Day 3577 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Proverbs 14:16 NIV

To shun is to say that something is utterly unwelcome. But alas, a prideful security is left to merely hope that something we don’t want won’t break in while we’re not looking.

Indeed, unwelcome and unwanted are perhaps fairly close in both spelling and speech, but alas they’re quite different in terms of design and disaster. For to say something is unwanted is done from a prideful perspective which hopes that said unwanted outcome never comes near. But for something to be unto us unwelcome, well, even if it comes near, still we have the resolve to stand up and say firmly that it is not welcome here. And such is just what we we’re called to say of evil.

Not that we simply don’t want to experience it or admit it found within our errors, but to in fact go so far as to fear God so much that we refuse to welcome it in our lives, even if it means a life-long fight to keep it out.

Sadly there’s a quite preferential comfort to our commonly sought sense of feeling as secured as a pride might find, as if once within we feel as if nothing can get to us, a sort of safe fit for a soul.

Alas, as much as a safe is meant to secure it can also be used to conceal, to contain, to retain this mainframe in which we cannot break free once found within what we’ve wanted to win in regard to such selfishness as vain security. And in fact this is something that I dare say all of us have felt more than a time or two, perhaps times too many to count by now. For security has become of equal importance to liberty as both seen from eyes still blind by this lie that says either are matters meant for our making.

Making us thus the only ones who can determine when we’ve otherwise arrived at said place and time inside our mind in which we feel as if we’re both safe and yet still free to do as we please.

Meaning then that perhaps our security is more oversight than anything as it seeks not actual safety but rather a strange blend of liberality and laxity that allows us to do as we please whilst assuming that, as we must continue to pretend that we know what we’re doing in order to do as we imagine we might like to, we are the very best basis of what might be best for us. Leaving us then leaning upon us to both lead us toward what we want and to also find every step of the way every excuse we’ll need to keep up this belief that we’re doing no wrong.

Because this idea, as faulty and fail-prone as it’s already proven plenty, it’s sadly where we seem to find our best understanding of security.

That we’ve not made mistakes, or at least not many worth the weight of admitting our wrong. And too that whatever misstep we have in fact taken was taken at the blame of another, despite our being always only the lone alone who decides to own what we want whilst denying the more we don’t. And yet, somehow still we seem so great at failing to find it, it being this life in which we’re both free and too in which we feel safe as well.

For the reality will tell that safety isn’t quite so free, and nor then can true freedom be found safely.

Now granted, this is something which has always existed within a most certain clarity as shown inside the Christ. For our faith contends that He came to begin what continues still, an intercession carried by He who is our intermediary mediating this meeting between our madness and His mercy. Our madness being that seen within every sin undertaken with grin, and His mercy as still proven undeniably within the Messiah who paid our debt within every blow upon His faultless body, blows we ourselves should have known.

And now we have a truth in which we have been allowed to come to know what we should have known all along. Yet we don’t. Because it’s uncomfortable, this truth of what we’ve won being what we’ve left to lose, a truth told alongside the same in which we find that what we’ve failed to find is what He found for us, asking us only to admit we couldn’t but that He did. And yet this is right where our pride has a most perfectly difficult time admitting such a confused admission as that paid for our admittance into acceptance having still done all we remember now as having been unacceptable.

It’s as if we’re scattered and scarred here strewn amongst a strange reality in which the more we come to know of all we’ve long pretended we didn’t, lessons left unaccepted due to the indifference they held in regard to our reverent resolve to remain irreverent, they find for us ever-further this focus that finds us seeing only guilt as the pasts we tried so hard to paint as perfect enough to leave us feeling safe and secure were only perfect at painting us as sinners without a security at all.

Just a soul sold to buy what came about to betray.

And our pride hates to see us that way. For we’ve here lived our every day as if we had the only say, the only voice with any sway, the ability to so define our every way as if our way was the only way to win what we now do without. Safety, security, comfort when considered from the view of eternity. No, of all we’ve come to know it seems that now we don’t know much at all as all of it just continues to unravel into an increasingly reverent fear as found for us in that He found us, and that not how He made us. Nor thus doing as He called us.

For alas that’s been the call ushered to voicemail every single time that we reach a fork in this road called life in which we had the chance to choose a better choice but instead chose only to hear that same screaming voice begging us to put ourselves first, assuming our safety inside such a vanity as that brought about by our thinking so loudly that we knew the way to feel as safe and secure as we know we need, whilst also doing only as we please against the very God who simply asked us to think it through.

I believe that such is one of the simpler messages of the crucifixion. To reconsider. To take a second. To allow into our choices a consideration of the costs that our pride might not consider ever needing to be paid. For the truth is that our every choice has a consequence as every decision has a choice left unchosen and thus a slightly altered path that we’ll thus never have followed.

And while this consequence can indeed be a good cost to pay if the wage’s left unwon by the wrongs left undone along the path we were never made to take, sadly that wrong path is the one that’s won our fealty more times than not.

Just then that our pride never saw it as it’s learned, as we talked a bit yesterday, to see only the complacency in which it comforts, choices left unchanged despite the chains they charge.

Yes, seems to me that such is why we love pride so as it knows only to chase the comforts and consistencies that we feel we need always urgently, as if a matter of a self’s safety. This is why we always go out of our way to get our way, is it not? Simply because it’s our way that’s to us such a consist of what seems consistent that we cannot within it miss what we want of it, from it, it being this comfort we’ve considered only won within what we want.

That’s why we love that which is constant in life. It arrives in what’s always a measured comfort as we both knew it was coming and thus when it would arrive, us then feeling always safe as our safety is sought only in a lack of change or challenge.

Indeed, it’s as if our pride has worked itself overtime in order to invent this tracking system as had with say the US Postal Service in which we can keep track of where our wants are and too when they’ll get here to where we want them to be, so close and clear that we can finally see the full estimation of our every assumption, a safety won within our grasp. Never seeing them then as nothing close to an understanding, as well, understanding was never ours to order.

Just ours to appreciate.

Much like safety and security, matters achieved for us which then ask us only to acknowledge that we had so little say in them that we know now only to fear He who chose to give them to we who so clearly don’t deserve them in what was the most brutally beautiful mercy every offered unto us monsters.

And yet I suppose this is why we find such comfort in our assumptions as well, as well, they’re but a pride’s measure of everything from what life means to thus what it needs in order to measure up to what we want it to mean, which is only then allowed to be something we can allow ourselves to appreciate. Proving ourselves both Jekyll and Hyde, hiding our lives within ourselves, assuming us the best place to keep us safe from what we can’t or won’t or otherwise don’t know how to understand.

Yes, we’ve become so arrogant that we even think appreciation is something to be measured by us, as if every gift we’re given is a matter meaning something different and not simply a kindness offered despite the price paid.

Lost in a fear of dollar signs and decimal points.

And here inside this most misplaced of fear we’ve become so convinced of all this that we want as won our way winning then our sense of security in our own adamancy that wishes only to rely on ourselves that we otherwise decline any idea or detriment to or against our design of this lifetime that we’ve, in our minds, thought always our own. That’s how we arrived of this mind in which even a gift we’re given can be seen a burden as we even hate the humility which asks that we say thanks. Because we don’t like it that way, we’re not used to it that way.

For that way isn’t our way and thus it makes no sense to us as we’re not the ones who designed it, as everything we design must fit inside these ideas too big to keep to ourselves.

That’s why we do far more boasting than being grateful. It’s because we’ve become so secure in our pride that nothing outside of us matters anymore, thus not even wisdom or fear or understanding as they seem to insist that we come to them rather than leaving us alone to just create our own versions instead. For that’s all we want anymore in life, just our own internalized version of everything so that we, as the writers of everything we believe, we cannot then be proven wrong.

Yes, hurray for us! Hip-Hip, who cares?

No, seems sadly that anymore we’re the only ones who do, and that again about only what we want and what more don’t as determined by how unsafe it seems.

As if life is ours to so betray as to hold tight this say that says we have a say in what happens today, already too planning well ahead into tomorrow the things we’ll then want or want by then. It’s one of the more glaring routines in life, this rut in which we want only what we want and nothing of anything else as everything else just exists outside our understanding, and thus has no standing as there’s just no room left in this inn in which we live as if we’re all that matters in life.

Afraid always of only finding out otherwise.

That’s why we seek our comfort, isn’t it? Because we think it matters, that it keeps us safe, it helps us feel secure. And we seek to feel that way mostly only inside simply because we think we matter, right? But that bring me to my question for today:

What can we do with comfort as considered mostly inside a vain sense of security other than coast, quit, consider the cost of possible loss of said coziness and in this find no reason to risk it, it being the furthering of a faith toward an actual betterment? What is so special about comfort if not the complacency it cherishes more than life itself as lived always moving, always improving, always doing what courage says is needed as opposed to what comfort says probably isn’t?

Do not courage and comfort remain often opposed? For is not courage, rather than a lack of challenge, merely the choice to chase into the uncertain despite the challenge it costs? Does comfort know how to welcome such a choice, to take this chance at what seems now uncertain at the express cost of moving on from what is certain? There’s no comfort in that, all this uncertainty as seen inside such things as change and the chaos we know well it so often brings. It’s untrackable, untraceable, unthinkable at that.

For why welcome what might cause us to fall, to fail, to finally find out that we’re not as able to secure our security as our pride and it’s constant seeking of comfort have come to think? Can’t understand that kind of outlook!

Because we hate the discomfort designed alongside all such fear and worry and other kinds of similar humility. We know now only to worry about falling short, and that not even of an actual call but rather merely this life we want, filled with ourselves only and all. Because there’s no fear in that as it allows us to look to us to erase or rewrite or otherwise deny whatever feels as if it might bring danger or disaster or discomfort the like. It’s again, as we’ve talked recently, why so many hate the light.

It’s just more comfortable in the shadows, a sense of security our arrogance can truly appreciate as it asks no change, and too makes it hard to see the chains.

And in this we feel somehow safe, somewhat secure. Somewhat because we still seem to somehow stumble upon entirely too many days in which fear finds us anyway, despite our trying so hard in vain to avoid the pain and forecast the rain. And yet our inability to accomplish such an impossibility ought to inspire inside a realization that we’re not anywhere near as in control as our pride finds so comfortable to consider. A confused misunderstanding that has us standing where we continue falling, somehow unsure of how.

For we thought we were safe from such a thing. Thought that our assumptions were secure. We just knew that we were free to do as we wanted to, nothing of mistake lying in wait, never a wrong turn taken or foolish word spoken. Simply because we fear again only failing ourselves, simply because it’s ourselves upon whom we’ve come to rely to keep us feeling safe and secure.

Just that pesky cross.

Seems that we can’t outrun it, can’t overcome it, can’t erase it, misplace it, convince it to just leave us feeling safe inside a safety so lost to think it’s ours to ensure.

It isn’t. In fact there’s nothing at all in or of life that is ours to design, to define, to refine, to outline or outrun or outwit or outwant or outlast. For life isn’t ours at all, we’re but dust and patience, both His as He formed the former and offers somehow still the latter.

That’s what should matter. Not how safe we can make ourselves feel in a life in which we’re failing. Not how secure we assume ourselves to be inside a vanity in which we know we don’t see but one half of life’s hope. Not hoping inside a hole in the ground, be it mine for gold or a mind fighting for its own glory. Not glorifying this gaining of things we can live without, wanting always for only not finding out just how pointless our pursuits have become for a sense of security so shallow that we see nothing to us below the surface as we exist anymore in such a superficiality that we don’t even know who we are.

Simply because we’ve tried to be our own, owning a life that we sell off by the day to the lowest possible bidder, beggars breaking bread with blasphemy and disbelief.

Shouldn’t be this way, so comfy inside our concessions of life to the death of sin as wanted within. That’s not what He wants, and considering He gave His life to clear up any confusion as to what He wants for us, what are we missing or misunderstanding about the emptied out tomb? He wants for us everlasting life, and that’s in fact a promise so secure that He never once asked us to figure out how to find it, protect it, prove it or provide it.

Again, He just asked that we appreciate it in the only way such a thing is possible.

And that only way is fearing God rather than living in fear of failing only ourselves. For in truth, in the end, it doesn’t matter how undignified we become in the eyes of the world, the same eyes that we’ve so sadly come to see life through. Doesn’t matter how many wants we never have or how many dreams we never realize or how many plans go up in smoke or how many mistakes we leave smoldering behind us. No, what matters most is that we can agree to this humility that helps us see that He’s has every reason to destroy us.

For it’s within that very same understanding that we can see the gravity of Christ proving that He chose otherwise.

Friends, point is that pride tells us all this wonderful stuff about where to find comfort and just how safe and secure we’ll feel once there. But it’s a house of cards which looks right from one specific angle, the angle that only pride knows how to look from. From all other perspectives though, it’s as thin and flimsy as a playing card. And thus we need to be careful what we’re building and what we’re building it with. For if it’s built with pride with the lies pride loves, it may look impressive and feel pretty nice for a while.

But only the fear of God will allow us to stand in the end.

Because only He sent the Son who gave His life to show us just how costly our security for eternity really is. And since it’s a price we can’t pay, I say we stop writing this story as if we can afford to believe otherwise.

For pride’s but an unlocked door. Sure, it looks closed, but one turn, be it of the handle or rather of events can otherwise leave us wide open and so easily broken either into or apart that we’ll only understand our inability within the aftermath of a life stolen from this safe that we never were. And make no mistake, we do indeed have a treasure inside.

And our being made in the image of God isn’t something we should so easily trust to a pride that’s been known to pursue what rusts, and that also loves denying that we’re indeed not but patience and dust.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold