Day 3507 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Jeremiah 4:3 NIV

“First collect the weeds and tie them in bundles to be burned; then gather the wheat and bring it into my barn.”

For it’s here no secret that we’ve all both been sown amongst thorns and too had those same prickly opinions placed upon our presumptions that have now grown so thick inside our thoughts that we’re as much this world as the world itself. Simply because that’s the danger designed inside this expected indifference into which we’re all here commanded to dissolve. Sure, it does some enjoyment upon the surface of a society so superficial, but just beneath the vanity down where life grows, well, there is where it does far more damage than any of us can survive.

Because to be as indifferent, as irreverent as we’ve so commonly become is to soon come apart, leaving us either bundled with the weeds and thrown into the flame or rather gathered with the wheat that walked a war already won and was welcomed into the promise of He who won it for us.

Alas the commonality, the normality of our culture’s contentions as considered from within these wicked and wayward intentions building inventions inspiring inside all the igniting of a soul to burn out before we even begin the battle is seemingly reason enough to listen at least equally to what the world says and to what God suggests. For that does indeed appear to be a consideration we’ve gotten so backwards as written.

Because God’s commands shouldn’t be so easily seen as suggestion, and nor should the world’s expectations be considered as factual as faith is supposed to be either.

But unfortunately here we are. Here we hear so much hate and haste that it’s only our own time we waste running to the width of the world wandering the wide wondering why we haven’t been given the fullness of either direction or destination as defined by this ever-shifting expanse between humanity and the God who created us. And this distance as defined by our growing indifference is such that we anymore contend that we cannot hear the voice of the Lord despite His very Word sitting at our side.

We can hear the world plenty loud though! And because we are so desperately a people of ease and simplicity, we’ve come to equate volume with value and thus find that the world which screams at us its wants from us, to us such is the substance of how we’re supposed to be undertake this existence. Yes, we do as told by the world which has no trouble leading us as far away from life as we’re willing to go. And because part of their message is that such isn’t mistaken, well it seems we’ve bought a bounty of that idea as well.

It’s just now that we don’t realize what all we’ve had to sell of ourselves to find that we might afford that ability to so easily tune in to what the world tells us. For as it turns out, to listen to weeds is to welcome those same seeds of worthlessness into our own wants and wishes until, eventually, we’re nothing but the world walking in the world so indistinguishable from our surroundings that our salvation is, if anything, considered only a distant and therefore discounted matter of chance.

Because that’s basically the understanding of such a gift that this world has decided upon.

Indeed, we grow amongst thorns, amongst weeds which want themselves weary working for only whatever they’ve come to wish as always defined by what this world pretends to give or threatens to take. And such is anymore so standard that any who ask as to the why’s and where’s are only reminded that such unwelcome investigation might quickly render one rather unwelcome themselves. For weeds seek not to be reminded of the lack of a harvest they’re able to offer. No, weeds don’t want to offer anything to anyone but to rather soak up all that they can for themselves alone.

Which is both what God called us to contend against, knowing how easily such vanity would inspire a vitriol against Him, and too what we’ve so sadly come to become anyway.

For such is the outcome of not only bad company but also of that company all but having now become the only community of which we perceive that we should seek to be a part.

Because here that’s how this ball rolls. Downhill and at a rate so rapidly increasing that, once started, there’s really no time left to bail before it bottoms. No, such is what pride does, what preference does, what the pride of public preference is. It’s nothing but for all of us to unanimously become so unknown that we all congeal into a community of discontent in which we delight only to discount and disagree with any reminder that we could truly be something so much better were we simply willing to try.

But here it seems that to try for better is almost perfectly the very last thing thorns see fit to inspire.

Why would they? Why would anyone try to compel or impel or propel another to do better? Why should any of us even acknowledge that there is such thing as better when good enough is so, well, good enough? Indeed, why rock that boat when it seems that we’re all quite able to drift listlessly atop this endless sea of human insanity? Do any of us wish to be made aware of our failures, our flaws, our faults? No, of course not, those things hurt!

Roughly as much as thorns, or so we’re told.

Yes, that’s why so few risk the rocking of boats or the recounting of truths or retracing of steps to see if we might find some way back to where it all went so wrong. That sort of thing is rather venomously hated around here, and to the very degree that any who decide upon that direction will be warned first of the danger they’re choosing, and if those one or two warnings are left unheeded, well, this place has proven no problem acting upon them.

Calvary anyone?

Indeed, weeds. Those cheering at the chastisement which achieved our change of mind that might become a change of direction which would become a change of destination. Those mocking and making fun of this so-called Messiah who claimed He came to save the world but couldn’t from their cross save Himself. Those spitting and hitting this humble Son of Heaven who did indeed come to set free those who still even today are bound down by a kind of slavery that our society says is something we should be proud of.

Yes, so proud that still we cheer as the parades roll by and as we stand in awe that their lewd line looks a little further removed from those rules we’re so inspired to hate around here.

For that is what we hear here, is it not? That we should hate rules? Should disdain God’s design? That we should refuse to lose the revelry we’ve come to so clearly revere more than the righteousness to which we’ve been called to return having in such been at first made to remain? To refute, to rebuke any and all who dare repeat that call to come back to our senses from these pretenses that we’ve so proudly and profoundly come to prefer?

And all the above only because thorns think that their opinions matter simply because they have them.

It’s much the same as those nations the Father removed before the people as they entered in to take possession of His promise. He warned them back then to completely destroy the ways and workings of that world which He was overthrowing. Been reading about all this in the Pentateuch for several days now. In Deuteronomy at present, and though it often seemed but a repeat of things taught in Numbers and Leviticus, it seems this time somehow quite different.

The words are still much the same as those rules and laws they seek to recount and remind, but this time it’s as if there’s finally a point and purpose I’ve been offered to finally realize.

It’s something that this professor in college would say all the time. “If I repeat it more than once, there’s probably good reason for that.”

He was then suggesting at tests and such, seeking to inspire us to take note knowing that such information would be asked of us upon an exam of our understandings. Something this world so clearly lives as if isn’t coming. Indeed, we mentioned that motivation yesterday, how this world is so filled with those who so fervently, ferociously deny the coming Judgement Day. And again, it’s for good reason, it’s that very same one mentioned above.

Weeds don’t want to be reminded of the lack of harvest they’re able to offer.

Because who wants to acknowledge that their final outcome is nothing more than becoming a bundle of unbelievers worth only to be thrown into fire? No, such a story doesn’t seem to fit the lay of this land so lost and lazy that any looking for more than settling for their share of that same are seen as crazy, enemies, foolish fools following forsaken fantasies. That is what this world thinks of faith, isn’t it? That it’s foolish to follow this feeling that there’s just got to be more than so many have decided to settle for?

Indeed, such is the stance of weeds, and one made clearer by the day it seems. Right up to the point wherein some are now falling away in what has become their share of that verse we discussed in yesterday’s post. Because we’ve been taught to put up with all this alternative assumption, all these common expectations, all the world’s wanting for their itching ears to hear something soothing. Yes, “See no more visions!”

“Give us no more visions of what is right! Tell us pleasant things, prophesy illusions. Leave this way, get off this path, and stop confronting us with the Holy One of Israel!”

That’s again why God called those then to so utterly obliterate the peoples who were being dispossessed of their land for the sake of those God drew out of slavery and desired to call His own. Because those same messages repeat too, and sadly even more than His do. See, He breathed for us the Bible, and while it’s a hefty Word to be sure, it’s sadly seen as but a book to this world defined by disbelief. And well, that disbelief has inspired many to wonder why listen to what one book says when they so easily ignore all the others.

Why listen to what the few of faith have to say when the more of none say things that sound better? Why allow ourselves to be so bold as to refrain from doing what the nations around us are doing when to do the same things as they is anymore the only way to remain welcome here? Why undertake this load, endure this call, why put up with the sound teaching taught by the likes of those who live in the wilderness and walk along the outskirts and sit with tax collectors and sinners?

No friends, why do we still put up with all this godless chatter?

Why do we care what the world says? Why do we worry ourselves weary in regard what the world may do should we continue to adhere to this walk along His Way? Yes, why do we allow this world a seat at the table, a measure of input, an opportunity at suggestion as to the direction we live, the decisions we make, the words we say, the more we don’t? What has this world done to so deserve such a right to tell us what to do, who to be, what we’re not allowed to say and what they think none should believe?

Yes, why do we listen to weeds?

If not just because they’re closest and thus easier to hear?

No, perhaps the best question is instead when we agreed to believe that those around us are closer than the One who died to live inside?

That’s why we’re elsewhere called to rend our hearts, not our garments. To understand the risk we’re in within this world we’ve come to live as if we’re of. Because we’re not. He may have created these vessels out of this clay found in this place, but friends, He did so only to house the hope that is the Spirit that is the Son that came to save us from all we’ve done to please the crowd that’s gathered around and fought to keep us rooted in only this ground by telling us that we can belong here.

But why should we want to now that He’s told us of a better promise we can go to, grow to?

What I mean is this:

“The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field. But while everyone was sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and went away. When the wheat sprouted and formed heads, then the weeds also appeared. The owner’s servants came to him and said, ‘Sir, didn’t you sow good seed in your field? Where then did the weeds come from?’ ‘An enemy did this’, he replied. The servants asked him, ‘Do you want us to go and pull them up?’ ‘No,’ he answered, ‘because while you are pulling the weeds, you may uproot the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest. At that time I will tell the harvesters: First collect the weeds and tie them in bundles to be burned; then gather the wheat and bring it into my barn.’”

Indeed, “other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants, so that they did not bear grain.”

See, we live in world that tells us that faith is foolish and furthers this insistence with the suggestion of our suffering should we go ahead and live our lives according to it anyway. This is seen clearly in this place as again even some who have proclaimed the Name have now fallen away and refuse to say those things His Word says that this world doesn’t want to hear. Because many have become welcome here, wealthy here, willing to stay here because of it. “They have received their reward in full.”

Here.

Friends, I completely understand the ease of settling for such an outcome. I realize that it’s so normal anymore that it feels incredibly awkward to be the one lone weirdo who lives in wait for something else, somewhere else. I get it, believe me, I really do. But what I don’t get is this willingness to agree to this blasphemous beauty bestowed upon doubt and denial and decay. I don’t understand what it is that we win when we agree to let go of our hope of our being something better, somewhere better than whatever this world has been or will become.

What is the point in being like everyone else when the vast majority of everyone else is living a life of enmity against God?

Make no mistake, this world will continue to mock our faith. Jesus told us this clearly when He said that in this world we would have trouble. He knew what would come, and just how many would run away as it did. He knows the weeds as He walked amongst them Himself and knows the fullness of the wrath they can unleash. But He also knows that the worst that weeds can do is kill the body.

Why listen to them when they can’t touch the soul?

Indeed, why let those who have no faith affect our outcome when they otherwise have no right to it seeing as they have their own, and one eternally different at that? This world has absolutely no right, no power, no way to ever possibly destroy what He died for us to have. Unless, that is, we give that power to them by letting their lunacy take root in our hearts and from there choke out His hope.

Don’t you dare do that to yourself. Don’t do that to Him! Because despite what this world says, trying to convince all of us that we are nothing more, can be nothing better than just another blank face in a sea of doubt, that cross says something different. That cross says we matter. That cross says we’re important to Him. That cross proves that, yes, in this life we may lose, but that even that is a beautiful freedom as it frees us from feeling as if we have to keep listening to those weeds whispering all around us that we should be like them because we’d be happier here then.

I don’t care to be happy here. I don’t care to fit in. I don’t want to be like everyone else. How’s that for different? Why? Because this all ends, and so why waste the good parts, the best hopes, the biggest beliefs upon this part that’s so impermanent? No, I’ll wait for my reward and I’ll revel in the laughter of the thorns who think I’m crazy.

Because what’s crazier, listening for the distant hope of Heaven or letting our attention drift instead to hearing only the doubt that is all that all these weeds all around us have to show for the lives they too could have lived in hope but instead chose to reap of harvest of hollowness?

No, friends again, stop listening to weeds.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold