Day 3581 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Psalm 119:130 NIV

To the simple.

The accessible, the undemanding and uncomplicated, the unadorned, unsophisticated, uninvolved and widely unassuming. Indeed, His Word was breathed for the benefit of those humble in heart and open of mind, the basically basic who build their becomings upon their bare-bones beginnings of hoping toward their becoming better knowing only then that better is always available to become still as better isn’t a goal but rather a pursuit into the uncertain and unending. For there is no end to the growth or potential of betterment and belief.

In fact it’s only demand is the simplicity of the simple, as it’s all that can see it as such.

Indeed, the simple, or to actually use a bit of the language of the Hebrews, in the original Hebrew, "פֶּתִי" or pethi, it’s a word or rather a thought which refers to those who are inexperienced or otherwise naive. And yet this is right where our modern misunderstandings come to stand mostly only in our way of the betterment toward which and for which we’re here and called still further to be. For here we see the simple as the lacking, the left behind, those lost and losing, yes, the losers who know not what it is to win at life as won by those who themselves define what they think life is.

And thus we see this idea, this call to the simple as one perhaps not aimed at us as we see ourselves as nothing of simple but rather the most intricately complex of all of creation’s complexity. And we see ourselves as such because it’s become for us an evidence used by our vanity. We cannot agree to be seen as simple as here the simple is the forsaken, the failing, that which falls short or falls apart or again falls behind within this ongoing race toward first place at some man-made finish line in life.

Yes, life as lived here is but a begrudging belief of boxes begging be checked by we who both build them and then buy then the many lies we need believe to truly believe that our complexity, as confusing as it’s so clearly become, is truly worth the simplicity we’ve lost and left unwelcome.

This just makes me wonder as to what else we might have lost along this wandering wonder, or maybe it’s a wondering wander. Either way the point’s the same in that we awake only to either wonder or wander to and through both wanderings and wonderings as to the more we might convince ourselves we already are or rather have the self-perceived and prescribed ability to become all by ourselves. For as we’ve talked of late, this is what this life is anymore.

It’s just us, as in each of us looking out for only us as if each of us are somehow our own and too then the outcomes of life as proven in our perceived losses or wins, they too are ours to own. And as we’ve devolved into a complexity never once asked of us as it simply opposed the simplicity of those who mind not the simple life of a simple mind aching for a simple faith in a far from simple Savior, we’ve too become convinced that all such semblance of simplicity is only an offense to our vanity.

For again, we cannot dare allow ourselves to be seen or to ourselves assume that anything about us is simple, but this simply because we’ve, in our progressions and advancements, we’ve only come to sadly equate naivety with numbskullery. And we won’t have no name-calling, especially that which dares undermine our uplifted opinions of ourselves and our coming abilities or opportunities or whatever other self-promised and publically-preferred outcomes for which we’ve come this far out from our right minds into these lives in which we’re not living anymore.

Because there’s a simplicity demanded to the living of life as there’s an underlying honesty to all of this which says with all eternal certainty that we know not what we’re doing as our pasts are somehow laden with mistakes that have left weights as won within such things as guilt and regret. And we don’t for the life of us know how that could have happened as we’ve always tried so very hard to make ourselves look and seem so perfect as we’ve long assumed we needed to be, but only as measured by a world too itself having already succumbed to the disassembly of all vanity.

Which is all that vanity as found inside such things as pride and ego and arrogance can ever truly be or bring. Just disassembly.

Yes, we read within His Word a truly light-giving life to this promise that pride precedes all fall. For it only stands to reason that such is seen as such for one must first undertake the building if there’s to then be something left to be broken. And we’ve indeed done a very great job at this building of ourselves up into these pinnacles of human potential, a product proven in the utter lack of simplicity or simpleness to be seen or even assumed inside our lives.

No, we’ve become a people who want nothing of what all is simple or simple at all, but only because all that’s simple is again seen as unimpressive. Or is it that the simple is instead merely unimpressed? In fact, this seems a rather interesting idea. Let us pursue it perhaps? After all, again our pasts have proven that many of our prior attempts at perfection of life were in fact mistaken at best. And so perhaps we’ve gotten this idea a bit upside down as well.

For is it honestly such a negativity to be seen as one living a life of naivety? Is it truly to be seen as appropriate, this social commonality of despising the simple who are living life simply? I mean, we do use such things as markers of our own vanity as measured against those we don’t like or understanding, don’t we? We call them simple-minded, simpletons, silly hearts and stupid. All simply because we can no longer see the beauty inside such simplicity as that beheld by those who’ve not become what this world has otherwise insisted we all should be.

Indeed, to be naïve is nothing at all the knock we’ve so come to use it as being against those who aren’t as advanced in certain ways as we see ourselves to be. Yes, to be naïve is defined as “deficient in worldly wisdom or informed judgment.” It can also be used of those “not previously subjected to experimentation or a particular experimental situation.” And is this not what worldly wisdom really is, merely some kind of experiment as found in all our trying, mostly only in vain, to understand this experience we call life?

Is this not what all pride so tries to do, come up with ways to pretend or otherwise portray ourselves as more able or accomplished than we really are? Is ego not an experiencing of our fear as found and felt in our not being able to be enough, to measure up, to overcome this experience? Is not almost all of life itself but an experimental experience, one most often undertaken with a strong leaning upon worldly wisdom as won by others who are or were themselves nothing at all all that different from us?

Are we not all just trying our best to do this as best we can, and in that failing and falling and stumbling and bumbling and fumbling every step of the way inside choices we make with perhaps a bit too much “informed judgement”?

For again, such is what this world is all about anymore. It’s about judging, mostly that which we don’t understand so that we feel more justified in our not trying to understand it anymore. Such as the simplicity we lost somewhere along the way to wherever we are. Indeed, even this is a seemingly overwhelming and never-ending complexity in that none of us are anymore all that much of anything happy. We’re miserable, just men becoming monsters behind all this manmade mayhem in which we walk amongst those many who prefer the dark as it doesn’t so easily disclose their failings as the light might.

And as we become willing to agree with them so as to be seen like them so that we’re not judged by them for our being different from them, we too are beginning to lose our simplicity, our naivety, our humility, and in that perhaps too our humanity.

For what we see here as read within the Word which God breathed for our benefit, it’s the study of His Word which brings understanding to the simple. Which is an idea that brings me again to the original Hebrew for the kind of simple as considered here. As opposed to our more modern misunderstanding of such things, which has us seeing most things more negatively than anything, it’s actually a word used in a decidedly positive connotation in that it refers to the willingness of someone to confess their present lack of understanding as met with an equal willingness to learn the more that they can, in their simplicity, more readily agree they need in order to be or become the better in which they believe.

Indeed, one of the definitions of what it is to be naive is found in regard to art or artistic venturing. In this sense, to be naive means that which is “of or denoting art produced in a straightforward style that deliberately rejects sophisticated artistic techniques and has a bold directness resembling a child's work, typically in bright colors with little or no perspective.” Child’s work, childlike faith. Simplicity? Indeed, and I find that I believe this to be an idea which might offer a quite beautiful angling of this understanding of the necessity of such simplicity.

For in truth, the study of God’s Word is in fact an art as it’s in and of itself a matter of both poetry and prose as the entirety entirely proposes the purpose of both our just punishment but also His benevolent promise to have already paid it. And yet it’s within this mercy that we find this place where we meet this naivety as referred to elsewhere as a childlike faith. For children are indeed naive in that they are in fact inexperienced and in many ways in regard to many things unlearned.

And yet oddly enough within their inability is not found the same shame we feel of ours as adults nor the then and therefore found urgency to or toward the denial of any and all lacking or limitation.

It’s met rather with an excitement to learn, an elation at the idea of growth, an overall and yet utterly simple appreciation for this vocation of undertaking study and the artistry that we each come to find within it. Such as that found in our following Christ and doing so better by only our delving into His Word where we’re met with ongoing reminders of our confusions, delusions, disasters and other misunderstandings as made alongside all these advancements and progressions that we’re so inclined toward and intrigued with anymore.

But yet this is nothing at all the kind of simple things that kids are excited by, is it?

No, as kids we all want nothing more than to grow, to learn, to become both bigger and better as considered of those with more knowledge and understanding than we have, only considered against our simple measure of how much we don’t know yet. And yet too, as adults, do we not most days miss or reminisce upon the days of our youth when all of life was found and thus felt far what, simpler?

Simple. Simplicity

Yes, sadly this is why we so miss or reminisce what we miss. It’s because we know we’ve lost it. Our hindsight now says that it was left behind, became betrayed, was given away for these then perceived bigger and better days at which we have arrived but yet not to the outcome for which we’d hoped. And thus we’ve found that we’ve indeed grown, but to perhaps know maybe a bit too much of what’ve become but burdens and utility bills.

Not so much the fun as we saw it to be as those naïve little children looking through eyes blinded by the simplicity of a naivety the likes of that defined of the artistic perspective which believes there’s no reason that horses can’t be colored blue or that candy makes a quite fine dinner plan or that cartoons make more sense than sitcoms do, is it? No, we’ve, having lost such simplicity of mind and courage of heart, we’ve too lost the deliberate rejection of sophisticated techniques such as used by all these adults who think they know everything.

And that’s the point here, it’s that we need that back.

We need again the ability to deliberately reject all this modern “understanding” and common “sophistication”. Indeed, as with David, we should seek instead the kind of faith that leads us to a willingness to become ever more undignified in the eyes of the world if such is what’s needed for us to grow in Christ. Yes, we should indeed seek to become simple, naive, unlearned and as inexperienced as we possibly can in regard to every one of these worldly ways that so many so adore so that we might then have room in our eyes, ears, hearts, minds, lives and souls to be then filled with God’s Word.

For again as here we read, His Word gives light, it is our lamp upon this path through this valley of the shadow of death, a constant friend leading ahead, following behind and walking ever patiently beside. And we need that. Severely! And that simply because friends, we don’t know how to do this! We don’t understand this! This faith is everything that our lives haven’t been thus far. It is the antithesis of us, our counterpart, the very consideration of an entire life we’ve not lived at all.

And while this idea meets confrontationally our “sophisticated understanding”, something as understood only by pride and ego, that we think we have thus only as adults, as seen from the naivety of a child’s point of view, it’s exciting!

It’s a matter filled with awe and wonder. It’s a run through an open field stretching our arms as wide as we can just knowing we can fly above the grass blowing in the winds we’ve so sadly long thought unfairly against us. Indeed, we need that simplicity of faith, of hope, of excitement as promised in and of this faith as it turns life’s difficulties on their head as it teaches our head to become a deliberate rejectionist of all such modernity as social media and mainstream monotony.

We need to end our matrimony with public advancement and technological theoretic and return, repent back toward the simplicity of belief in the simple, in the straightforward, in the childish faith that has no doubt in the shining Son of God who came to save and refuses to leave the job undone. We need that hope, that trust, that faith! Otherwise this will never work as we’ll hear only the lies we’ve come to insist into truth as they seem to assist with our arrogance trying in vain to keep itself afloat.

For such is the societal sophistication we’ve chosen for ourselves. To see ourselves as above such things as belief or trust or truth or need even. No, we have no needs as we’ve instead become of a mind in which life is all about only whatever we want. And the world has taught us to not want the simple things, the naïve things, the missing out on the experiencing of all worldly lust and loss. And so we’ve sadly lost our ability to say we are indeed unlearned or inexperienced in regard to such things.

Doesn’t mean we need to keep going this way, following our own lead or letting those around us do the same. Doesn’t mean that we need to fight so hard to keep up with a world already entirely too far ahead of itself. Doesn’t mean that we need to keep reaching for every tree which bears more and more knowledge, some of which we’ll only come to wish we could unlearn.

Yes, such is a greater gift than we can perhaps presently understand. To not chase the world. To not learn all the wrong things. To not strive so hard to stay in step with the wicked or walk in the way that sinners take. But rather to look again toward the light of life and study the Word He left behind to lead us back home. Seems that’s another thing that we knew as kids but have forgotten as grown-ups, that when the lights came on, we headed home.

For friends, His light has come into the world and the darkness has not overcome it. And so maybe we should stop being so worried about what the world may think as we turn away and head home as the rest of this night sets in. No, do not deny or disregard the label of being simple. For sure, it may be seen as a bad thing to most in this place.

But hey, so was Jesus! And that worked out pretty good for everybody!

So may we be so bold as to be among the simple and keep life there. For His Word gives light and brings understanding to the same.

Only the simple.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold