Day 3618 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Isaiah 57:20 NIV

A people purchased by the pursuit of purchases is a people bound to be blown at first about but then apart by “by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming.”

All because our every scheming is anymore only for things in thinking that believing that seems to keep screaming the streaming of every horror from delight to indifference, both somehow always tied inseparably together as knotted in what is a most tumultuous undertow of our agreement to again today undergo this underwhelming undertaking spent still chasing every wind of want and wish as won within a world that we’ve simply grown to love perhaps a bit too much. Why do we so love this land so lost? For it’s not a love found either in consequence or cost.

No, we hate those things so must simply be then the chaos of such confusion as choice and chance and this chase to change as little as possible so as to have to do as little as possible, all whilst still expecting as much as we might dare still imagine.

Why are our imaginations so tied to such liens and lines and lies as this lustful life lived lost looking for some shred of necessity inside anything money buys? Or rather everything for which money tries only to always end up falling short anyway? For the truth is that even should we have all the money in the world we’d still not be able to afford all we want herein. Because that’s the deception of desire, it knows only to want more no matter how many past cravings have been won at the expense of savings.

Problem then is that the question will eventually become just what all forms or funds or findings of saving are we truly willing to trade for what we can only have inside something we here call a day? Doesn’t matter if that day is that as considered now yesterday in which we neither had what we want still nor any reason to imagine what new desires we now demand we find by this time tomorrow. And even then, by this time tomorrow we’ll call said tomorrow today as it’s then more present and thus presents a more present present of more time spent seeking presents that present us as still thereafter presently not pacified.

It’s truly the churning of the sea, only the waves crash inside our minds which are anymore hard as rocks having become so unalive by such a life as this in which we live only to buy and sell so as to tell the tale of how much we have as used anymore to define who we are. Yes, we are hardened in every way imaginable, even against the very imagining of any other plausible purpose there may be for a life we’ve not lived in quite some time.

No, we just work and whine and want and dine upon this endless buffet of this blasted buffeting blaspheme that’s convinced you and me that somehow we’re the gods of our lives as seen through these eyes so blind by all that sparkles and shines that we assume anymore our souls not worth quite as much as all this store-bought stuff simply because we can see the pride we’ve either paid or would otherwise owe in order to all this junk both have and hold.

Can’t apparently see Christ though, and thus we seem unable then to see the price He paid for us to not live this life still so lost like this.

Indeed, it’s to us as if that cross was never carried, our sins never buried, our very eternity never thus tarried upon this triumph of His good over our ongoing evil of what is such a grievous nature that we’ve literally all but lost the humanity in our human nature. For anymore all that seems anything of natural unto us is merely this chasing after stuff. Some call it wind, some call it wish.

Doesn’t quite matter such said semantics though, for all it is is but a life for fish.

Yes, I find this fear that feels as if we’ve fully gotten this opportunity so confused that rather than fishing for people we’re but people fishing for what is basically ourselves as done inside our looking only to the mirror to imagine for us what’s best for us. We’re but circus clowns so accustomed to what is a life lived inside these three rings of want, wish and whine that we don’t know any other way of life. Just us running both through our everyday chasing the everything that we want, and yet too somehow also in circles because of our need to look only to ourselves to lead the way.

It’s like a dog chasing its tail. Sure, there’s plenty of excitement met in trying to catch it, but once it wins that end all it does is bite itself in the rear-end.

Wonder how much of all we’re doing as done only for whatever it is that we’re doing it for will come back to bite us.

Considered that a bit yesterday, this saddened reality in which we all walk so aimlessly both to and through what seems an endless string of haystacks. Yes, we spend our nearly every waking moment sifting through straw seeking a dream to thaw from what is a life gone so cold that we anymore know only the self-perceived warmth of wealth. Indeed, we seem only willing to feel alive when we’ve so strived to secure what we’ve craved that we’re then left with a story to share of how our own day we’ve saved.

Just look at all the treasures we’ve found!

Never mind the piles of muck and mire, mud on fire as found in the process. No, that’s not our life going up in smoke, it’s just evidence of how important all this other stuff is. So much so that we’ve set out running so fast for our share of this lie pie that we melted the soles off our shoes and the souls from our view. Don’t have time to care about such unseens as those things. After all, we’ve heard Jesus saved our souls so we needn’t worry ourselves with them anymore. They’re in good hands.

Alas, our lives are lived in ours.

And it’s these hands of mine that have found every single way to excuse every single mistake that I’ve, for some reason that I so often can’t remember after, in that moment thought was the best choice to take. Likely because that’s what I saw in that moment. Just another chance to take something I wanted and thus have something I thought I couldn’t live without. Funny how those two seem to always be found side-by-side, our wanting something and thinking we can’t live without it.

Guess then that want is life, right?

After all, if we can’t live without what we want then life is thus impossible without said want and thus life is want. But then why don’t we want life? Seems kind of stupid doesn’t it? To want everything that only brings about such things as desire and its cousin disappointment? Ever notice that? That the only surefire way to be disappointed is to desire something? We’re never disappointed when we don’t get what we didn’t want, are we? No, we’re only disappointed when we dreamed a desire into a fire that consumed our ever expectation.

Setting our own stumbling blocks in our own paths and then wondering as to why this life seems so dissatisfying. Strange that!

Yes, it is strange how we could have become so far gone as to not apparently see the lack of difference between desire and disappointment or want and whine or have and hope. Indeed, I find that last one to be perhaps the worst one. For since when was hope so hollow as to be actually held? And yeah, I know that I ask it all the time, but I find that it’s one of those Biblical questions so applicable to all of us that it should be asked by all of ourselves every single day: Who hopes for what they already have?

Rather we hope for what we don’t have, don’t we? Indeed, and yet even this is something of a self-betrayal anymore in that we now know only to hope in what we don’t have as defined by what we by all means could. Such as bigger houses or faster cars or more money or more fame or more power, you know the game. Yes, sadly we all know this game that this life’s become. And shame on us for continuing to play along! After all, we talk about that quite frequently too, how doing the same thing over and over whilst expecting different results is insanity defined.

And thus us defined as well as we do today what we did yesterday, all this want and whine, and yet we seem to expect that today’s the day that we’ll finally find all we’ve fought to feel as held by the same hands that keep digging this pit and throwing this fit and not seeing any problem with any of it.

Guess that’s too bound to happen when all we know of life if this kind lived tossing and turning, chasing and churning, both on our beds and in our heads. Yes, we lie awake through so many sleepless nights planning plans to make tomorrow go just right, and we abuse our minds within such a trying to steal control of life from the only Author and Savior thereof. He never asked for our help, and even further He also never asked us keep doing all the stupid things that need His.

Just asked us to set our minds on Heaven as opposed to leaven. Missed the message it seems, maybe we should check our junk folder or voicemail. Well, could that we would, but alas, nope, got more holes to dig seeking hopes to hold.

Like I said yesterday, it’s no wonder as to why we’re all so upset and shy. Been years since we’ve seen the sky and have absolutely no reason for why. Because it can’t be that we truly love this life so lived in pits seeking something that fits our wants and wants our fits. Can’t be that we enjoy getting so dirty in deeds done both dirt cheap and too mostly just in the dirt. Surely isn’t that we’re actually finding what we’ve long been wanting, for wouldn’t we have stopped if that were the case?

No, for that is the case and it’s one set for the docket any day now. The People vs Their Savior, a case of misplaced trust so buried and betrayed that still we deny Him any devotion as it’s all apparently needed for all this other stuff in which apparently waits so much life that we can’t live until we find it all. Apparently. But no, truth is that we simply won’t live until we stop this madness of trying to find something that means something in this place where everything only means something for a moment.

That’s the churning. That’s the turning. That’s the tossing. It’s all what is to be soon argued as a life lived losing. Just in a case brought against us all because we never wanted to see it that way. For we’re convinced, and somehow increasingly so, that this world has somewhere in hold something we can too, hold. Yes, we want to get our filthy little hands on everything we crave so that we can then feel accomplished.

But at what expense my friends?

What piece is worth our peace? What trophy is worth a loss of tranquility? Does anything we can hold truly hold the ability to define our soul? And if not, then why do we live as if it might? We are so convinced that we can find something, try something, buy something, build something, be something that will allow us to feel whole. But if it’s found in a hole, just how whole can it make us feel? And make no mistake, I’m not talking only mines and malls. No, I’m talking mostly of these cravings we’ve carved in our minds and galls.

We’ve turned ourselves inside out trying to find everything we’ve come to want. And yet we want more still. Don’t we get it yet? That all this working and wanting and hurting and having, it’s not ever going to accomplish what we hope it might? That we can chase after everything that catches our eye, and perhaps even catch up to it all someday, but that something else will take its place by the next? There is no end to craving, to lust, to rust. It all just eats away at everything that we already have, everything that we already are.

Why isn’t that enough anymore? Why are we never willing to be content, to be grateful, to be thankful for the content of a life we’ve been given? Why do we find more excitement in the idea of a trinket than in His triumph? What here is of equal worth to Heaven’s hope? And if there is something, why hasn’t anyone found it? Again, as we talked about yesterday, we’re all still looking. Maybe that’s the best proof that what we’re needing isn’t here waiting.

And maybe it’s also why we seem to struggle to rest and thus know next to nothing of calm or peace or purpose. Do you really think God, the very same who made the Heavens and the earth and the stars in the sky and keeps them all spinning just right to hold so perfectly together, you think that same God designed us to do this the way we have? That life should be so chaotic and filled with discontent and so much disquiet that anymore our own minds are what keep us up most nights?

Friends, what if I told you that nearly every storm and basically every struggle we face in life was designed by us alone? Sure, God does things that stretch us and test us and try us. He calls us into things that we don’t understand and away from things that we’ve come to insist we stand beside forever. But even those challenges and trials and fires into which He calls us, would they be so bad if we didn’t seem so adamant to fight against them?

And why do we if not but to try again to get our way?

That’s my point for today, it’s that our way is probably doing far more harm than good in our lives. It’s just too open to outside influence. Just think about all the things you’ve wanted or all the things you’ve done or even all that you’ve lost. Think back on some of the harder disappointments in your life. Just how innocent were you in any of it becoming either a regret or a mistake or an idol that’s long since been lost to the sands of every other false hope you’ve ever had?

Why keep doing this to ourselves, this chasing after everything that only keeps peace all but impossible to find? Again, it just shouldn’t be this way. But I fear it will continue to be this way so long as “our way” remains a thing in our mind.

And I think the very next verse kind of helps with that problem. “There is no peace,” says my God, “for the wicked.”

In other words, if we’re not finding or feeling much peace in our lives, well, chances are we’re doing something wrong, something we shouldn’t, maybe in fact something wicked. And while we may have become widely convinced that to want is to live, if living in want is keeping us from finding peace, then perhaps wanting more of this world is only the wicked thing that we need to stop.

And I know it may feel quite confrontational to put it that way, but friends, if we don’t start calling a problem a problem then we’ll never be able to fix any of them. Because if we can’t see that we’re the ones causing most of our problems, then we’ll never realize that we need to ask Him for the help we thus couldn’t offer ourselves.

We made this mess, but considering that we did it, don’t we also then have a say in stopping it?

#LeaveNoSoulUntold