Day 3720 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Matthew 7:14 NIV

And thus it’s a narrowing for us.

And this of both life and love. And it must be as such because we’ve lived a life in which we’ve loved the lust for the trust of rust which will only ever be all that it’s all already been all along. And simply put, if all we are is all we know and all we know is but all we tow then all we can be is simply all we’ve all already been. And considering then that all any of us have ever been able to be all on our own is but a lone loon looking to love more of that which has left us lost, well then there is simply no possible way to find the narrow which leads to life.

For it was paved by He who gave of His so that we might see all that for which we’ve given of ours, so as to in this realize with our own eyes the death we’ve demanded within the delights our desires have designed.

Because the fact was written long before we set to erasing what is His will, or so we try, as done within this wasted way of life in which all we know is to love the wide for the welcoming ease of that social sense of safety as considered inside the lie we’ve all lived and died to buy which believes only that the corporation of a community is the only sense of security that any of us may ever truly need. Indeed, that excuse we’ve all used of everyone else doing whatever we’ve too come to do, it’s among the very earliest signs of a life on the line that happens to be seen as sadly belonging to all of mankind.

And that only because God is generous and allows us unto the freedom of a free will to do wrong despite the violent clarity of the continued necessity of our admitting that we’ve all along known the right to do instead. But instead of that right we’ve all left Him behind as we’ve strained blind into what’s become a life lived so numb to just how dumb we’ve become that we cannot now be the ones who manage to ourselves come apart from what we’ve come to be as is a part of an apparently loving community of fellow convicts and miscreants.

No, we understand not that idea that says so blatantly that we must spurn the majority of humanity at the then choice to rescind our every demand to be a part of what we’ve become a part of. For such simply doesn’t make much sense. Why would we, having now found all we’ve fought to feel, now turn heel and walk away from a world we’ve gained? Well, as the Savior so brutally put it within not words spoken but rather dire actions undertaken, it’s for the soul.

For the soul is what we’d sold to so afford these invitation we’ve sent unto the world to come and rent a tent inside our heart, our hands, our hopes. Yes, we’ve lived as if open doors unto the wantings of the wide, and now so much of their life has become our own that we’re too now owned by a life we both seem to know but only begin to slowly hope we might not know for much longer.

Why? Because living a life to die isn’t much of a life as it turns out.

And make no mistake, all this winning of sin’s proven wage is something that’s quite unbecoming a people who He began to be alive. For as we’ve talked not long ago, it simply makes no sense for Him to have created life only to insist it die. Sort of a self-negation it would seem. And I simply cannot even start to wrap my mind around that kind of heart that would give of such a hope unto these people He created to both know and thus they too know He, only for we to be the ones left to lose this life He gave us to live.

Who would do that?

Well, oddly enough we would. Because it’s become evident that we mind not at all the freedom found and felt within the fall. I dare say that some don’t even mind the fallout of what is the aftermath of a life so commonly communally misconstrued into apparently only meaning whatever the masses might insist it might. And they can only so insist upon such maybes because we’re all mainly dead men walking with thus no making of any such authority as that we see used so abnormally as to inspire an entire creation to deny their very Creator.

For as much as it makes no sense for God to create life only to insist all of it just eventually die unto the sin that is what’s been allowed to win so many souls that He had to pay the way for even but a few to find their way back to the life He created, in love, for us all to live, neither then does it make any sense for us to whom such a gift was given to only go on living as if no such hope is there to have so close as to not even have to hold the hope but rather just trust that this Hope holds us.

Why deny the hope of life if not for the understanding, confused though it is, that we’ve come to live a life already without such a loss waiting for all of us?

And indeed, amongst all of the widespread misunderstandings strewn throughout this place, I dare say that our ability to insist that we can both do with life whatever we like and perhaps manage to miss the punishment incurred by such a try to so usurp His place in this place He’s made both for us and in us, well, that’s got to be the most wide open and rebelling of them all.

For it’s the one that literally all of us have sought to seek in what we’ve learned to assume a way of life so wide open and free that, yeah, maybe we can be the ones to eventually prove able to outrun the gun that is the Son who came to save from within a grave as if to say that such is both where we belong, but so too by some miraculous sort of mercy now don’t have to stay.

So why do we?

Why do we daily do what only all the others seem to always only want to if not because it’s all those others that have so become our brothers, sisters, fathers and mothers that we dare not now so deny our “family” as to so blatantly turn our backs upon what we’ve all come together to become together? I mean, we have so clearly so little hesitancy in regard to doing wrong as done within all the mistakes we know we’ve won within all the wrong choices we’ve made. And we know we’ve made them because of the feelings of shame or regret borne within them.

And yet we’ve done such so much that we’ve maybe even come to see shame and regret as members of this family. And when we feel as if we both belong to something, and this same something then belongs to us, well, thus we likely won’t find the ability to leave it behind as there is, unto us, no greater feeling than that felt which has us feeling as if we belong where we don’t.

Because it pretty much strips away whatever may have been left of that life lived in the love that came from above to lead us back to the same.

Yes, we’ve in truth only so much of us that we can lose before we either fall so completely apart that we finally ask for His help to help us restart, or we simply embrace that our life is meant to waste and from there agree to the doing of just such a thing.

And that latter matter is the one made so mainstream that we’ve all thought it the thing that we too should do with what we believe our life to lose.

And having indeed lived as if this were our life to live and lose however we may like for so long as for such we’ve lived, we’ve too come to love the lust of that rusted trust touted by those too trying to keep themselves alive to keep on buying this belief that God isn’t there simply because we’ve come to see so very many agree that He isn’t there at all. And when bombarded with such an ongoing public denial, it’s only a matter of time before we buy into the lie and let then our lives out unto a shared living upon the wide that is the way of the world.

Yes, we are surrounded by those who live only to deny God out of the fear that He might really be there!

And when watching so many run away then from the life only He gives, it’s only then a matter of time before such becomes said of our own lives.

But how much time will we give unto this seeking to die by our too running away from the Life?

Alas, I know all the familiar excuses to not try to find what so many say we can’t. After all, how can this ever be something that we can find as those who’ve too fallen into such infatuation with the fat vocation of a sinful condemnation the context of considered within our common sharing of the wide road to destruction? Indeed, how can we who’ve come to love death then become the ones to find life? How can we undertake such a vicious and violent undoing of literally all we’ve long known to do, which is what we’ve now done so long that we’re now known as that which we’ve done, and it still mostly all that we do?

Yes, how can we find the narrow road at the then obvious exchange of the wide which the wisdom of this world seems to love, and has thus inspired us to love as well?

Well, seems the only real way of finding it is by admitting we can’t. For I’d contend that it’s only then that we can finally stop being the ones we trust to look. And it’s only then that we finally start down this road of our finally realizing that nor should we let anyone else lead the way either for we’ll find there that we’re all only the same flesh and blood despite our own personal blends of contexts and trends that have come to all but define us all as the different we think ourselves to be.

And indeed, we do somehow still seem to truly think ourselves so very unique only because we’ve fallen and failed so differently than most everyone else has themselves. And yet it’s because of this that we have only ourselves to blame, and thus that proving that it oughtn’t remain our name that we seek to fan to the flame of fame but rather that of only whomever might help us up and out of this life lived so obviously without any real ability to be the better we’ve never been before.

For honestly, if we could have been better, then why haven’t we? And if we’re still trying to improve, as so very few seem at all willing to, well then are we not only confessing that better is in fact what we’ve apparently not been? For we’d not still try for what we’ve already found, would we? No, once we get something for which we’ve been looking we stop looking, for to continue would be pointless as the point was whatever we’ve managed to find.

And thus we find that we’re still a far cry from better as we still, at least some of us, awake some days still trying to find the better we’ve never been. And so it seems then rather blatantly obvious that it simply should not be us to whom we look or upon whom we lean looking to learn the things that we’ve clearly either not known or simply never knew what to do with.

And believe me, there are indeed a very great many of those very things.

For we’ve all claimed all along the way to whatever and wherever we are this day to have known all sorts of things that we believed to be of an importance enough to learn them, know them, but alas then apparently not powerful or important enough to have imported us into the better that we’re still looking to be. And so either all we’ve known was never able to help us become the better we’re still trying to be, or should at least start trying to be, or we’ve simply never had the ability to use properly what we’ve come to know that could have helped us to have become by now at least something better than whatever/whomever we currently are.

Which leads to the necessity of the narrowing into which and out through which we’re all both called to go and then come if we’re ever to go to where He is, which is the better we both can believe in and yet cannot apparently manage to become.

And yet this seems the entire point of this post about this verse, or rather the point of this verse that is the reason for this post. Or one of many at least. And that is that since we can at least begin to believe in His brand and breed of everything better, that we can’t get there by ourselves on our own seems to show that we’re not supposed to but that rather we’re only supposed to try and find He who found us. And thus we find the problem in that we’re meant to find a God we both can see but yet more often claim we can’t.

For make no mistake, there is evidence of Him all around. We just seem to have found only ways in which to miss Him, to mistake Him, to make the mistakes that blind us to Him because of our share of that wide fear that He will hate us should we find Him having truly so fully known us all this time. And it’s this very lie that has the majority of mankind still living to hide within the shadows of a showdown with sundown, assuming that our actions and understandings are best hidden then. And we so try to indeed all of them hide because, despite pride saying our choices have no price, there’s just some things that we don’t want seen for some reason.

Perhaps that which says that we know He has no reason to welcome us home having watched us so squander our existence upon this consistent embracing of a world’s way won without meaning, without mercy, without a respect then for His majesty.

And yet the cross says otherwise.

Says that He has seen us living life within a share of the wide from which He too knows that too few will ever turn from. And yet, having seen all that we’ve done trying to live a life that’s become but a replica of their longstanding rebellion, He came and laid down His life anyway. Thus showing that while He knows we’ve not loved Him, He’s still loved us.

And thus the question then becomes what it is that we’re listening to. For again, as we just talked about yesterday, the reality is that daily we walk alongside millions screaming all about how they see no point in our doing what's hard, unsafe, unreasonable, illogical even. But friends, those who find sin reasonable probably aren't the ones we should listen to anymore.

Rather maybe we should only listen always to the One who, despite a tomb involved, lives still a life in which the only thing empty is that grave.

Because only He seems to know then the way to both where He is and thus what it takes to end up where He’s gone. And so He is the One we need to follow, no matter how His path might narrow. For the truth is that life was never meant to consist within an abundance of anything other than appreciation for the gift that is a life given. Because for us to have this gift that is a life to live meant His at first creating us in love and then coming to show us just how much in what is the greatest gift ever given again.

Life.

He gave us life. We gave it unto living wide. He came to walk the narrow. And now He calls us to share.

So what’s it to be? Keep on living like the world out on that wide open and wandering seeking always there for that something that makes it all feel worthwhile? Or turn around and seek to be found among the few who seek the narrow as walked by the Savior who is literally the only hope we have with a worth so fully proven that even death shuts its mouth?

Friends, we can do with this life as we please, and we know this because we’re surrounded by the many who do this very thing daily. And that without so much as tear shed, or apparently any fear felt. Or we can turn and repent of such a life worthless and in that turning stumble unto the finding of that narrow road walked beyond that small gate that is the Name of Jesus.

Not because He is small, no, simply because He is the only Way through it.

In fact, because of what He did with the grave, He is the gate.

And yes, it will be hard to find Him when found still among so many so clearly not trying to. But friends, even this fear now stands resolved in that we’ve never had to find Him at all. He found us. And so it all comes down to yet again a matter of trust. We can trust in the common confusions of those walking the wide, assuming safety in the numbers. Or we can trust in the rare belief that Jesus did live, did die, did leave, but only to make ready our chance to do the same unto the same outcome that over death He’s won.

And if living life after death is an option, well then should it really matter how hard the road may be that makes something so amazing such a promised possibility?

No.

Thus the narrowing.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold