Day 3571 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

John 3:20 NIV

There’s anymore an almost visible disdain for daylight as defined by He who set the stars in motion which send the sun to rest that is done to suggest that there is indeed a great many who fear all of which they’ve failed to be coming to light for others to see.

And yet, one day the truth will tell that our lives as lived our way were but an expose of some of the most egregious evils ever imagined by even the most fallen of men, leaving us then without excuse, reason or rhyme as to why we gave away so very much time to the doing of all we sought only to hide, assuming that both somehow we could and that somehow we did. Alas, for most, this day will wait until we’re dead, leaving us then nothing to do but dance with the partner we chose as the life of life then comes to a close without the choice to choose again a different plan that would have purchased life as opposed to only our losing it forever.

I merely pray that for some this day may indeed be today whilst we’re still here within the land of the living, thus ourselves alive just enough to do as we’ve not and thus find the hope that we’ve only hidden from.

Indeed, is this not what we know well to do? To hide? To cower? To crawl daily into the shadows seeking their easiest of a refuge’s semblance? Do we indeed not feel more safe, more secure and secured within the shadows of sin which we’ve done most days with nothing short of grin upon our chins as we again chose to choose that which invited only that we lose, if nothing else the time we spent trying to hide all that we wanted not anyone else to know? And if we have lost even a minute to this motive, have we not then all but ourselves condemned?

For if we acknowledge that something of everything we’ve done was done so dirty, so devalued, so disdainful and divided away from the way in which we then knew might be better instead, does this not confess that we do know that there be indeed a difference between wrong and right? And despite our trying so very hard for as long as we’ve failed to convince anyone otherwise, the fact is that we have all done things that we know to have been wrong.

Why else hide anything?

You see, we’re a people of almost perfect vanity. It’s an insanity of sorts as it consorts with our seared consciences trying to convince us that we’ve still something of some shred of innocence upon which to keep up this pretense of our reliance as if we’re not the shattered reeds of what are but our own crutches upon which we’ve come to lean looking for every excuse we can create trying to finish off this personal masterpiece of a life lived so impiously that it’s amazing we can even contemplate the idea of a better day.

Yes, we’ve each become so comfortable doing wrong thanks to the shadows now seen as our closest of friends for all the failures and flaws they’ve helped us hide that we mind not doing as we shouldn’t as we’ve found what feels an ace in the hole of this hold we’ve had upon our lives, choking the life out of ourselves little by little as we come to share in this world’s almost radical hatred of the light. Indeed, we’re down here doing but all we can to live as if all we want is all that should be done.

Never mind the endless corridor of chaos and confusion and calamity that we awake only to close up as tightly as we might so that none of it is seen in the daylight.

No, nothing to see in the shadows in which we sleep. Just dreams for things that are worth being seen, a life lived in love with life as opposed to the loss of time as found in our finding thus far entirely too many reasons to keep on losing so much more than we’ve actually found room in all our hiding for. We’ve in fact hidden so much of our pasts that it’s almost as if we might have born just yesterday, fools in training as it were as we were then what we are still, just a walking unwillingness to do anything any different.

And why is that?

Is change truly something of such dishonesty that we honestly can’t see the necessity not hidden within it? Is awaking today or perhaps tomorrow at the latest with a newfound mindset set not upon hiding but rather upon for once striving both through our pasts and to the promise of a better present truly something without enough precedent for us to even consider it? Have there been none who’ve been so changed for what’s so undeniably better that we ourselves are still unsure as to whether it’s ever worth the risk?

What do we have to risk that may somehow some day in some way out weigh the weight we’ve won within our wrongs, most of which still we waste away trying in vain to keep covered, hidden away?

See, I think the issue is that we’ve bought this idea that this world sells that tells us that we’re better off neither letting anyone know the bad habits we have nor either changing any of them even though such would free us from the waste of time, of life spent trying so hard to hide them. Yes, we’re inspired constantly to do always only as we please, and then should it go bad again, just hide it. Deny it. Act as if your pious, perfect, a most preferred performance of this pretend pretense which pleases the crowds gathered around seeking from us themselves to glean something that helps them sell themselves this lie we’re living up here on stage.

All because we see no shame in the costumes or catch phrases. We have no issues with the face paint or fuzzy red wigs and matching rubber noses. We somewhat enjoy the comically oversized shoes and seeing just how many of our friends we can fit in what is the smallest car on the road in this circus of life in which we’re all but acrobats of the asinine, swinging from sign to swine tossing our pearls of worldly wisdom as if trophies we’re helping others keep winning.

While we’re all only losing.

Indeed, we see ourselves here in our hides not anything of fools for it’s so dark inside anymore that we can’t see much of anything. For it both seems and even somedays feels as if the life’s gone out and the light isn’t welcome anymore, because we know well what would happen were we to rouse ourselves and open that door upon which some most unrelenting stranger has been knocking the cadence of a hope that’s become what’s heard now louder and louder as life fades and our days wane and here we waste in what is a life already wasted and thus one we think cannot be anything but.

But, is it not this that makes us fools?

Is it not our fear of the past proving itself what we know it is what makes us so foolish as to keep hiding what’s already never once been hidden? That’s what we talked over yesterday in regard to the verse found just before this one for this post here today. It’s this most mindless of mindset that has convinced us that we can hide and that, even beyond that, that we’ve done so well enough that we can still pretend that upon that day discussed above, we can then still measure up to the clarity of God’s calling us to be all we know we haven’t.

For nothing has ever been hidden from His sight, it’s rather just us who’ve hidden us from life here inside our shared hatred of the light daring to disclose all that we’ve discovered and destroyed in a life that has indeed gone almost perfectly to plan. Yes, I find that this is right where our fear in this must begin. It’s found in the fact that we’ve wanted it this way. That we’ve demanded it this way. It’s a matter made manifest in the manifests of our every missed opportunity along this journey to do what was right while we chose instead to do what we wanted.

And we just can’t bear to imagine such a blatant unraveling of our every lie we’ve come to believe that’s left us living this way. Because all along the way we’ve sinned with a grin, telling the world doing the same that none of us are fools because we’re doing as we please.

Which is still supposedly the only best outcome in a life.

And it’s this very lie that we’ve bought by working overtime to hide our every mistake, our every misunderstanding, our every standing for something we shouldn’t have and doing none of what we should. The very same lie that has us convinced that we’re fools for admitting anything we’ve gotten wrong, simply because everyone else has bought that same lie which has us all now living as if none of us do anything wrong.

And this idea has so taken root that we call fools those who admit their flaws.

But no, we only are foolish whenever we refuse to accept our mistakes and thereby grow from them. Fools are the ones who never improve whereas the wise are the ones who never stop trying to. And so yes, though we might widely and rightly despise such design, truth is that we need to know the weight of wrong as won already within all we’ve tried to hide, otherwise we'll keep doing it anyway as if it's as light a matter as our arrogance has made it seem.

For is this not what our opinions have always shown? That we think it’s no big deal to do things wrong? That doing wrong is somehow justified by our being applauded by those many who are doing the same? That we can remain convinced that we’re right simply to avoid the weight of being wrong? That we can hide what we know we did or figured wrongly so as to not show our failures and flaws to a world living as if none have any?

Indeed, for you see the worldly opinion that all of us have shared is that there can be no freedom found or felt within the weight of wrong. That’s why all of us continue this counter productivity of remaining enslaved to ourselves for sake of daily burying our errors. We’ve indeed become slaves of our vanity, trading away freedom every time we do something we know is wrong, doing it anyway and agreeing to spend time thereafter hiding it with all the other mistakes we know we’ve made.

All because within a world so vain, we think being wrong makes us look bad. And we’re ourselves so vain anymore that anything that makes us look bad makes us thus feel bad. And we don’t like feeling bad, feeling ashamed, feeling embarrassed by those many moments in which we make fools of ourselves doing as we shouldn’t at the inspiration of a world so foolish as to live as if fools none of us are.

And somewhere along the way to these lives in which we hide for hatred of the light which shows those all around just how wrong we’ve been all along, we’ve come to convince ourselves that not much is really all that important, especially those things that we can get wrong or mess up or fail somehow.

That’s why we hate coming into the light, just not enough places to hide what we get wrong and mess up and fail. But friends, there is nothing at all right about living in the dark. As we discussed yesterday, there is no safety in the shadows. There is, in truth, no shadows at all as God is light and thus He’s seen all we’ve done no matter how well we think we’d hidden it all. It’s just amazing how widely convinced we've been as to the otherwise.

I suppose that such is the outcome of blinded eyes and fast beating hearts breaking themselves to please themselves.

It’s that we never come to the place in which we’re able to see the utter lack of freedom that’s found in our living our lives trying so hard to hide. We’re all racing so fast to cover up so much that we’ve not even time to realize we are alive, much less to appreciate this gift for what it was meant to be. No, and that is why we need to slow down, to sit in the silence of life sometimes, to welcome the thoughts we've never wanted to think, those of guilt and regret which seem only to speak the closest thing to truth we've ever come to live.

But still, we don't see this in this place, do we? And sadly, that which isn’t seen isn’t believed as being worth much of anything.

And thus long gone are the days of sackcloth and ashes.

No more torn robes or raining tears over the sights or sounds of a whole world drown in delight without a care to why it's always so easy as to leave us never feeling guilty. And yet I’m convinced that we need that more than we need these acquittals we seek. We need the verdicts to go against us, because one day the outcome will if they don't. For the end of life is promised to be one of two eternally opposed directions. Peace and life or none and not anymore.

And yet we're told elsewhere in Scripture that many are here living what is their reward. And thus we see that in Him, it's all a table waiting to be flipped. Suffer now and rest later or rest now and, well, you get the picture. But yet we don't live as if we do for still we do as we shouldn't, seeking not growth but only a way to avoid the guilt. The assumption of hiding always thus our closest friend and nearest option, one reached for more than we can admit as these closet fools we’ve become in these shadows of a life we’ve chosen to live.

But aren't you tired of it? All the running, the hiding, the fighting and denying that we’re doing nothing wrong? I know I am. I don't want to live this way, this constant flipping between pleasure and pretending it was worth it when the in the moment proves far from it within the aftermath in which we seek for weeks, months, years maybe the ways to continue convincing ourselves we've done no wrong and thus need no change.

No, we need change. We need a lot of change. We need so much change that who we've been cannot survive. That's why the grave. For it's the perfect place to finally leave lay all the days we knew only waste, wanting all we never needed and then needing ways to pretend it acceptable in the end, only to once again settle for trying to hide it when we couldn’t make it seem quite so acceptable as our arrogance wanted it to be.

For there is it again, this truth which says that there is nothing acceptable about sin, and thus we shouldn't continue seeking ways to justify it. Rather we need to dawn the sackcloth sometimes. Need the ashes on our heads and the weight of just how wrong we've been. We need hearts rent, even more so than the garments we don't anymore. For there should be both a price to pay as well as sign to show that we understand that it's a price that we can't afford anyway, as it’s simply one we never could to begin with.

And we need this broken heart and shattered resolve as it's only within our humility that we can show Him that we crave now to know Him, and that in the only way possible, which is the leaving behind our love for the darkness and learning to love instead the Love that is the Light that is the Way and the Truth and the Life. For He is the One who paid our debt, we've just to be the ones who now accept that gift as shown inside our no longer charging against it, neither in denial nor in disdain. For we cannot afford to add to our debt nor can we contend against Him as if we can somehow disprove it. No, we’ve done what we’ve done, and yet so too did He do what He’s done to overcome it anyway.

Even despite the many days in which still we waste our lives trying to hide what He’s already died to forgive.

My friends, point is that all this hiding we’re trying, it’s just our pride pretending it can protect itself as inspired us by a world living so lost within that same lie that almost none of us are alive anymore. And so may we cease this seeking of acceptance, of preference, of opinion and option as we simply have none. There is no other option, no other Name under Heaven, and thus as He’s seen and forgiven all we’ve done, no real reason to keep living in hiding assuming that it helps us continue to look good. Because it only does to those who think themselves good too.

And simply put, as even Jesus said, there are none who are good for good is God alone.

And so we have to stop taking our one and only choice, this one and final chance as for granted as we have always. And perhaps the first victim of this most personal crucifixion is the understanding that has always sought ways to get us off, for we are nothing if not guilty. And we simply cannot continue living as if we're not. Literally. For death comes to us all.

It's only what's found thereafter that truly matters.

Please do not lean upon your understanding to get that. For if it hasn't yet, and it knows only reasons and ways to continue that missing of the importance of this message sent us through the Messiah, chances are it never will. For we know well that we’ll only continue hiding from everything that dares convict us.

It’s just that instead He came only to convince us that there is freedom because in Him there is forgiveness.

And so what are we hiding, not in the shadows of selfish doubt and public denial. No, what are we hiding from? For the cross says that He is nothing but love, mercy, kindness, compassion. And the empty tomb found just beyond it proves that He isn’t finished with His perfect will for those who follow Him out of death into life.

May just be me, but that sounds far better than living another day within this hideout of what are my all too often hollow considerations.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold