Day 3612 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Psalm 39:5 NIV

“Even those who seem secure.”

Except that “the Lord said to Samuel, ‘Do not consider his appearance or his height, for I have rejected him. The Lord does not look at the things people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.’”

Can you imagine what that way of life might be like where were we too to look not upon the things people look at nor for those many more that most here seek toward? What better measure of freedom might be found were we not looking to find what everyone else is failing to? What other outlook upon forever might we feel if we felt even the slightest hint as to what hope truly meant? For can hope, as I so often ask, truly be so trivial as to reside inside that which is only finite and fleeting?

Why do we so build nearly our every belief upon such things as cell phone screens and movie scenes, both alongside songs sung by souls that know not what security is as most here think it a matter of investment, measurement, magnificence or appearance?

Indeed, to what are we investing our inclinations and investigations but those very things? What of all matter matters most to us alone? Does anything? Did it ever? Or has not life here always been but a measure of whatever another wanted or wished for us to share? See, it seems that such a sense of sharing is anymore where we feel most safe. It’s a safety in numbers kind of thing, literally. I mean we literally do next to nothing without some sort of outside input from what is a community so ambulatory that nothing stays the same anymore.

Can hope exist inside such an endless shift as whatever all of this is that we all seem to assume is able to make us feel as secure as reality says we’re not? Is not nearly all of society running away from said reality alongside this selfish assumption that says we can either build or buy our way into what is only our portion of all that this place is pretending? Should such things as safety and security, the very salvation of a soul as sold unto all freely from He who bought it bloody, should they be so simple as to be shared by the simply indifferent?

For that is what humans seem all but inclined to find of enough intrigue to seek entry into this existence in which others help us form the substance of everything from what we assume of security to then what all we then do in search for our cut of the cloth. But what is the cloth? Anymore is it not even to some actual cloth? These days people literally put trust in just such material as manmade, well, material. It’s seen inside this interest given unto investing our time and dime into buying the right logo.

Thus I believe we’ve done gone loco!

And I say this because none of it matters. Not an ounce of material as made or manifest within this momentary existence can ever prove of enough measure to matter forever. Forever is simply bigger! Forever is longer than a football field, and yet on todays like today we are far more likely to find someone glued to a TV seeking to keep track of score and stat as if such things will matter by this time next week. Will they? Playoff schedules and post-season records?

Sadly yes, for such is what people look at, listen to, all but live for in fact. And I’m not here today to look down upon any who do indeed do that. No, I’m just using an apt example as to the larger sample of all that we seek and store and assume in this us secure. For the gravity of this fallen reality in which we live only to be either entertained or merely appeased, it’s all distraction. It’s all a retraction from the actual meaning of life itself. It’s in many ways even a detraction of life’s meaning because it all just pulls our attention back to what is but a moment in which we lack.

But what do we lack? More than we might imagine. Everything from hope to identity, it’s all anymore so outsourced that we ourselves have none. It’s kept inside such things as favorite teams and season finales. Again, not that there’s anything inherently wrong with any of that, for I don’t believe that God is against us having things. No, I think rather the issues begin to arise when the things have us.

Which is right where I fear we’ve awoken to find ourselves yet again.

Because still we live today as if yesterday meant nothing as tomorrow is basically already here within what are plans and preconceptions presuming ahead of time more time tomorrow to waste upon whatever we don’t find, feel or manage to fit inside today. It’s all become what’s basically a fallout shelter in which we seek mostly to store food, primarily in our stomachs, clothes and blankets and beliefs that we never really wear or even try to wear out, batteries in the form of blasphemes that light up only our plans for our destinies.

As if God needs our help planning anything, especially from such a people who live as if the brand we buy tells the world how great we are.

How great are we? Seriously, how good are we at anything? How can we be any good at anything when, seen from the basics, we’re but dust and patience? Is that not all we are? Just a handful of dirt taken from amongst the dust and breathed to life by He who is the Maker of such? His patience then being the only thing that keeps us alive despite our doing and losing so much to what isn’t life at all? What of all that we’ve done, wanted or won has ever proven able to add even an hour to our time?

Or is not time seen as the lone expendable in life as we expediently expend it upon worries such as what we have to spend to get what we want?

Should life consist of nothing but such wind and wish? Looking to the world to lead us into what cannot then ever possibly free us? For how can we know what freedom is or where is grows if all we know is but to ask the world for help to figure out why we’re here? Is here where we intend to stay? Or do not all from this place one day stray into what is a grave, a cave beyond which so little time is spent seeking the hope of there a betterment built not of settlement inside such assumed security as our every assumption knows only to be?

Why not let such a cave as our every consideration crumble, our then assisting in the assimilation of us into He who is coming again?

What will we leave when it’s our time to go? Where will we go when our time has been left? Is Heaven to the right? Suffering around the other way? Life to that only left behind? Hope a U-turn? Actually I think that last one is all but undeniable anymore! Because the fact is that we can’t keep going the way we’re going if we want something other than what we’re finding or feeling or buying or stealing from what is a life lived anymore as if a bank not ours to either build nor to so betray as all of us have so long tried.

No, none of this is ours to design, define, demand or divide. We have no right to decide amongst ourselves what life means as neither have we ever made life nor have we ever made anything in life then that’s helped us to make what we haven’t. Nothing we do, neither worry nor want, can add anything to our time. Rather everything we do demands we lose said life as defined here in time. And it’s defined here as time because it’s the one thing we all have that none of us can get back.

We can buy more things should we lose them or break them or lone them to another who has a more pressing need than we. We can horde up stockpiles of non-perishables in the planning for a hard day coming. We can set our minds to learning skills that help us survive what are dangerous or perhaps even deadly circumstances. We can give our time to making money or making idols of both money and basically everything else anymore.

But unlike money and clothes and food and shoes and houses and cars and jobs and plans and dreams and goals and expectations and exciting vacations, we cannot replace time. We cannot buy another life. We can’t sit down at the bargaining table with God and barter out a brand new beginning when our time has met its ending. For such a table doesn’t exist, and thus when we here cease to, well, we are then just done.

And while this truth should enlighten us to lighten up in regard to all that’s only temporary, it seems to anymore do the opposite only.

Indeed, down here we live as if the only thing not running out is our time. Again, we give it to gaining everything under the sun. But that’s just it, what’s down here that we can take with us when the sun isn’t what we use to mark our days or seasons or reasons anymore? What happens when we awaken on the other side of life where clocks don’t matter and nor then does our job or our schedule or our savings or our sufferings?

Should any of those things to which we seek or for which we talk or of which we fear truly matter as much as they do down here? And if you think they should, please tell me why. Because I personally cannot wrap my mind around that thought anymore. No, all I can seem to see is that I have no idea how much longer I’ll be here. Because, oh yeah, we can’t buy that either!

No, none know the length of their life, and so why then do we try so hard to measure our existence according to what we have or what more we want when we’ve no idea how much longer we’ll either have it or have to find it? This normality, this understanding, this way of life that so many are living in which all that matters is buying and selling and having and holding and never knowing then what hope is nor where it exists, it just doesn’t make any sense.

Because we are but a breath. Flowers in fields that are fated to fade and fall. We are all but crops planted for a season and then sent on to reaping what we’ve sown whilst we’ve grown. But are we growing? That’s my question, no, no that’s my worry! Are we growing? Or is all that’s growing merely only all that’s around us? Just piles of plastics, stuff of trinkets stacked so high and thick and wide that our possessions become our protections?

Can we hide from God behind these barricades of misplaced beliefs?

I know we can’t. Because He doesn’t look at what we do. He doesn’t worry over what we continue to. He isn’t focused upon the things we focus on. No, seems His cares and concerns are as far from ours as up is from down. And yet, considering a message like that considered in Psalm 8:4, shouldn't we perhaps seek to care about what God cares about?

After all, the cross of the Christ contends that God cares about us so deeply, so kindly, so compassionately that He came to lay down His life to erase all that had earned our suffering and death as demanded of His righteous and thus justified wrath.

And yet what earned said wrath but what we've come to care about? Indeed, why do we seem to care so intently for the very things that make us enemies of the One who loves us so much as to die for us? Does this not seem barbarous? I in fact don’t even know that enmity covers it anymore. We’re actively walking away from life as done in all of this either willful or perhaps sometimes unwitting denial of direction as demanded of a life lived perhaps again too ambulatory.

That word refers to the ability to walk, to move, to realize that unlike trees we’ve no roots. At least not here. So why do we buy them, build them, design them, demand them? What is it about this place and all we’ve done to it that makes us so excited to stay? What about our way continues to convince that it’s the only way right? What about what’s left? Both behind and as of now then still beside? What are we missing inside every moment that we spend here wanting or wishing or wasting what’s never been ours to consider so worthless?

What in this world is worth more than what we know isn’t?

And what isn’t here? Where’s peace in this place? And not that which comes in pieces or parts, no, where in this place is peace permanent? Does hope have a home here? What store sells belief? Can the world’s fastest car get me to wherever purpose is proven quicker? Does a bigger house hold more honor? Is courage contained inside shipping containers? Does freedom fit within fabric or bills folded in pockets? What does mercy measure? How much does grace weigh? Does salvation ever go on sale?

Or should we instead set our sails to leave this shore of the unsure behind for better breathing where hearts are again found beating to the tune of time not wasted and thus life neither?

“Even those who seem secure.”

And so what then is our feeling of security possibly worth? If we’re to be unknowingly and thus surprisingly taken away from all our toil and our triumphs taken thus from us, what do any of them matter then? If we cannot stop what is to come but are all bound to go, why then give so much of us away to what all has to stay?

Does this not prove that neither positions nor possessions nor power nor popularity have any real meaning?

And yet are they not all among the greatest of priorities and sternest of pursuits as perused for their apparent sense of security as proven unto us anymore only in success? And if so, again, why? What can any of what we do ever do for us? Can money save us or power protect? Can what we have house our hope? Can planting roots inside what we do allow us to know anything of freedom to move? Can our knowledges lead us to longer life?

Maybe to a degree but even then death still calls us all.

So what’s the point in anything man does? Does money breathe? Can clothes talk? Will a new pair of shoes help us walk to places our old ones couldn’t go? Will we be able to, once there, find a store that sells us time or some way to paint an evidence of a lasting existence? Or should we not focus then on the micro as opposed to macro? Shouldn’t such things as our words and movements matter more than what we have and keep in store?

Personally I contend that what matters most is what often gets worried about last. And I find that it’s this that I desire now to change in my life. I want to live small, to live quiet, to live calm, or at least so much as I might. I want nothing of what this world is or does or dreams or designs or desires or demands or delights. I want to be as different from this world as a human might. Because I don’t manage to find much reason or reward in what this world’s become.

Because it seems that no matter what we do, what we have, what more we want of what all is only here, none of it changes the fact that none of us are here for much longer. And yeah, even if we ourselves manage to beat the odds and live another hundred all filled with frills and thrills, what then? Life here still ends, and thus too our every single want and worry as wasted for within. Perhaps we should then stop wasting what isn’t ours to waste?

God didn’t give us this time to just take it for granted. It’s His patience. It’s proof of His mercy. It’s a matter made for repentance away from what we’ve made, what we’ve become. This day is called today so that we can perhaps learn within it to not take tomorrow for granted. Because it might not come, and one day in fact it won’t. What then should that tell us about what should matter to us?

We are but a vapor and our work often even less. Let us thus be more careful as to what and where we assume secure. Because just like time has been misunderstood, who knows what else we don’t understand until the truth comes out of nowhere at what is maybe the end of any opportunity to do anything any differently?

Maybe different should start today by our realizing it might be the last today we have. And considering that for some it will, well, what’s so secure about that?

#LeaveNoSoulUntold