Day 3538 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Matthew 22:21 NIV

A reply offered in regard to the wonder as to whose image and inscription were boldly emblazoned upon this mediocrity of man’s currency which has so sadly become unto us indeed us in what is almost every way possible.

For alas we’ve so devolved in terms of devotion to the divine being the line we refuse to cross that, no, that line looks clearest in the rear-view nearest as it’s a concern not even an afterthought anymore. It’s an idea antiquated in every way these days as the world has so far progressed past such a vital simplicity as our not being our own defining further than nothing we own should thus be us. But yet, such is just how we’ve come to live so in love with a land so filled with frills and frights which illuminate every night so that we can continue our search for something of substance to make our self-betrayal not so blatant.

But blatant it shall indeed remain, for how else might we explain how we’ve come so far into this world that we worry ourselves weary after the woes this world knows, never once letting go of what we can go without?

Because, while it’s evident here that many certain things seem to certainly matter to most, what if most of what matters doesn’t? Like material possessions? What if our souls having become so sold to what is a near possession seeking such possession has proven for us only an enslavement to stuff? What if our fascination with fame and fortune has found for us only a furthered fall away from the finding of life forever? What if our jobs and the salaries we seek only afford us an inability to seek something that money can’t buy as built within a title no corporation can bestow?

What if, as we talked about yesterday, a few politicians having lent their image to coinage has inspired us to allow that same coinage to become a willing reflection of our image?

Whose image and whose inscription? That’s the questions asked of Christ in response to the people pressing Him for an answer to their question, one lain in what He knew to be a clear entrapment, a question in regard to the paying of taxes. Whose image is on the coin? Whose inscription is engraved on the coin? Whose coin is it as determined by who made it as defined by the one whose image and inscription set it apart as belonging to this specific community, culture, locality, country?

“Caesar’s,” the answered.

New name, difference face, different place, story yet still the same.

We don’t have a Caesar ruling over us anymore, or at least that’s not what we call them. No, they’re presidents in some places, kings or queens in others, prime ministers in a few countries, emperor is still a term used to reference those of apparent regality. Nope, no Caesar, just plenty of others who still buy our very best with what little they can produce of what we’ve come to believe the very best proof of our life’s worth.

Talked about that yesterday in what ended up being one of my absolute favorite posts that He’s given me a chance to take part in. It’s this heartbreaking reality in which we walk in which all of us, to varying degrees, have this indifference almost toward anything that isn’t worldly. We’re anymore so entwined with this temporality that we’ve turned away from the bigger reality into which we were born and back to which that cross now calls.

Because it’s a shame to spend our lives so lost within the ways of what won’t last. And yet we all do it because it’s of such commonality that we cannot comprehend doing differently. Nothing else makes sense when the whole wide world is doing this one way. Who would dare go another? Who could last should they try another? For we’re, by all accounts, all but bound to making this mammon that man says is worth something.

For we have to eat, right? We have to afford clothes as nudity is quite awkward, at least in public places (at least most of them for the moment anyway). Need a house to sleep in, beds making such an undertaking vastly more comfortable. Cars are all but necessity as they get us back and forth to the place we make the money and too the places we spend the same to afford things like the food and the clothing and the mortgages and the student loans to some overpriced instructionary institution that taught us only what to think rather than how to think higher.

And so money has become the very basis of our basically everything. We even hear around here that money makes the world go round. And that’s cool. It’s wrong, but cool I suppose.

No, what makes the world go round isn’t anything found in the world. It’s such things as gravity and trajectory and the polarities which exist at the top and bottom of this planet and the overall orbital design of all existence in fact. That’s what makes the world go round, God, not money. But alas, we can see money and we know well that money helps us buy things that we want so much that we think them needs. And this leaves me thinking that we needs our heads checked as it’s all nonsense.

Whose image? Whose inscription? Whose attempt to emboss themselves upon some metal or a sheet of paper as if their glory is what gives such substance its ability to be worth something?

No, question is why do we so agree so easily?

So easily in fact that we never stop to consider the other side of this proverbial coin, again, pun intended. For that is what life is, it’s an existence founded upon a singularity aimed at one of two ends of what is a plurality that will end, inevitably, at the very same point. Just having accomplished eternally opposed purposes. For that is the matter that matters most, so much so that Christ chose the cross to help get the difference across.

One way runs through this world picking up as much of this world as one can want while the other does the same only to eventually stumble upon the silliness of such a limitation as our always worrying only about wanting what is in and of the world in which the way of all mankind proves is going to end someday. Maybe soon.

Maybe soon.

And the uncertainty as to our exit from this humanity is enough, for some at least, to wonder as to the more profound points and purposes perhaps proposed upon our present and indeed upon our person. Because surely we’re more than money, right? More than what we wear, where we go, where it’s all gone so wrong as to have left us not really remembering whose we are while we worry about what we wear and where we have to go this afternoon. That was the overall crux of yesterday’s talk, pondering the off-chance that maybe Jesus had a question asked of us without asking us anything.

For the coin is Caesar’s, but friends, we ain’t the coin.

So then what of ours is Caesar’s? What of us is Caesar’s? Is there anything that truly defines us that is Caesar’s, or Trump’s, Harris’, Biden’s, King George’s, Putin’s? Take it back a bit: Lincoln’s? Washington? Mao? Stalin? Hitler? All world leaders, all with faces on coins and inscriptions all but carved in the hearts of their most loyal followers. But that’s just it, have these people become more than people to us simply because they lord it over us, or rather have all these place holders come to hold too much a place in our lives, so much so that we have agreed to make part of their existence a perhaps hefty portion of ours?

Forget the politics. Who else has become part of our image, our identity, our very existence? Taylor Swift? Lebron? Jordan? Diddy? Disney? Nike? Apple? Chevy? Where does it end?

See, we’ve sadly come to see ourselves as, at least partially, defined as what we have around us, thus forgetting what’s in us. Indeed, anymore our very identity is tied intrinsically to a job, a title, a trophy, a triumph, a trinket. We’re consumed with such things as video games, stereo systems, cell phones and streaming subscriptions. We plan our days around taking breaks to check the feeds of things that we can’t do, see, be. Why?

Even worse, what has all of it caused us to forget, forfeit perhaps?

We’ve forgotten so much of He who made us and thus who He made us to be that we see an equal part of our existence as held inside the substance beside us. It’s locked inside idols made by man of man and whatever said man has made. And the warning against such idolatry is that all we have in and of this world will stay in and of this world when upon that coming day when our souls are then proven not of this world.

And so just to save time, you’re welcome, let’s us focus today on not what we have but rather what we are. Because what of us is Caesar’s? Is our time a gift received from someone or something in this world? Were we bestowed our breath by those who too breathe but temporality within this finite and fleeting? Is our body our own or a vessel otherwise crafted or created by man? Is our life a matter made of mankind or whatever man’s made themselves believe matters?

Sure seems like it most days.

For again, that’s what we so tend to tarry toward. We wake up only to wait in line for the world to once more tell us what matters. And we bite and buy into to such blatant disregard for everything with actual meaning all because it’s normal. We’ve become desensitized to what we do all because everyone else does it too. And we settle to live like they all do.

Because, we don’t see anyone really doing anything any different. And as a people seeking the safety of evidence, we don’t know if we could exist should we attempt what nobody else is trying.

So we just keep dying, a little more every day inside every choice being made to think something of this world matters so much that we can focus on it until we don’t remember that we matter anymore.

For are not our breath, our body, our time, our lives all given us from God? And if so as they so are, do we not matter more than all this material monotony? Are we not worth more than whatever the world is selling short? Should we be so quick to sell what we are in exchange for what the world says is worth equal worry? Or should we not give to God what is God’s?

What is God’s? Life? Breath? Time? Intention? He gave us all the above. And since man can do nothing lasting with them, why then should we live as if they can last should we give them to man?

No, we cannot truly have become so blind by all this bling and disbelief that we believe that, can we? Have we? When did we?

See friends, God knows our days, our years, our time upon this planet as He’s the One who planned it. He knows how many minutes we will be here, Psalm 139:16, thus our every day is a gift from Him as He alone determined how many we’d have.

Going further, He knows our bodies as He alone was the One who at first designed them and then formed them from the dust of the ground. Genesis 2:7. And it’s this very verse that also tells us that He also remains the lone source of our breath as He breathed life into our lungs. And indeed, this is in fact a fact reverberated in such verses as Luke 12:7 which tells us that He knows the number of hairs upon our head. And thus our bodies are His, given unto us as vessels of the Spirit, jars of clay that are given to be living testimonies of His creation and ability to keep it going. And so our lives are His.

Our hearts are His, something evidenced in perhaps a slightly different angle in the likes of say David being described as a man after God’s own heart, a craving we all feel in so many wrong directions as defined by and determined in our knowing we belong to somewhere, to someone, just unfortunately convinced that this world is our best place to look. Simply because it’s the only place our eyes can see right now. Especially if our hearts are unable to hope beyond the here.

Which is yet another proof of our being His. Yes, let your eyes look straight ahead, Proverbs 4:25-27. “Let your eyes look straight ahead; fix your gaze directly before you. Give careful thought to the paths for your feet and be steadfast in all your ways. Do not turn to the right or the left; keep your foot from evil.” Our eyes are His, thus our focus is His, our attention thus His too. Our thoughts are His, or should be aimed at Him in what is a life given unto honoring He who gave us life, not once, not twice, but in fact thrice (ours, that of Christ, and in Him ours again).

Indeed, He knows the thoughts and attitudes of our hearts, knowing them because He’s chosen to know them, thus making room for us in His awareness. Why then is He given next to none of ours as we instead continue to spread it amongst such substance as social media feeds and mainstream media headlines? Simply because He’s not on a coin? How foolish of us to equate metal or paper with worth!

For our eyes were made to look directly at our Father. We’re in Christ called to set our minds on things above where God is, minds thus meant to maintain a similar focus as our sight. Indeed, walk not by sight but by faith, a proof that our trust is His as our trust should be only in Him as only He is He who came to overcome the grave and save us from ending up forever inside the death held within.

Friends, all we are, body, mind, soul, our entire substance is the providence of God having decided to make us in His image. And yet, as truth so often does, it all goes even further, ever deeper than that. Our thoughts, our understandings, our worries even, they’re all His as He asks for all the above.

And so what if us can be Caesar’s?

What of us can belong to this world considering how none of what we are is a matter given us of the world, by the world? No, all we are is from Him, and in the only reasonable equality to be anywhere near welcomed a life eternally, if it’s all from Him it’s all for Him as all will return to Him. And thus we see that indeed, yes, the body is more than clothing, life is more than food, and in fact life is more than the body. For this body is but temporary, a life on loan from the lone Author of life.

And so what shall we do when this rent comes due? Shall we be thrown into a sudden surprise that all we are is more than what we gave our life? Will we stand in horror as we see the hope vanish from around us as all we’d lived hoping in is proven of a world that we’re not bound by anymore? Will we cry ourselves empty as we empty ourselves of every worldly triumph and trophy? Wail as we watch all we worked for, wished for instantly tarnish?

Or will we have lived for more than that which tarnishes and tears and leaves tears as we leave here? For the truth is that there should be no tears, for where He is there is “no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.” Why then do we hold on so tightly to a place in which all the above exist in growing abundance? Why live a life that will leave us worried or hesitant or disinterested in leaving this place? Why give our time, our attention, our inclination toward things that are of the old order of things?

Why not allow Him to strip away, prune away, burn away all that isn’t life as only He can define and thus find in us? Is this truly what we want for us, a world we all leave and a life lived in it worried only about what stays in it? Why not want that hope of where He is in that place where there is only peace? Why continue to worry instead about some piece of metal or some momentary meaning as made within something that can only last until we leave?

Because indeed, He created us to be His, and friends, this means that someday our souls will be set free from these temporary vessels that they’re housed in here. So why worry any further about this place? For everything here is ending. And since we know this, please don’t live a life that leaves you living for things that are ending, because that will only convince you that life is ending too.

It’s not. At least not in Christ.

Not ever.

But by all means, focus on coins and culture and chaos if you want to think such thing matter. But just know that if you so choose to do just that, you’ll probably find it increasingly challenging to focus in on what actually matters. And too, flip side, if you focus on what matters more now, salvation and such, you’ll find it increasingly challenging to worry about the things and ways of this world. And considering the direction of this downfall, not worrying about what’s happening in the world sounds like a far better way to spend our remaining days.

Because money won’t buy us out of what’s coming.

Jesus did though.

So again, live as if you belong to Caesar by worrying only about what belongs to Caesar, or, live as if you belong to God by finally worrying more about the fact that you do belong to God.

Choice is yours. Please don’t leave it to a coin to decide.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold