Day 3520 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

1 John 2:15 NIV

As if but a vagabond walking home, entirely too assured of where they’re headed to consider hoping in or holding to anything they may find anywhere between where they are and where they know they belong.

Alas, it seems that we assume that to belong is an assurance all its own. In fact it’s become a human inclination to find that place in which we feel we fit. There’s an almost natural neutrality to it in that it’s a pursuit preferred by all and for almost nothing but good reasons. For we were made to belong, to be what we were made to be where we were made to be it as that is the design of humanity for we are all still but man in a garden surrounded by the rest of creation created by a Creator that designed both mankind and every other kind to live together and all likewise enjoy the expanse of our existence where we’ve been given said experience of existing.

And yet we’ve sought so long and so far and so very fervently, and too thus through so many things along the way seeking here that something or somewhere, or even someone, that might finally find for us the freedom found and felt in feeling as if we fit where we are as such is where we so assume we should.

Because here was made to be home as such was God’s intended initial intent.

But what the world has become isn’t what God intended we do with it. And so the problem has come in that we’ve now become, in light of so much searching finding only so much fright as faced in our failing to find that feeling thus far, altogether disheveled in regard to direction as our devotion’s been directed at so many decisions and their destructions that we’re all but afraid to try anymore. We’re afraid to fail anymore. We’re all but absolutely terrified of falling short one more time whilst looking in one more place for that one more thing that we don’t think we’ve tried yet to find yet that feeling of our feeling as if we belong.

And truth be told we can’t rightly remember whether or not we’ve tried this next idea before as we’ve tried so very many over the years to what’s amounted to no avail that we’re again just afraid as it seems anymore that anything we try has been tried before, if not by us then by those who, like us, are too seeking to find that place they feel at home. But further still, that likewise common consideration of community as chased by all humanity has led to us also doing as humanity does and all continually and communally contending for that contentment while only still unanimously not finding it.

Finding so little of life or love or anything at all really, well, it’s left us feeling only a furthering of our floundering in fear of failure. For if nobody else has seemed to find what we seek to feel, well then how much longer can we hope to hold that hope of our feeling at home among those who are also failing to find it?

How much longer can we hope to hold that hope of feeling anything when all we feel is just afraid of falling short one more time to find that place or see that face in which we belong? Indeed, such has become the scene in which we scream our names and announce our dreams for the whole world to hear in hopes that they won’t forget that we’re here and, again like they, trying to make here feel at home as now only assumed just so backwards in that we now seek to invite this world and its ways to invade our days while we lay as wide open as we can stretch always waiting for something to fit the hole we hold inside.

Yes, we ask the world to do their best, to send their best as we all now just rest all but entirely unready to try anymore, again knowing well all the things we’ve loved enough to have brought us to life in that life we’ve been looking for.

But alas we know only that they’ve thus far failed and so now we fear only feeling the same fall all over again. For we know the repetition of patterns repeated, and too we know the insanity of assuming something better despite our refusing the very repealing of those patterns we’ve come to revere for nothing more than their assurance of safety as considered inside the rapidity of others feeling sorry for us just the same as we feel for them as we all just fall again today short again of feeling what we’ve hoped to find.

All because here we don’t belong.

For that’s the reality from which we’ve fallen out of love into love with all that isn’t life nor then able to provide such a light of the Way that brought the Truth that is the assurance of life as He too is the Life that laid down His own to prove perfectly of a place prepared that doesn’t ask us to find it but rather to merely and meekly follow Him toward it. And yet even such simplicity of salvation isn’t allowed to be seen as quite so simple by those who are but slaves to this assumption of our finding something that gets to us quicker than we can get to where He’s gone.

Because there’s still a life to be lived within this in between.

And indeed, even that is a confusion confined if not condemned within man’s delusion of doubts and delights designing a direction we can take toward something worth finding as found within our feeling at home once it’s held, so long as it’s held soon.

No, it appears that our adding our incessant impatience has now proven the problem and every part of it. We’ve found the permanence of our place only in pieces as we’ve come to seek it in pieces of impermanence as paid for with the souls we’ve sold and starved seeking to settle so far short of where we know we belong. Indeed, we’ve set aside our vagabond bond and have in that become bound to the doubt and disbelief that defines the best for which most here do believe.

Yes, most here only believe in disbelief, and they anymore love it so that they’re slow only to lose it as it’s to them the last thing they’ve left in which to hope.

For sinners can only truly hope in that doubt that says we’re not as doomed as we deserve. The slave can only assume the solace they’ve known for fear of the failures to be found in all that we’ve not known so far. The worldly can only walk in worldly ways so wanton in both want and wish as those have defined for us the best for which we’ve come to believe. And so we see that who we’ve become isn’t at all who we were meant to be, just as much as this garden seems anymore more grave than anything.

Simply because sinners know only to continue earning their wages out of fear of finding less should they leave their now normal behind for something different.

Indeed, we are all scared to death of losing what we’ve found and come to love within this life atop this land. For we’ve tried so hard to feel at home that we’ve even come up with ways to arrive at such a settlement. It’s only that our settlement has demanded a settling, again short of the more for which we were made to remain. But alas, just as much as we’ve not remained who God made us to be but instead chased sin with a grin all the way down into the graves, so too have such things as love, life, faith, even feeling become but ghosts of what they were once.

For as it turns out that’s all that can happen when a soul so decides to so decline the design of the divine for the chance to dance inside the decay of things loved that we’ll lose one day upon that day when we leave all we’ve come to love more than life itself.

Why is it that we’ve traded life for the lifeless? Why have we fought to force faith to be felt inside our faithlessness? Does doubt truly delight so much that it’s not worth the determination demanded to decline it? Are we to truly believe only that this world is the only place we could belong simply because it’s the only place we presently are? Are we then to confine our hope, our joy, our peace, our purpose inside the pursuit of more of this world than all of it we’ve already wanted and won?

Yet, what have we won if still we want?

Do we not all still seek something in which to hope? Don’t we all still feel this hole inside keeping us from feeling whole inside? Is not that hole we hold so bottomless that it could empty the world of all it has and still feel barren and betrayed? Can we not then see how we’ve only been betraying ourselves all this time trying to fill that hole inside with the whole world outside that still doesn’t seem to define who or what we’re meant to be?

For do any of us truly feel as if here we belong?

Granted, I can’t and thus won’t try to speak for anyone else, but I can and therefore must speak for me for the Spirit of which I’m but a vessel compels me to such blatant honesty. And as for me, no, I don’t feel like I belong here. Haven’t for years. And somehow still it’s a sentiment that seems only to grow by the day, by the hour, by the headline and latest horror. For such things should not so define our lifetime nor the time in which we have to live a life.

And yet they do.

Because we’ve agreed they can.

Indeed, we’ve agreed to let this world define everything from life to love, and thus we find that we only feel the same as the rest seem. And in this sense of our belonging to a community, finally, we find that we feel this fear of not letting down those who’ve welcomed us this low into this hole that seeks still to fill that hole we hold with a world that can no more hold life as it was at first designed than that grave did He who designed it to be so much more than we’ve since settled for.

How much longer can we trade that triumph for only further failing to find anything that comes close to it? How much longer can we lock our lives inside the things we see, the things we buy, the things we build, the things we’ll lose? Yes, how much longer can we look for life within the things of this world which have no life, or even inside those who have only a life to live here a little longer?

Can possessions prove a place for us to belong? They haven’t yet. Can wealth win us a hearth upon which to finally heal our heart? Hasn’t yet. Can celebrities combine to come inside and make us feel complete with the lives they live that we don’t? Doesn’t seem so. Can politicians provide a promise that promises to provide for all time? Nah, most can’t uphold a promise past an election. Can all this world becoming our kingdom make us feel ourselves kings, even though we’d only have a few years left to the luxury?

Probably not.

Because everything here is still just temporary. And that’s the sorrow against which He seeks to warn us in this verse for today. For why place something so lasting as hope or joy or life or love were meant to be inside of things not meant to remain? Why lock our meaning inside materials that are made to fade when this world passes away? Why live to be liked by those who don’t love life enough to seek it where it’s been promised most permanent?

Yes, why follow the world away from life everlasting toward only things that seem to keep us guessing in regard to everything from who we are to why we’re here and where we might belong before long?

How much longer is before long and do we honestly believe that whatever we find along the way will make us feel whole and thus at home when still we have to leave?

Friends, that’s the gift of our Father. For you see, He at first created us in His image, and in case you’ve forgotten, and judging by the priorities and pursuits of this place, most have, He is timeless. He is endless. He is goodness. And so what are we going without by trying to not go without all that’s found within this world limited by time, space, matter, madness? Yes, what are we missing by missing the Messiah in our lives as lived looking to other things to offer what He’s already given?

Can this world give us more than forever? Can those around us give us something better than forgiveness? Can a life loved like the world lives leave us holding onto unending hope? Is there lasting joy in momentary enjoyment? Is there meaning within something material? Is that meaning equitable as the meaning given us by our Maker?

It’s all a matter of love for love is life and life meant to love. But friends, why love what we’ll leave? Why give something so powerful to everything so impermanent? Why try to feel as if we belong in a place that won’t be around forever? Do we not want forever? Do we not want to belong somewhere that won’t let us down or leave us dry all over again? Why then continue looking to desert we’re in for the place we belong or rather something from the desert to distract us from the fact that we’re in the desert?

No, truth is that we’re all but vagabonds as defined by “a person who wanders from place to place without a home or job.” Guess the only difference then is that we do have a job, and it’s to live as if we don’t have a home. Here. It’s to speak the truth that sets captives free from living as if they might belong. Here. It’s proclaiming the Name that is above all others so that all others might hear in Him the hope this world can’t hold.

Here.

For indeed, this world couldn’t hold Him, that empty tomb proves perfectly that promise. And yet that’s just it. If this world couldn’t hold Him who came to bring us hope of that forever kind of home in which we were made to belong, why shift our sights back to assuming something sufficient inside this place that He’s now proven couldn’t hold His promise?

My point friends is that cannot discount the delight of a life on the run. Granted, it might mean we lose a lot within the haste home, but hey, it’s nothing we wouldn’t lose anyway. So don’t worry about anything of this world. Don’t let this world turn your love to something that cannot give you live. No, rather than confining our lives to this world we’ll leave, let us live instead to belong beside the One who first made it and then sent His Son to come and save us from all we’ve found trying to find a way to feel alive within it.

Because the fact is that for too long we’ve leaned upon this love we’ve learned as left to things we’ll leave behind. And thus we’ve come to equate love with all that’s lifeless, which is not at all what neither life nor love are supposed to be. For in Him we see that life and love are one and the same. And thus if we love what doesn’t give life then we’ll in the end find neither. But if we love the Father, then too we love Life as in Christ He proved that loves lives, and thus life is love and love is life.

And life’s just too short to listen to a world that seems all but convinced otherwise.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold