Day 3521 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

1 John 2:17 NIV

As to why the words from a song written some 100+ years ago would become, all of the sudden and thus quite suddenly, something of such inescapable substance that someone would be otherwise unable to not talk about it, well, I have no idea.

But it seems as though these days I see that the luster and allure of lure and lie will indeed, as the song says, grow strangely dim in light of the glory of the God who sent the Son who left the Spirit who leads us home.

For as said Son said himself, “if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you?” Indeed, it seems as if already we’ve found why that hymn has given me something to say. Because if that home were not so toward what then would He have died to lead? If that hope weren’t given unto us why, while on earth, would any hope in life beyond that held here? For the most common message tells us constantly that there are plenty of things within this world in which to house our hope and thus to find, eventually, for ourselves a house here filled with hope without needing that brazen belief that believes beyond.

Yes, here we hear we’ve here a home, and yet even with all the world helping us to want for it and to then wish for it even fuller with figment and fragment of folly and failure, it seems as though those inevitables have become evidentiary of our existence here being quite temporary.

And as those things for which we’ve lived do indeed become strangely dim, well such only seems to say that there’s another place in which our treasures such as hope and meaning are best kept for what we can’t help but feel a coming brighter day. Which is again a statement that seems quite the oddity in all honesty as we walk within a world packed to the seam of things to see and thoughts to share and opportunities to experience, the whole combination quite the existence.

Or at least as so many here seem content to make it seem.

For that is the other half of this oddity as found in whole within that hole we hold within as discussed yesterday. It’s that we walk not only a world so filled with such frills and thrills but too we walk amongst the many who imagine only the gravity of their getting and gaining all the world no matter the cost. But that’s the problem, at least for a few of us. It’s that we’ve come to count the cost as paid upon the cross which was chosen for great reason as crosses kill, and well, we’ve a life we’ve lived we’ve left to lose before we’re bound to leave.

And now indeed that we do, at least a few, seem to see that death doth indeed come for all, it’s as if we’ve found in that a most personal decision as to, again as I often say, what we win and when we lose. Only now that now we know that to live a life is now in Him also promised a life to lose, it’s as if that decision is proven all but perfectly dire one way or the other. For that death comes demands we either find a way to smile as it nears or rather steal away into makeshift shelters of selfish assumption presuming them as safe as society says and thus us found there safely inside said safety of our not suffering the way of all mankind.

But you see, that’s not for us to say and thus not something a society such as this can so sternly assume. For within the court of eternity, He doesn’t much need the input of you or me or Mike at work or Sally next door. No, He’s already determined our destination, one found only after we’ve left this life we’ve left to lose. And so it feels as if all we’ve left to choose is what life we lose and when we let it go.

Or at least that is an option now afforded us in Christ.

Because the reality of our mortality is that we’re going to lose this life we’ve lived. It’s only that now, in Him, we have the opportunity to lose the lost way of life we’ve lived both to and thus for all that was never anything but lifeless before we come inevitably to that end anyway.

Alas, this world so inspires us to again buy into that lie that says we’ve here a home that we’ve all sought to find it somewhere, somehow, in something or someone as such is seemingly the only real options from which to choose. Or so we’re told by a world that’s found faith to be so foolish that they think it not foolish to refuse that offer to lose a lost way of life before life is lost anyway.

And that’s likely only because we’ve all been offered so much of this world to gain, and thus too gained so much of this world, that we’ve all too set our sights to peruse those few worldly things we’ve not tried or tried to buy that we hear we’re supposed to find or feel as society says that they might offer us the closest thing to this best life idea that so many here buy and sell so often. And once our selections and substances and assumptions have been singled out, well then we awake each day we’re somehow given to pursue them as best we can as quickly as we can.

Because that lie that says we’ve a home here seems to invite inside this fear we feel in that failure of everyone else to find theirs in full. And we just can’t allow ourselves to imagine that the same sort of sorrow should happen to us as well.

But then again we talked about that yesterday too in that there’s an indivisibility designed between life and love as both are found and bound forever perfectly within the Father who sent the Son who left the Spirit to lead us home. We see the continuity between life and love within the life and death and life again of Christ the Son both of man and then too of God. For He came to live the life we couldn’t only the die the death we wouldn’t to achieve the redemption we shouldn’t even have the ability to imagine let alone the opportunity to experience.

And yet that’s exactly what His love sought to achieve for all of us who are otherwise so bound to death due to the wealth of such wage as won from within the sin overrunning this world. He created us to be His and in that to be alive as He is the Life. And because so too is He the Truth, well then it seems that for us few who don’t care to lose what we cannot keep, we in Him seem to see this shine of something everlasting that makes the finite and fleeting seem the only focus that can keep us failing.

Because that’s the true pursuit of every prize and priority as peddled and purchased by a people without the personal audacity to imagine beyond the idolatry and idiocy that are, oddly enough, almost as inseparable as life and love.

Which is right where we want nothing more of this world than this world has in the end managed to offer us. See, this place does indeed offer us all a great many things that it likewise conspires to convince we need if we’re to live the kind of life that this world loves to live. And in fact, and a shameful one at that, all of us have partaken of our fair share of worldly fare. But to what avail? To what end? To where then when upon that end?

See, that’s the new perplexity as purchased for us by He who redeemed us at the price we know well we couldn’t ourselves afford to offer. For none of us are anywhere near as able as He to do what He did and live to tell the truth. For we’ve lived too long a lie that’s left us looking to and through this world for that home we hear we’ve here, and well, since lie is sin and sin is death, well then our having lived in accord with any dishonesty or deception has determined that each of us have only lived a death.

Starting to see now why the things of this world do indeed grow strangely dim?

It’s because we know the death we’ve lived, or at least some of us do. It’s something found and felt within such things as shame and guilt. That’s why so many fight so fervently against things that most others enjoy. It’s why some refuse to settle for the substance of things assumed. It’s why a few delight to lose that life so lived chasing after delight as defined by a heart’s deceit. You see, we’ve seen ourselves the evidence of what the Bible says about our hearts being deceptive and deceitful.

And to tell the truth, it’s not much of a life after all.

No, it’s actually quite miserable. And as it’s turned out, there’s really nothing that anything we’ve had or held or wanted or wished for within this world that’s thus far proven able to overrule the reality of our rebellion having led us only to losing more than life. Because that’s something this world doesn’t ever dare tell anyone in regard to the cost of sin’s consequence and the corresponding fact found in that said cost is paid all along the way toward whatever we manage to want enough here that we take our hope out of Heaven to have it sooner.

Yes, there are things that seem just as close to death, if not even further down than it can go, that are found in living a life on the wrong side of right. Because again, all of us live and so too then all of us die. But with both thus being equally promised, why then the inequity given unto our fear of latter at the expense of so mishandling the former? For we’ve come to live as this world does, and that life is but an overall fear of death which then inspires us all to live up to the hilt so long as we’re here.

Indeed, deny yourself nothing in which you might delight, that is the message we hear around here as that’s, to such a fallen humanity, the very best way to fill their empty houses so quickly. Just soak up as much substance and assumption of it’s worth as you can get your hands on and mind to believe worth holding onto so tightly. But again, to what end and too toward where when we reach that end?

Because again, it comes for us all.

That’s the warning we see written here from within this verse written within His Word, a Word undoubtedly and thus undeniably written for our benefit. What benefit? Not living in such a normal worldly way that we, like they, come only to believe that here we’ll never leave. Because again, it comes for us all. What will we have left when we’ve left all we’ve had here? What can hope fall upon when we’ve fallen away from a world that was never ours to keep hold of?

Will we have anything of hope left to hold, or will, like most, we have left our hope housed in homes we lived convinced we could keep forever despite not a single other managing to accomplish such an outcome.

Because again, it comes for us all.

It’s just that we live amongst a very great many who live as if it doesn’t or won’t or that they might somehow be the ones it leaves alone. It won’t. Because life as lived here isn’t this continuum upon which so many seem to assume it to exist. It’s not linear but rather perfectly circular in that from what we come is the same as that to which we’re headed. The ground from which He took us if the same that inside they’ll who’ve tried to get us to live their way will eventually only forget us as we’re one day buried outside of their sight.

Indeed, all that’s here will be forgotten, but only by some who find themselves to not be the sources of their own luck but rather of the love of the Son who came from the Father to give unto us the Spirit who teaches us to leave what we cannot keep and too to no longer want what life doesn’t need.

Yes, we in Christ will forget our mistakes as they’re finally and forever washed away. But those not in Him, well those regrets will actually be felt forever.

But I suppose the difference of destination is decided within just how much of that difference between necessity and vanity we’ve since forgotten. Indeed, how much material have we had that had no hope beyond the moment we got it in our hands? Does not all manner of worldly matter seem to end up the same? For we place so much excitement and enthusiasm upon things we crave only to achieve our having them only to feel that elation prove so fleeting that we’re then right back on the hunt for something else to have in which we can then feel ourselves hope again.

Why continue repeating such a cycle of disappointment? Are the dreams we have for the things we don’t truly going to prove what all the others didn’t? Is there life found in letting our time tick by as we set in search of something here into which we can still our fear of still having to leave all that’s here?

Friends, I ask these sorts of such heavy questions in almost all of these posts because the fact is that the way of life we’ve all come to live at the behest and suggest of a world that so loves to pretend it knows what’s best for all of us has instead only become for all of us an inability to even consider such questions in light of the consequences we know must exist for our not having the answer, or at least our knowing the answers to not be what we’d otherwise like to confess.

But one day we will, each of us in fact as that is a promise also found within that Word He breathed for our benefit of both living a better life and too, because of our learning how only from Him, in the end finding too in Him a life that doesn’t end. But many won’t find it. Because it doesn’t exist inside the things this world seems so fervent to try and force it found. Hope just can’t fit inside something so temporary as everything in this world.

For friends, this world and its way are passing away, something we could honestly say we see inside every day anymore. But it’s not what most seem willing to say nor admit they see. Because too much here is still of too much worth to them to let go of the opportunity to have it for a while. But that’s just it, everything here is just for a while and none of us are privy to just how long that while may prove to be. But forever, well, that lasts forever.

So why keep shifting our sights to all that here shines when such will soon only be the dust that it’s always been?

Because while those entranced by the excitement are otherwise unable to agree, such is the substance of everything in and of this world, just dust. And yes, that means even us. And though many have tried, truth is that all have failed to find more life within whatever we might try to take our attention off the fact that this isn’t forever yet. This is all just the beginning, and this verse for today, well, it’s one aimed at our learning to not let this part be the best part because again, it comes for us all.

And while the Son has proven that He wants not that end for any of us, the fact that so many of us are so unwilling to believe in life beyond the end of this one that the society around us will continue to only inspire countless more to conspire against God in exchange for the substance of human assumption assuming that life is found within anything that sparkles or shines. All for it all to pass away anyway.

So friends, please reconsider where you’re living and alongside that consideration just what you’re living for. Because the truth will one day be proven in that what we live for is where we’ve lived toward. Don’t end up having lived toward a world that’s gone. Rather let the things of this earth, as Mrs. Helen Lemmel penned back in 1922 in what is inarguably one of the greatest and most well-known hymns of all human history, let them grow strangely dim in light of His glory and grace.

For since in Him it’s seen that both life and love are meant to exist as one, we’ll not want to be the one left out of experiencing them, in Him, together as the truth is that we cannot survive without either. No, and that is the truth no matter what anyone else may say or whatever else we might have in which we’ve come to be convinced is hiding either life or love or hope or home or whatever else we know we need.

In the end, we need life, yes, but that life doesn’t need this world. And while the world can’t agree to see that, again, that empty tomb proves that fact quite perfectly to those who are willing to look beyond themselves and this way of life we’ve lived inside a world that’s passing away.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold