Day 3626 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Ezekiel 36:26 NIV

I contend that the oddity of faith is felt in that because of it we’re being made new within a world all but happy being lied to, leaving all of our new to feel quite the confusion as we’re counted for once outside all delusion.

And in fact, the parts of us that are being made new along this journey into that ever-shifting seeking of something of further understanding in regard to both where we’re standing and too how we oughtn’t be so still inside of what is such less than life has come to suggest that within this new life lived outside the lies people cling to, we’re daily receiving new the parts and perspectives that none of us know how to comprehend, let alone convince others should make sense. No, in fact the things that He is in us making new are the very same as those many that this world is still holding tight to.

Leaving me convinced that the difficulty of this walk is found within what is a life in fact so new that each and every day we find in Him only every reason to finally do all we’ve never even dreamed we might need to or be free to.

Simply because we’re finding slowly that He is in fact only everything this world has never allowed themselves to dream possible.

No, sadly we live within this world in which the grandest of dreams are for things already seen, paths already known, promises already proven and a life thus lived so far from the risk of losing that we’re not even willing to risk trying. And this aversity to adversity has left all of us held fast to what is a fear so slow that we’re all of us now afraid to move because we’re well aware that anything we do, anything we say, everything we allow to be changed invites this chance of getting it wrong, and thus leaving us looking as incapable as we’ve long known ourselves to be.

Problem is that this truth isn’t ever what you see. You never witness someone eager to struggle, excited to stumble, elated at being proven unable. No, we are a people so very prideful that we think that life is literally only worth living so long as we either do it perfectly or can at least make the missteps seem a part of this interpretive dance that is our every decision as designed alongside the road of what is a load too heavy to hold. All because it’s one made of so many mistakes and misunderstandings that we can’t wrap our minds around how it could all be our fault.

For that isn’t the frame of mind we know to exist within. Rather our minds are always running themselves aground seeking some sight, some sound, some way to paint over this frown that will not turn itself upside down. Because it can’t. Because we don’t understand how it got this bad. Because, to us, we won’t allow ourselves to see just how many mistakes we allow to remain a part of our every undertaking and understanding and undermining of every mining of every moment as if each is both so very important but also not important enough to take as seriously as we’ve never wanted to.

And within this running always away from what all we’ve willfully become, we’ve only become of such a scared and scarred stagnancy that all we seem to see are reasons to hide what we’re too embarrassed to admit we need to fix or forget.

This is something that stays on my mind in what is, I know, God having His way in me. It’s a realization as to all that we allow ourselves to refuse to change within what is a fear to lose any of what we think we may not be able to be happy without. For life here is anymore so geared toward pleasure and away from pain that we’d each rather exist within this plane of the plain than to risk boarding the train of trial and error, because unto us being caught in error is as woeful an outcome as we might imagine.

But why? I mean, having made so many mistakes, having gotten so much so wrong, having misunderstood or misread almost every moment inside which we were given a choice and we listened to only the wrong voice, having messed this all up as horribly as we honestly know we have, what do we have to fear when it comes to faith? Have we not actually been walking by some strange semblance of the same? Only a version placed somewhere in between adverse and aversion?

Indeed, this presumed middle ground, so safe and warm, it’s where I’d say 98-99% of people live. And most of them for their entire life. It’s done out of this hesitancy toward change as considered for us by those who’ve become us, and in most ways we they. Yes, life is anymore so communal in nature that so too are nearly all our considerations and their many concessions. Because that’s all that can happen when we live learning to look only to a world losing a life inside a life being lied to by everyone all around us.

All we can learn is to love the same lies such as how change is hard, and too that what’s hard is at the very least negotiable is not entirely unnecessary, and how all that we can come to see as unnecessary is best then considered only utterly and permanently unwelcome.

No, just come as you are and expect to stay the same.

Meaning then that anything new, anything different, anything difficult, anything even potentially perceived as in any possible way precarious or dangerous is left so far from us that we ourselves can then never know any of whatever else we might be, see, need, need to learn or even come around to love to leave. Simply because such things as considered within the unseen and thus uncertain, things such as change, which we know only to see them as a choice as opposed to a chance.

No, we’re anymore so very afraid of life as a whole, let alone that entire way that we’ve never learned how to live, we’re so terrified of it that we won’t even take a chance on ourselves. Not even as we watch on whilst so many others seem to live what is a life only lived through what are little screens showing us scenes of all the things that all the daring and dashing are trying and crashing. No, I suppose that that’s what plays into our fear more than just about anything anymore.

It’s that we seem to have come upon an existence in which the only substance of anything we see and all of what we hear is nothing but a highlight reel which plays this story of everyone doing everything so well that we, as the mistake-prone and entirely misunderstood, are left standing in what is but quicksand swallowing up our every hope faster than we can find it.

And we just let it happen because such is the life that’s been sold to us as normal.

It’s a normal where nothing new is every imagined. A commonality where yesterday is always considered the best backdrop for our inability to carve out a new choice made today. A life in which we slave away to get nowhere other than maybe closer to having what we wanted last week. Yes, this is a life in which we just waste every chance, every change, every choice then. As if we’ll maybe someday find some way to not let life pass us by into what is a past we’re still living as those still living as if the past was where all our best was already proven.

And thus we have no idea as to who He is nor what He’s doing. Because while God is the same yesterday and today and the same promised onward into forever, if we truly think that He’s okay with us being the same as we were yesterday, then we completely missed the message of the cross and of the Messiah who hung thereon. Because Jesus didn’t lay down His life to free us to do nothing differently in ours. No, in fact, His very Word says that the very point is for all things to be made new.

And He is doing a new thing, and no, we do not live as if we perceive it. Rather we live as if we don’t want to be it, believe it, buy it, try it, feel it, find it. All because anything new is anymore, unto us, only the very substance of things unseen, of thoughts untried, of chances untaken, of changes unmade, of a life unlived. And trust me, as I’ve said above, I know well this fear, this worry, this weight.

For I wade through it nearly every day.

I find myself at times almost in tears as won within these fears I find in regard to the life I’ve not lived, the things I’ve not done, the questions I’ve not asked, the risks I’ve not taken, the changes I’ve not made, the chances I’ve missed, the choices I refused, the open doors I walked right past afraid of the unknowns waiting within them. And it’s the realizing that I will never know then what could have been or who I could have been, that’s what inspires me now to try harder to welcome the danger of doing something new. Of wanting something different. Of embracing His doing of something different.

Indeed, because if we’re ever going to be something new, we have to do something new. And if we’re ever going to become so bold as to do something new, we have to wander into that wonder as to what all He can do new in us, for us, with us. Because believe me, if it were left up to us, we’d never be anything but what we were yesterday and every day before.

Yes, I am certain that were our lives as lived in faith still a matter of our own choosing, then should tomorrow come we’d still be then only afraid finding anything but what we found and felt and thought we had figured out already. We want only a life of already, of close enough, of good enough, of status quos and every stagnancy that we can convince ourselves is better in terms of safety than our seeing something more just a little further than most are willing to go.

I believe that this is why He offers us what He does here. Because again, we’re talking a Savior who laid down His life for what He knew would be such a cost then passed on to others in the form of such things as trust and humility that most would then never agree to it. He knew that most would never welcome His kind of new. He knew that most wouldn’t want to do what He calls us all to. He knew that most would just turn and walk away.

Just like the guy He told to sell all he had, give it to the poor, and then come and follow Him. He knew the man would leave upset because he just couldn’t bear to part with it.

And that’s the point for today. What is our ‘it’ that we’re afraid to let go or give away or leave behind? What in this life, of this life are we so terrified of losing that we’re willing to lose out on our seeing, being, becoming what He died for us to be? What have we found, felt, figured out or feel we might soon that we’re unwilling to surrender in exchange for the chance to change our understanding of life into an existence not reliant upon our every inability but rather one spent leaning upon His lack thereof?

Yes, what is it about what we’ve become that makes us think we’re still the ones who ought to be in the lead of this life that has us willing to stay behind in what is a life we’ve already lived but one way, that way being the same as how everyone else is still living and losing theirs?

For that is what a heart of stone does. We all know the heart’s purpose, and I’m not talking in regard to the kind of heart that we think about come February as drawn upon little cards or those little candies with sweet nothings scribbled all over them. No, I’m talking about the physical heart inside our chest. We know what it does in that it’s a muscle that pumps life-giving blood throughout the body carrying the oxygen and nutrients that our organs and tissues vitally need in order to go on living.

How can a heart that’s grown hard to trying, becoming what is but a stone unwilling to move, how can a heart so heavily laden with doubt and fear and worry and indifference in regard to difference, how can that carry anything to anything or us therefore anywhere?

That’s the image I think we need to take from this passage. It’s that a heart of stone cannot beat. It cannot pump. It cannot then send blood coursing throughout the body. Leaving then our bodies to eventually starve and suffer and too become then stone-like as if statues without the ability to move on their own. Yes, I fear we are all well on our way to becoming our own pillars of salt in what is a life spent looking back out of fear found both in letting go and too in moving on.

But that’s exactly what He calls us all to do. To let go and to move on. To leave behind who we’ve become and to step into who He alone knows we can be. To stop looking to a world all but dead to tell us how to live a life and to turn that hope for assistance unto the One who died to overcome our indifference and to place a new kind of everything different into our hearts, our minds, our eyes, our lives. Yes, He gave His life so that we too could leave our death behind.

That’s why He offers us a new heart of flesh in what is, as the next verse, a life in which we too receive the Spirit by which we come to follow His decrees and keep His laws and seek His glory and tell His story of what is a lost life overcome within the grave out of which we too can now say we have walked as well in what is a past now left behind for what is a life now so different that we are indeed barely recognizable.

We’ve been talking about that for a couple, this reality of faith as found in that we’re going to be found so different by those around us that many of them may choose to keep their distance from us. Guess the world’s just convinced that they might catch it. I remember that fear too. Always worried that I might look foolish to someone else. Always concerned that I might say something that wouldn’t make any sense to someone. Always hesitant to speak about Jesus amongst those who might think Him but an imaginary friend.

Don’t care anymore as I’ve not many friends left to offend or confront or confuse or lose. No, they’ve mostly all already gone. Meaning then that I’ve even less to leave behind as it seems I’m already on my way to what this world will mostly never know. And I couldn’t be more excited, more thankful, more hopeful because of it.

No, He is in me indeed doing something different. And it’s got me trying to do things differently, to see things differently. Simply because I know He didn’t offer us a new heart if we didn’t need it. For He’s not that kind of God who does the unnecessary. No, rather He has a point and purpose, perhaps even a promise, for everything He does and how it’s all done.

And so, if the One who gave His life asks me into the grave for what is a basically an open-heart surgery meant to bring me back to life from the death I see I’ve lived, then I just can’t find any reason to question it anymore.

Because I know well the things I’ve done, and the many from which I’ve run. And I’m just tired of trying to evade the inevitable, and the truly all but eternally vital. No, I know I need as much of His kind of new as He can find a reason to give. And I don’t really care what all I have to lose in order to find that promise of a life made new.

For I’ve run out of reasons to hold on to what most are. Guess it’s one of those been-there-done-that kind of things. Just don’t see much excitement in the normal anymore.

Not when the new is still pouring out a hope that never seems to get old.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold