all there is and thus we’ve perhaps at best 70-80 to cram as much fun and frivolity as possible into our time before the clock stops. And again, looking around at the current goings on going on in society, people are living like they’re either running out of time or have no time to run out of. Everyone, or at least the vast majority, live as if they’ll either live here forever or if there is no forever in need of worrying about.

And this is making for a massive problem coming to a soul near you as, if the Word of God is true, we all owe a debt simply for being alive let alone what we’ve since then done to these lives we’re living. Because the fact is that since the fall of man, God has set a limit to our life in this land. And since we fell so hard as we fell away, so too has He set a debt that our sins have come to deserve.

Indeed, we see both of these written and worked within the image of Christ as an innocent Man took upon Himself the sins of man to the outcome a brutal death, the most heinous of the time, perhaps of all time, and thus lost His life in this world before even the age of 40!

But the problem is that we live among a people who don’t see it, either because they simply don’t want to be humbled by the gift that such grace has given, or because they’re not ready to lose their lives for that hope that He left in that grave, or simply because the god of this age has blended the two into a sort of blindness that’s otherwise bound us to what has now left our biggest and boldest belief being that we’re not leaving despite everyone leaving.

We cannot deny death, and yet we do. We cannot avoid the responsibility of a God-created reality, and yet we do. We cannot debate the authenticity of His authority as breathed out for our benefit in what is a truth that no human arrogance has ever been able to disprove, and yet we do. We cannot manage to erase the existence of Christ nor His story from our history, despite humanity seeking incessantly to do that very thing so that we can then do everything we want without feeling guilty.

And yet we assume we can despite such having never been done.

This world has tried everything possible to unload or offload this weight of humility as found within our having nothing to do with either our existence nor the ability to claim with any honesty that we can honestly do whatever we want with said existence without cost or consequence. We’ve tried everything to prove ourselves free from responsibility, and yet we’ve never managed to actually accomplish such a task. The best we’ve done in that regard is to merely live in denial.

For that is what the devil delights for us to do. To live in denial is to allow the devil to have as much room as he needs to do whatever he may please to lead us away from life. Simply because he does as he’s always done, steal, kill, destroy.

And we are surrounded by people who are none too happy to let him steal their time, kill their lives, destroy their forever, and all for nothing more than a little bit of fleeting fun or the feeling of self-fulfillment as won by the world at the expense of the soul which knows that we are here for far more than just our own personal pleasure or prosperity.

Unfortunately such things have become such priorities that this world’s grown darker than ever in order to pretend that we’re perfectly within our rights to do so much wrong if such means that we gain whatever we’ve come to want inside a life we again live as if we’ll live forever. We are so used to storing up for ourselves treasures in only the places where they rust, gather dust, become lost or get left. And thus we simply don’t see any other way of life as our eyes are just so blind that we think life is found in something hidden somewhere on this ground.

And thus we’ve had our wings clipped and our hopes destroyed simply because we’re afraid to fly too close to the light as we know that it will only show all the world all we’ve done that we’ve always tried to hide so as to not be seen as who we’ve become. Because we know that it is so much less than who we were created to be and had every chance to make any choice to simply remain or return.

No, this world doesn’t know how to do that as our arrogance doesn’t know how to understand it. We don’t understand change, sorrow, shame, regret, guilt, and thus nor can we even begin to undertake such a radical shift as repentance which leads, as it always has, to an entire way of life left behind in exchange for what we know we cannot find or figure out on our own.

Which is exactly the problem. We want to do everyone on our own for ourselves so that we are the only ones who get the glory. Pride and vanity are the vessels by which the devil sends blindness into our lives as they leave us looking only to us, in us for only what we want for us. And thus our lives have become all about us, and that is simply as far away from how God designed this to go as humanly possible.

We have blinded ourselves into utter disbelief, simply so we can believe in only that we’re safe to live our lives doing as we please, even to the very audacity of our trying to write our own truths so that we can then assume ourselves never guilty. Simply because we agree with the world in that there is no glory nor gain in guilt. And thus it must be denied even if such leaves us blind and unable to believe beyond ourselves.

Thus we’re slaves of ourselves and the one to whom we’ve sold our souls in exchange for all the world in which we live but from which we will all leave.

Friends, this world makes it seem like there is a kind of life as lived here that is worth not worrying about what comes after this life is over. Just please understand that one day our time here will be done. What do you want to see upon that day when you do leave? Do you want to have lived a life so blind to faith that all you see is all you hoped to keep falling away with no chance to get it back?

Or do you want to see every hope you had finally closer now that you’re not confined to an amount of time that was never meant to last forever?

Make no mistake, there is a vast difference between the two and it is determined by what we look for in this life and too what we’re willing to lose and leave behind of this life both now and when we leave it for good. Indeed, will we live with a belief that we will leave here to good, or will all that we assumed as good only be left behind?

Friends, please don’t live your life blinded by things that cannot exist outside of time, space, matter, material. Do not bind your hope to anything that is limited by such worldly limitation. Because one day those limits will be lifted. But if we lived our lives blinded by doubt, denial, indifference, then we won’t find much good once inside forever.

Rather we’ll only then learn the difference between the good enough we settled for and the grace of God that Christ came to open our eyes toward.

Don’t live in such a way that leaves Judgement Day the first time you see the glory of God as given in Christ. Start looking now, and refuse the ease of remaining so spiritually blind, because it will prove an eternal horror to not recognize hope when He’s standing right in front of us.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold