Day 3628 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Ephesians 4:23 NIV

Because a change of mind begets and thus begins what becomes a change of life, and one almost always changed for the better. And in this case, the case of our faith, this better begat by a change of mind is that forever kind of better as found in a life lived there.

In forever.

Unfortunately, as you may have noticed, the word ‘change’ was mentioned a few times within all that. And this idea, this theory, this mention of such alteration is something that’s anymore quite confrontational because it seems to come across as having come from what is an undeniable outside perspective as proposed upon this purpose, at least on the surface, of seeming as if the other sees better or knows more than we might. And as a people who in pride delight, this matter is then measured in what’s considered a rather blatant affront to the arrogance we also like to deny.

Yes, we deny any and all semblance or insinuation of change, a choice chosen from within an egotistical perspective that pretends said decision as made in regard to the denial of any and all change is the sensible choice to make because surely we don’t make any mistakes.

Yeah, go with that. However far it might never get you.

Because that’s the reality of all such apparently plausible deniability as made basically a necessity should we continue to live a life pretending that where we are living as who we are is the very best of both. And indeed, we’ve all seemed to come somehow to see this very outlook as seen from only our point of view. So much so that it’s come about to construct a great many “attitudes of mind” that are what we could probably better understand as opinions and perceptions and preferences and pretenses and performances put on from what is a stage of what is nothing but a self pretending that it’s justified in never doing anything beyond nor then better than what’s already been.

Meaning then that we’ll ourselves never be anything better nor learn anything more nor see anything further nor then understand any deeper measure in regard to what in life might really matter as we’ll forever be lost inside what is an enslavement to misunderstanding as made mainstream alongside a million minds all thinking the same things. Things such as how it’s rude for another to so intrude into our status quo as to insist we might at least consider a change, one needed only because they apparently don’t think that “as you are” is quite the finish line we’ve come to see it as.

No, what if that is, in fact, one of our greatest if not the greatestest undoing in terms of all such things meant to be alive and active and moving and growing and learning and loving the leaving of all that thus already was already? Such things as faith and hope and curiosity and consideration and even life itself. For are not all such things best experienced on the run? And I don’t mean in haste but rather in a humility willing to waste what is for what might be as found only within our movement toward it?

A movement obviously taken at the clear expense of our staying put?

For indeed, such is what all such movement does. It progresses, it pursues, it purchases this persistence that pulls us into something better but, in that, away from all that’s thus deemed lesser. This is life as lived within what is every single choice we’ve ever made and the many more we’ve still to muddle through in however many days to come He’s determined we still have to so still try to learn to be more of who He made us to be rather than merely remaining what we’ve already become.

And yes, this is quite the affront to every ounce of arrogance we may have allowed to remain, to reside, to stay beside and behind and even anymore in fact too before these very minds that barely make any of our own choices these days. Indeed, so many of our choices are made at the behest of other voices as spoken from such folks as influencers and celebrities and mainstream media personalities. Yes, so much of our mind’s attitudes are made for us by those around us.

It’s just that we seem to have a far greater affinity for those great and growing many who speak this lie that repeats that as still unchanged from the past in which the false prophets spoke unto those in hearing’s distance, “’Peace, peace,’ they say, when there is no peace.” This verse was taken from Jeremiah 6:14, which begins by pointing out the problem being that “they dress the wound of my people as though it were not serious.”

Yes, as if it were not serious.

As if sin is not serious. As if wickedness is not serious. As if complacency inside of the wickedness of sin is not serious. Why so unserious? Seriously! Can so much in life be so far from being serious? Are we serious? No we’re not! We’re not at all serious about all that much, except that part in regard to how we seem to seriously hate people asking us to take things seriously. Things such as sin and the wage we’ve been told it wins. Why? Why does God want us to take this serious, so serious in fact that we embrace this opportunity to “be made new in the attitude of your minds”?

Because He knows that if we don’t we’re going to die.

Seems pretty serious if you ask me.

But looking around, that’s not at all what we see anymore. Not even close. Rather we see a people stagnant, lukewarm, lazy, lustfully so. We see a people resting upon their laurels, laurels being “the foliage of the bay tree woven into a wreath or crown and worn on the head as an emblem of victory or mark of honor in classical times.” Or current times. When in Rome, right? Yes, live as the Romans did.

‘Did’ being the obvious problem.

Because they’re dead. So too the entirety of what was the Roman empire. It’s gone. Over. Caput. Vanished. Evaporated into what is the fog of history from which we cannot even find the audacity to learn. No, for who knows what all lessons we might learn that would inspire in us the changes we’d then know to be necessary in order to avoid the pitfalls and fallouts of every fallen people and nation and mindset and misunderstanding? Yes, who knows what we might realize from even our own past was in fact a mistake we made that we should resolve to not allow to revolve back again?

But we do. Because again, we’re afraid of change here so sat inside a mindset so flat that we feel only that we’re all but obligated to tell everyone who dares insinuate that our lives are not nearly as great as we know we only pretend them to be to get lost and leave us alone to live and lose our lives however we see fit from within a mindset that sees not even half of it. No, I think we’d be amazed were we to, one of these days, sit with the realization as to just how much of life and its meaning we have absolutely no understanding of. Same said of faith, if not to an even deeper degree.

Why? Because we settle. We pick a place along this path we’ve picked toward a perfection we’ve painted with only the preferences and opinions that we tend to like the looks of, and once there to that place in which we’re apparently perfect and our lives the same, we then open up shop and begin to politely sell off all our ideas and ideals, for a nominal fee of course, as if they should become the foundation of another too going no further than we ourselves have determined to believe best enough.

Yes, best enough. Good enough. Close enough. It’s all just our measure of what is enough and our general proximity to it. As if such things as good and best are to be so limited as to be determined by us.

But I suppose that we simply have to see them that way because of this frame of mind we’ve all but made up upon such frames as fear and folly found by all and down every alley that we’ve walked looking for what might be easy enough to add to our close enough to what’s unto us good enough to define our very best.

All because we’re afraid of the fog of further.

Yes, we’re absolutely terrified of that alien attitude of mind in which we want only to find what is truly best as opposed to our meager measure of what it might be. And what we fear is what we hate in what is a mannerism meant to try to keep us safe from what we fear. Indeed, if we can convince ourselves to hate something, then we don’t ever have to admit that we’re terrified of it. We just talk about how much we hate it without ever really getting down to why.

Because we know, and too we don’t want anyone else to. That’s the one secret to our selfish settlement of apparent success that we’ll not divulge. Because it’s the one that would also instantly unravel every lie we’ve told, and ourselves come to buy, in what is a life that we know is nowhere near what it was meant to be. And thus us nor what we should be. Could still be. May never become.

But why not? That’s my pondering for this post today. Why not?

Why are we not willing to change? To grow? To discover new things, to do new things, to leave old things, to sacrifice the dead things in our wonderings and wantings that are holding us back, as if captives, to a past we’ve already lived? Indeed, why are we so violently attached to this “as you are”? Come are you are is one of if not the biggest catchphrases within the entire religious world. Come as you are. And granted, there is some honesty to that idea for we are all welcome, mostly out of sheer necessity, to come unto Him as we are.

After all, we can’t be anything else, can we? We are what we are, and so as we are is all that we can come as. So yes, I’ve not at all any problem with that. Rather my issue is that found within the unspoken subscript. Come are you are, and we won’t make you feel bad if that’s where you choose to stay. Because it’s unkind, unfriendly, unwarm, uninviting, unwelcoming, unwanted to say or insinuate anything else. Because we know well that this world hates change.

So we won’t ask. No, for that’d be rude. Right? Indeed, as discussed above, this world considers it rude to suggest that anyone might need do anything differently than they’ve chosen to. Because we’ve taken these ideas of identity and independence and smashed them together so forcefully that we cannot see any needed separation between the two. No, we do not see any issue with living this life as if we’ve the unbridled freedom to do whatever we feel like doing.

Just so long as it makes you feel good.

That’s all that matters to us. And if you don’t believe me, tell someone differently and you’ll get to see a visual representation of an “attitude” of their mind!

Which is quite why God does ask us to welcome change. And I say welcome rather than undertake or opt for or choose or embrace or decide upon because of something I read last night, which, should I have another tomorrow or two and thus another go or so at then another post(s), it’ll be a message all it’s own and one that I’m beyond enamored by at the moment. But suffice to say that He asks us to welcome change because we can’t change.

So He asks that we humble ourselves and let Him lead us to what will in fact free us from what we have in fact become. Because He’s not quite so okay with our staying as we are. Because it’s fine to come to Him as sinners in need of forgiveness and salvation due to a lifetime thus far lived like everything was permissible and thus nothing was ever off the table. Yes, it is understandable for us to come as sinners needing mercy because of a past spent following that attitude of mind that has had us convinced that we could do no wrong.

But it’s not at all understandable, acceptable, permissible for us to stay as we’ve come as the sinners we’ve been. Not if His mercy is truly what we know we need.

Because friends, that’s kind of the point. If we do know that we need His mercy, His forgiveness, His compassion, His salvation, then we too know that we need them only because we’ve done things, thinking them right, assuming them acceptable, preferring them permissible, demanding them to be always determined justified, only to have found in them mistakes made that made themselves then into such things as guilt and regret and remorse and sorrow and sadness and shame.

All things that we, in turning to Him, seek also to turn away from. And that is the new attitude of mind that He calls us to, in Him, find. It’s a mindset not merely open to undertaking repentance, but rather one that seeks it out as if lifeblood itself. Because such is what repentance is. It’s a turning away from all that leads to death back to the pursuit of all that leads us closer to life.

And thus we see that all things are movement, for life is movement. It’s moving. We are either growing or we are dying. We’re either improving or we’re losing. We’re either chasing after something better or we’re wasting inside everything lesser. We are either chasing into the best or we’re seeking instead a way to justify our settling for staying put within the rest.

And it’s all down to an attitude of mind. We either set our minds upon insisting that everything we’re doing is fine to be done or we turn them to seeing that, because of such things as guilt and regret, we must be doing something that isn’t right after all. And if it isn’t right, why keep doing it? Why not do something different if that difference might make such things as guilt and regret far less prominent in our lives? Yes, why not change, or rather welcome it from He who begins it, if such movement would mean our undeniable betterment?

It’s a mindset. It’s a perspective. It’s perception. It’s literally down to what we perceive as being what truly matters most. Is it worth the risk to move forward into the fog of change not having any idea as to how often we’ll struggle nor then how many times we’ll stumble, if not fail altogether? Is it worth the risk of never knowing anything better in order to know we can avoid such pitfalls and problems as those found along the path we’ve not taken nor had a hand in planning?

And considering that every single choice we make in life is one made with risk attached, which one has the most risk? Trying to be made new, made better and probably messing up and having to continue learning as we go? Or trying to stay put whilst avoiding all such hint at any such change and never then knowing who we could been nor how much better then our lives, our eternities may be been?

Everything we do, every thought we act upon, it brings a risk. And whether we stay put or move on, it’s a choice we’re acting upon. So where are we allowing our minds to take us? To more of who we’ve always been? Or toward the better that we know in our hearts that we’ve simply not been yet?

Be made new my friends, for what life is there in what’s already known?

#LeaveNoSoulUntold