Day 3505 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Isaiah 53:6 NIV

Life is a matter of our trying as the truth is that none of us know what we’re doing as each day is entirely new even though they’re all so often lived the same. So then do we just try the same thing over again assuming different results?

Seems kind of insane if you think about it.

Because for any to try is to stray, both from the norm and thus to the common. And while this is natural as we are a people of movement and motive, the problem is now proven in that we’ve strayed so far from what God created to remain normal that we’ve become a commonality altogether counterproductive to the praise He deserves for at first having created us to be as we should have remained. Alas, to remain is to accept, and yet to a culture so collapsed upon arrogance, to accept is to acknowledge only the defeat of the many other designs and dreams we’ve yet to force to be fulfilled.

And for us to leave lost any of these ideals in which we’ve so invested so much of ourselves is to all but confess that our way might have been best but instead we begrudgingly agreed to settle for what our selfishness considers substantially less.

This isn’t something any of us wish to undertake as it promises only to undermine this vanity which we’ve come to live behind as if a mask that shows the world that our lives are just like theirs, as perfect as a pride might pretend. For that is here all we care to be, to see, to have, to hold, to tell and be told, just that life can somehow become perfected within the many wants and wishes that have become for us more important to us than we are even to ourselves.

Indeed, we’re so detained by desire that anymore it seems that we don’t even care what we have to go through to get to whatever it is that we’ve become convinced is the substance of the success that we’ve long lived to assume we knew how to find and then what to do with once found. We don’t even mind having to create excuses and craft delusions that allow us to warp reality in just such a way that our failures toward godly responsibility are never allowed to remind us of the more we were way back before we believed only that our lives were to be lived blazing trails to triumph even as the expense of tragedy.

And this tragic undertaking in which we boastfully remain blinded by bank accounts that are never big enough, by bosses we only want to become ourselves, by basement houses filled with so much more than not enough to provide a contentment’s prosperity, it’s left us only able to see ourselves as the source of our life’s meaning. Meaning then that within each day we assume we have remaining we must give ourselves fully to the following of ourselves only.

Doing thus always the same thing that we’ve always done before while eagerly expecting far better results.

Because to us any other idea, any other intention, any outside intervention is only considered a competition to the comfort and condescension which are anymore our last known positions as proven inside always the days before in which we settled then for what we still know only to settle for today.

And that is to keep looking to ourselves alone so that it’s ourselves alone who in the end gain the glory to a story that we’ve written in the pen of our own presumptions seeking incessantly the proving that provision is a matter found within a person rather than something poured upon them from another.

Thus leaving us in eternal contention with the God of creation who created us to be everything we’ve since seen fit so discount that we deny the beauty that it is to believe in exchange for the battle that we’ve become that knows only to fight forever for the more we’re anymore convinced we’ll always need to live a life that means enough that someone else will be so impressed that we reach one day that perfect place which forms a stage so spectacular that we needn’t be the ones patting ourselves on the back anymore.

No, once we’ve managed to achieve all the desires and dreams for the things and scenes that we assume will show the world as a whole just how right we were to so serve ourselves that we’ve severed our senses from reality, yes, then we’ll finally be the ones cheered, and finally for once by more voices than just our own as shouted silently in the mirrors of our imaginations in which we plot and plan our perfect path to the most preeminent assumptions of our lives being lived perfectly according to our plans and preferences alone.

And what’s sad is that we can’t seem to see in all that that all we are is just a people outpacing ourselves in what is a life lived so circular that we are but saws carving ourselves in two trying to uncover the potential that our pride says hides inside. Hoping always and only that we can find it before we’re in fact so lost from anything in any way resembling a life that we forget how to breathe and just accept the defeat that we’ve already seen so many others scream toward only to hear the line go silent as their dreams died out and left them destroyed.

That’s what I don’t understand about all this normality that is our straying always after something more, something less, something new, something old, something borrowed, something stolen.

As we talked about yesterday, each of us have gone off in search for so many things in which we were once just certain that we’d find our life’s meaning. If only we had this hope in hand we’d then hold our honor as well. If we could just catch our confusions and organize them into understanding then we would surely have a reason for where we’re standing being worth our being the ones standing here. Surely if we could have even a fraction of what this world’s inspired us to need then we’d be able to force the validation of our very existence.

And then we wouldn’t need anyone to welcome us, anyone to want us, anyone to warn us of the things we were missing or messing up. No, we’d have found lives so filled with what the world says is fulfillment that we’d have no more room for such things as worry, fear, doubt, uncertainty, regret, shame, sorrow or sadness.

No, we’d finally be able to just be happy were we holding something from or something of all the things and places that this place has said our purpose is waiting for us to find it. Yes, if we found enough of all that’s here than we’d be so much here that here wouldn’t dare ask us to leave.

But friends, that’s what life is bound to be, us forced to leave this life lived in this land in this place that’s so filled with so many other graves that I don’t understand why we fight so fervently to live as if we’ll not have one all to ourselves one day. We will. In fact, considering as how one day is as a thousand years to our God and too then a thousand years amassed into a single day, we’re already gone from here. We’re like stars shining silently up in the night sky, already burned out long before their light finished the trip to being seen by eyes that usually don’t have the time to notice their sparkle.

We’re all already gone as that is simply the direction that all of life goes in this world.

What then are we so worried about looking for or living without?

Why so much searching, such desperate seeking of something more as if more of what’s already leaving us is able to add life to a life we’re already losing? Why want more of what we’ll leave inside a life we’ve already lost? What will it mean in the end if our every priority and thus every pursuit was paved toward some plan to have some proof of our perfection of some life that we never had the right to rewrite into our own priorities? See what I’m saying? We’re behind the 8-ball and can’t find the cue.

We’re just floating around looking for some kind of quicker replacement to the things we’re too afraid to admit are worth eternally more than everything we’ve managed to find inside a world that’s forever bound within the restraints of time, space, matter, material. What does anything here matter when it’s only a matter of time before it’s left behind for good?

Even David, a man defined as one after God’s own heart, he himself realized this wonderfully woeful wandering within his own walk. Psalm 119:176. “I have strayed like a lost sheep. Seek your servant, for I have not forgotten your commands.” And yet within that humbled confession of a life given unto the wrong directions, he managed to pull in that offensive truth as found inside his asking that God find him and bring him back to what he already knew meant more than whatever he’d since strayed off to find.

But unlike King David, we’ve not had anyone write in an everlasting book that we are people after God’s own heart. If anything, friends, our pasts have proven quite perfectly the opposite. For each of us have spent years, decades seeking so many things not only other than God, but in fact many of them completely against God. For that is sin, it’s our missing God in the moment. It’s us putting something else, someone else in His place in our lives, our hearts, our minds.

As sinners we have all chosen to refuse God, to refute God, to rejoice in our rebellion against both the rules and God in our doing what we wanted rather than what He said we should. And this is why we struggle so badly with such things as the offense of humility. Because again, unlike David, we’ve not the ability to fall back on the fact that we haven’t forgotten His commands. Some of us have never known them. Some live as if they still don’t. Indeed, in this world, forgetting God’s commands is all but natural as we’ve all fallen so far from revering Him alone that we don’t care about His suggestions anymore.

No, in this world we live our way, and it’s been that way for so long now that anything that happened before our pride commandeered the wheel is considered so antiquated that it can’t possibly matter anymore.

Indeed, it’s amazing all the other things we’ve been so willing to try and buy and believe for so long. We’ve all gone after so many alternatives and alterations that we’ve both forgotten what matters most and too that we didn’t ever have the right to decide that kind of thing. We’ve in fact fallen so very far that we’ve forgotten who we are as defined by who He at first made us to remain. No, we’ve in no way remained anything close to who He made us to be nor anywhere other than open to whatever the world might still come to suggest we become.

Yes, all we seem to be anymore is merely whatever is wanted by another within this world in which there’s found an endless stream of things of which we assume are capable of proving so conducive to a life’s fullness that we now fear only not finding the fullest extent of everyone else’s imaginations.

For that is what we’ve long lived to look for, is it not? Just whatever everyone else already wanted? Our share of whatever someone else already found? A piece all our own of what someone else claims brought them peace? Are we not doing this even more nowadays via our living only vicariously through highlight reels rolling along as we’re scrolling along in our social media addictions?

Indeed, we do nothing but live our lives through the excitements that someone else, or anymore a thousand someone else’s seem still entirely content themselves spending their lives trying to capture inside hashtags and still photographs for the sake someone else somewhere else liking the looks of a life nobody is living. That’s who we’ve become, a people so flat and faithless that we find reason only to further the fall for sake of the friendship of it all.

And in this we only continue the wandering like sheep away from the Shepherd who knows more about us than we’ve since forgotten or sold away or traded off in exchange for one more chance at one more choice that, granted, does bring change but only the pocket kind, never the growing kind.

We’re afraid to grow beyond who we’ve become because it’s become normal to be broken. It’s normal to be doubtful. It’s common to stay confused. It’s acceptable to live in fear of everything but our assumptions and expectations. But why? Not why is it normal as that part’s way too easy. Why are we willing to let the world’s normal become our hope? Why are we okay with letting this world be our biggest and brightest source of inspiration?

Why do we give our perspiration only to the investigation of things seen, known, normal?

Is not doing what the world considers normal what Christ laid down His life to overcome?

That’s what this verse in Isaiah tells us. It’s that all of us, the entirety of humanity, have gone astray. And going on it says that in that straying we’ve all acquired iniquity. And then further still it reminds us that all of our iniquity that all of us have earned by all of us having strayed was placed upon Him who came to save us from what we’d all wandered off to become. Because while to try is to stray, to stray from what God said is right is to sin.

And thus we’ve all, having walked away from who He made us to be and how He called us to live, we’ve all strayed into sin which it cost the life of Christ to overcome.

It’s not quite so easy all of the sudden is it? Not quite so easy to absolve ourselves of the wrongs we know we’ve done. Not quite so easy to stay convinced that our lives are of no consequence. Not quite so easy to keep up this charade in which we parade around in performances of pride and pretense pretending that God is somehow pleased with our not doing anything but all we want to do whilst never worrying about what He asked us to.

Shouldn’t be anywhere near as easy, as normal, as common, as acceptable as this world’s made sin to seem. Because there comes a question along every path we’ve ever taken and that is how much further do we go? How much longer do we try it this way, in this direction, for this reason? How many more days or desires are we going to waste or chase trying to find proof that we’re right when our every mistake already made proves we’re not?

Friends, this world runs on rebellion and His Word says that that won’t change until it’s too late. How much longer are we willing to risk that whole ‘too late’ not being today? It’s up to everyone, but unfortunately it seems as though it’s also up to everyone. Because that’s how this world makes decisions. Everything is based on whatever everyone else is doing or assuming. Can we afford to leave our outcome in the hands of a world that can’t seem to hold itself together long enough to admit that we can’t hold ourselves together?

Can we afford to keep following a world that thinks faith is foolish? Can we really risk continuing to stray away from the Way that is the Truth that is the Life when we know that our lives here are not forever? Indeed, are we willing to risk forever just to follow our ideas, our desires, our dreams a little further?

To what end?

That’s the whole point in all of this really. To what end? What’s the outcome? What’s the payout? What’s the point, the purpose, the profit? Considering we’re all running out of time, think it’s probably time to start thinking about some of these harder questions we’ve tried to avoid all this time. Because while they are hard questions, one day we’re going to be asked even harder questions.

Can we afford to hope we’ll have found all the answers by then or that the world we’ve trusted and followed all this time will be there to stick up for us? Would even that matter considering this world is so clearly against God?

No, we’ve done this the way that’s normal in this world, but to what end? And if it’s not the end we were hoping to find, perhaps that’s telling us that we might should stop listening to the world that continues to go astray and maybe to do this another way. Maybe His way. Because what if His way is really the only way?

I mean, He said it was. Guess it’s just on us how much longer we want to try to prove Him wrong while doing things that become mistakes that we’re then forced to pretend we haven’t made so that we can spend the rest of today and presumably tomorrow still assuming we can become perfect enough to prove that we never actually messed up but rather intended to make all those wrong turns to what led us to the right destination in the end anyway.

Yes, doing the same thing we’ve always done while eagerly and expectantly anticipating far better results.

Because that’s not insane at all.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold