Day 3523 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Joshua 24:14 NIV

While the faces and spaces may have changed indeed, and rather dramatically if not perfectly at that, I fear that Egypt remains and thus too its stains as swollen inside a people unwilling to move forward in faith.

For as it turns out, that’s the only real direction that faith moves.

And as faith is life, too thus, forward in faith is the only movement in which any of mankind can ever truly exist let alone ever really hope because hope can only ever be really realized if we’re to ever finally abide beyond the inside fashioned of these forsaken assumptions of presumption and pride which have been passed down leaving us all only living life to pass away along with a world in which we’ve walked and from which we’ve learned how to do so and still not manage to get anywhere.

For despite our progressions past Pharaohs and our tendency to see such humanity as the only existence of true authority afforded unto us within which to witness the theophany we so dearly desire in order to rescind the necessity of sight being seen as unnecessary for faith to move forward, the fact is that while moving backwards in updated ways has become entirely worldly, it’s only still eternally wrong.

Because indeed, we may be so many days and designs and declarations further than the past in which Egypt wasn't but a desert and Rome was still the seat of global authority and Babylon was the epitome of human depravity as furthered beyond the exemplars of Sodom and Gomorrah, yes we might be far into the future when compared against those cultures and cities and civilizations.

Alas, it seems that neither distance nor time has thus far been able to find us progressed in regard to civility or humility for here immorality still reigns as if to say we simply want it to forever stay this way.

And because we dare not confess such obvious shortfalls in terms of faith and the forever kind of life for which Christ came to find us to help us find, well, we instead fill our days and dreams with things we’ve already seen but claim unaware of the confusion in which we design a newer and more novel version of whatever delusion or diversion we’ve all but made of ourselves and our surroundings. Yes, we just update the already was and proclaim this the evidence of our growth into the purpose for which we’re here.

Unfortunately though, that does seem always the underlying foundation of every figment of imagination upon which we lean and build and believe ourselves somehow better than those of the stone ages calling out, crying out from way back behind us to not ignore what they too once claimed they didn’t know or couldn’t see or wouldn’t hear. For the reality of all humanity is that the design of our time is still vastly the same as it was within the days and weeks and years within which all those glory days have now come and gone.

At least they left something.

At least there are hieroglyphs, petroglyphs, megaliths, monarchies and ancient memories preserved in stone or song that were meant to share the known of then with those who need still to know the same even in such days as these with all the technology one could ever want to live our lives so easy that we live them not, not anymore. Indeed, we seem to have so far progressed beyond progress that we’re but a repetition of regression in regard to reverence and responsibility and how the two meet inside what is a reality created by the only God that didn’t ask us to create Him.

That’s the oddity of our world anymore. It’s always been that way, granted, but it’s odd in that such blanket idolatry has so become us these days that we don’t even seem to see that all we’re doing is absolutely nothing that any coming age could ever possibly learn from. Unless that is they learn from the mistakes we can’t allow ourselves to admit we continue to make.

Such as all these gods we continue to grind and glean out of nearly everything from one another to just another post plastered upon some profile that someone else sees and appreciates enough to like but never enough to learn from.

No, we learn so little anymore, as I suppose that’s the only outcome coming when a people become so widely convinced that they know it all. And indeed, we’ve become so progressed in that regard that we spend our days regaling one another of our highlights and half-lives not realizing that we’ve lived neither for quite a while from within lives now lived vicariously through social media and celebrity. Yes, we’ve come so far that we even see time itself as something not at all valuable as we waste it upon such nothingness as all of this that we’re told matters anymore.

Indeed, such devotions are anymore decided for us by those who’ve been allowed to make all our choices for so many years that we don’t even really recall the last time we did something all on our own without the insight or input or fear of introspective investigation as always insisted upon by the crowds we’ve so become that our minds are mangled into this almost inhuman inability to realize that these are our lives as given us from one God who again didn’t ask us to create Him.

That’s the danger in our doing as others have always done and refuse to stop. We’ll eventually come to do nothing but whatever another decides as descended upon for them from yet another to whom they too look to live their life so that they’re not left the only one bearing the weight of making something wrong out of the same materials and moments that God has given us to do what is right.

I had that thought hit me after sharing yesterday’s post, as it seems anymore that the words never stop just because I click share. No, they’re still right there inside what is a flood of finally feeling alive as found only within faith as focused finally upon the Father. What hit was that it's not about doing as we see fit but rather as He said is right. For in the end, which comes again for all, it won’t matter much what the world thought, what we thought about what we did and how well it went.

No, what we’ll weighed by is what we lived by, for though long forgotten behind clouds of crowds and conversations calling our attention elsewhere to elsewise, each of us live by a code. And as with our passwords and logins, perhaps they shouldn’t be so shared as most so clearly seem to be anymore.

For the reality is that what we serve, who we serve, who we are as defined by that kind of decision and devotion, it’s a matter so entirely personal that we should be only persons making the selections and taking the stances and welcoming the consequences. Yes, welcoming the consequences as, well, if we’re doing what we know is right we should be enthralled at the opportunity to embrace every chance to have our choice contested and condemned and confused by a world filled with so many falsities that it’s amazing any of us have any ability to imagine what life might be should we ever get around to living it through what isn’t yet one more false god or familiar hope.

Because that’s all the world knows as the world wants only to know what already was as such remains a foundation already poured and thus apparently proven enough to rebuild upon despite the past destructions of such misplaced devotions as these that still we give to such chaos and commotion as the contemplation of settling for nothing but a share of the stagnation of fallen nations rather than a faith that moves forward perpetually into the promise of life without finality.

Which again makes we wonder as to what we’re leaving behind and too what we’re leaving toward when upon that day when our devotions have reached their culmination in the filling of a grave and the then finding out all about the everything we couldn’t or wouldn’t or didn’t dare pretend we could or should have seen as waiting always beyond the here and now.

Because, again my friends, life in this world is circular, cyclical in that it all revolves around the inseparability of life from death. For the reality of mortality is that you cannot have one without the other. And while we’ve been so stuck inside these saddened assumptions of something within this world being enough to make us feel worth our being alive for so little as something within this world, our worldly death is where the circle of life ends and the rest of life begins.

Where will we live it? What will we experience once inside of it? Who will we see, who will we serve when our lives of temporality are then a finale which only sets the stage for all of forever to finally begin?

Is who we are, where we are, what we serve, how we believe truly able to conceive the impossible hope of life lived forever inside the perfect promise of His peaceful presence? Can any of these idols we worship offer unto to us the same everlasting? Can they offer us even a semblance of the same before that never ending? Or are we simply just fooling ourselves by all of this distracting of ourselves with the changed faces of Egypt?

For again, dear friends, I fear that at least part of us seems to still exist beyond the Euphrates and sadly too that Egypt, if anything, resides inside of us at this point. For though the Pharaohs have changed appearances and all but abdicated their thrones for our preference and pride, the fact is that while the image may look different, the slavery is much the same. And so too then, at least I imagine, the refusal to admit our chains is much the same as well.

Not that we’re physically called unto making bricks by a leader so vicious as to even stop supplying the straw used in their manufacture. We’re not each living a life left out in the fields from the rising of the sun to the setting of same seeking to fill some quota of someone else’s expectations. Though that one actually does kind of hit a little closer to home as lived, apparently, assumed here. Indeed, though we not find ourselves listening to the clang and clatter of chains clinging link-to-link, sadly I do think that we’re otherwise bound to this ground more than we might dare agree.

It’s just hard for us to see it as the chains look like cell phones. The slave drivers are celebrities. The Pharaohs are called now presidents and representatives. The quotas might not be measured in bricks or bundles, but clicks and followers are just as valued these days. Yes, we live still a life left to serving the status quos and social implications of our failing another’s expectations. And thus we have as many gods as the Greeks, a pantheon of opinions and pastimes that we give our every day to believing worth the days we’re losing.

Are they?

Will it matter when we leave here? Can we live as if we are leaving here? Or have we planted so many roots into the common and expected that we can’t anymore imagine anything more than everything here staying forever the way it is already?

Sadly, that is how all of us live, at least in one way or another. All of us take life for granted, even if we’re increasingly thankful for certain outcomes or opportunities found within it. We all still take something for granted. We all still give our time and attention to things not worth such a priceless investment. We all listen to the echoing of voices screamed at us by the voiceless of whom we ourselves have so seemingly become here inside this inability to say anything different out of our fear of those whose ears don’t itch for such difference.

And yet if we do nothing different, well then how can we evidence any movement? If we never learn anything, how can we say we’ve grown in wisdom? If we never lose anything, leave anything behind, how can we confess that what we found in exchange was indeed worth the sacrifice? Yes, if we never know nothing of sacrifice or selflessness, how then can we say we know anything of Jesus?

And if we live as if we know more of this world than we do of He who created it, what will we have to expect when before the Creator we spent our entire lives only creating against?

Hard questions, I know. But friends, such is how this story should go! We should not seek to make this battle easier as the reward is worth the suffering, the sacrificing, the starving of ourselves their insatiable insistent upon the substance of things present while we stare instead faithfully into the certainty of the things not seen, not known, uncommon and so entirely unpopular that we smile as they laugh at our inability to stay on this side of the Euphrates.

But do we have any of that left in us though? For we were at first created with plenty of that kind of propriety as proven not in pride but rather in praise. Do we have any praise left for anything not here where so much is so glorified that we’re only considered fools for going without it? I hope we do or are least urgent to find it because the fact of forever is that we’ll live there without it.

Because just like those people Joshua is talking to here, so too have we still a long way to go before we find our home in the Promised Land that is now not confined to the Middle East nor cordoned off by such boundaries as the Mediterranean or the Arabian Desert. No, our Land now Promised is the Presence of the Lord. And while Heaven still has borders, they’re defined not by deserts or neighboring nations but rather by “Well done, good and faithful servant.” But again, we’ve a life left to go before we leave this lease for that outlandish hope of that home He said He was preparing.

Which finally gets me to the main question of the day: Are we preparing? And if we say we are, well then why the boxes? Why the pit stops? Why the time spent worrying about worldly things? Can the things we make come along with us? Can the taunts of the faithless stop us? Can the judgement of the world filled with all we leave behind before we leave at all, can they destroy His promise? And since the answer is a resounding no, well then why do we seem so willing to help that hope become so unfocused that we fix our sights upon all these false gods that stay here?

Friends, as Joshua goes on to instruct, choose for yourselves, this day, whom you shall serve. Because the apparently all too commonly overlooked reality is that we are all choosing already this day who or what we serve. And in fact, in all honesty, we’re making this choice every day, perhaps multiple times a day thanks to such an ongoing and thus ever-incoming influx of the substance of things others are choosing to serve. But please understand that the choices this world is making in regard to the things they’re praising, find to be pleasing, continue so socially serving or pridefully expecting, they’re all either past or present.

This world continues to repeat the past and prove unwilling to look beyond today. Christ calls us to do this all differently. To look ahead to where our hope is held in wait. To set our minds on things above. To turn, to repent, to take up our crosses and daily destroy upon them any worldly chain left holding us to who we’ve been and what we’ve done so far. Because we’re more than the already. We’re more than the here and now. We are more than what we hold and how valuable someone else says it is.

We are God’s treasured possession, let us not then let anything or anyone else come to possess any of us be it our time, our attention, our focus, our fear, our faith. No, leave all other gods in the past and let our faith do what it does and move us toward life.

For while this world lives as if it’s stuck inside the always assumed, we’ve been set so free from such commonality that we are now a community bound together by the belief that allows us to say in unison that to live is Christ and to die is gain. And thus that our leaving this world and all its ways behind for good, for His good, for to be with forever He who is good, such is the epitome of liberation, and thus something we’re unwilling to waver on or wander from.

No, leave the world to keep coming up with distractions and destructions. We’re moving on behind He who is the Way to the Life. And so all that’s left for us while here is to speak the Truth that the world needs to hear so that maybe, just maybe, someone else can find their courage to contend for life in Christ rather than remaining content in the comfort of a world gone cold, and one soon gone for good.

Leave the old behind friends, there’s too much opportunity ahead to risk missing even a moment of this increasingly joyous journey home.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold