Day 3735 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Ecclesiastes 7:4 NIV

An unseldom sorrow.

Such is what it seems I see inside the scene seen of such things as all this bitterness and rage as built upon mere human anger as spoken from within this continuously dissentious discourse as determined delightful by so many for some reason that I for one fail to find reason in. For it only brings about so many heartbreaking and hope-shaking sights to so woefully behold because of what we’ve become. And indeed, scarcely a day passes anymore without the seeing or hearing of something, the personally doing of something myself or the saying thereof that leaves me nearly breathless within what feels an inability to understand the why it must remain this way.

Why indeed? Do we just like this life in which we live in love of all this hate and hardship as hastened upon one another over matters so inconsequential that we’d be astounded as to the rarity of true wrath’s necessity?

Do we even dare consider the necessity of such a pure punishment as that which was already taken in our stead and yet still promised to any and all who doubt He did?

It’s as if we’re content to exist as if little vents that blow off steam in either little spurts or continuous spouts all streamed and screamed in throughout a life that’s anymore only always all about how life isn’t the way we want it to be. And yet we change so little that it seems reasonable to ask what of this fallen way we’re so ready and willing to change. Because no, seems we’re just fine with the hate, the heaviness thereof, the horror of divisive rhetoric and every social division which springs from it.

But still, why do we do it? All this that brings about only despair and discontent? All these rash words said without a second’s thought given unto their outwardly perceived meaning? All of these actions undertaken, choices we’re undertaking that take it upon ourselves to put again ourselves first as if all others forever last? Do we matter that much? Do others matter so little as to always be considered afterthoughts thought about only after we’ve gotten our ways and wins, wants wanted within what remains a life so filled with mostly pain and problem despite our pursuit of pleasure?

And each either only denied or allowed to divide because of our apparent inability to ever find our perfect fill of the latter?

Why do we so allow for such a continued discontentment with all of life’s content? I was taught growing up, in a manner seemingly jokingly so, or lighthearted at least, to never sweat the small stuff alongside a reminder that it’s all small stuff. Meaning then that nothing in life as we live it is ever truly of such a grand grievousness to ever be allowed to matter so much that we allow any of it to so inspire us toward such things as mischief or malcontent.

And yet we’re anymore so very sweated upon the small stuff that so too do we sweat the stuff that isn’t. We make stuff up seeking some way to be something of angry all over again. It’s truly as if we just enjoy the misery of a mankind mazed upon some misunderstanding as to the very meaning of life. For it shouldn’t be this way! We shouldn’t so seek to so squander our days upon the doing of things or saying of them either in a way that might inspire a furthered fall into a fealty with the very fatality that is every human folly.

Alas the world’s gone gray within all this giving away of our color to yet always another matter that may not matter at all, a matter that may not even be there to become so mad about.

Yet we do.

We all do. We all do things that cause the very mourning that meets the wise in the morning as they awake once more to walk within a place stilling falling, and that both apart and thus too away. Apart at the seams and thus away from the Son who came to sow us back to hope within the tearing of the veil that was once made necessity out of our sinful ingenuity as given unto the getting and gaining of a life lived straining unto the saying or doing of whatever we want, and that however we please, without then ever a second’s worry over what it may mean to any other.

Thus we loathe our brother. We hate our sister. We ignore our mother and despise both our dad and our Father. Not ever once seeming to care that such too leaves us defined as a murderer. 1 John 3:15. Because, as in 1 John 3:14 we read that we know we’ve passed from death to life if we have love for one another and that too anyone who has not said love remains in their death. Leading us into the jarring of 3:15:

“Anyone who hates a brother or sister is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life residing in him.”

For, 3:16: “This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters.”

Thus we see our call unto the same ways in which Jesus walked, the same ways He talked, even striving blind to try to find the very words He said as all He said was of such life that it’s all written in red. Much like the blood that’s buried both beneath the skin and alas ever more so behind the every morning in which we awake only with the off-chance of hate still being allowed to perhaps become the day’s outcome before its end.

What of our end though? What can our end hold when we’ve long lived a life that’s held only the hopeless heartbreak of our every part played in what remains a fall so fatal that so many here will never know life having never themselves been alive for anything other than the gray of the human way? How can it not mess us up, all this mess we’ve made as made of misunderstandings and such? Again, is such all we seriously want in life, of life, for life?

Are we alive if all we live for is the next argument or aggravation or frustration or disappointment over another’s attempt to try to please us, to love us, to help us or heal us or lead us to the happiness that we all want but yet wear faces that scream we know not?

No, I think we’re not, not alive at all so long as we live for such a lack of love as to love the pleasure pursued by the very same fools who follow their heart’s every horrid desire unto all this setting of fire to even the very hope of better, and perhaps that more than anything being only that of another. For I’ll let you in on what seems a secret so shrouded that none even think about it: There are some who are on the brink of giving up altogether in the face of all this lack of better.

There are some at the end of their hope as if it was truly always a rope that’s come to only feel so strangled that they consider the same. There are some so broken, heart-wise at least, over all this hatred we see, this hardship we insist upon one another as daily gathered in the form of expectations and our every frustration over them not being perfectly met. There are some sick to death, and then willing to die, ready to find that place where hope of anything bettered might truly be.

Because within every day it doesn’t seem to be here. How can it? How can hope exist inside a place so filled with malice and malcontent? How can we continue to imagine better when the weather continues to blow these blows as delivered from one selfish fool unto another? And yes, we’ve all lived the role of that selfish fool, doing only whatever we wanted to do, insisting that it could simply never matter if it somehow came out to the hurting of another.

For nothing we do is ever that bad!

Right?

Well, in a strange twisting touted by truth, our doing of so much wrong is perhaps a decent enough backdrop to the beginning of the imagining of doing something right. A world setting itself on fire in this fighting to find this fealty to our folly, it’s become the very image of all we shouldn’t ever settle to be. And the reality that we’ve all in fact been found living within what’s long become a life lockstepped to that of those many who hate without limit, so too have we now seen it.

The very image of ourselves as played the part of those tearing apart the very heart of hope as held by all but found by few.

Why so few? Is it that hope is hard to find? Well, no, for Hope found us. And so the concept of hope is quite easy enough. Is it then that happiness is hard to track down? No, for godliness brings with it a contentment that allows us to be at peace whether in want or plenty. Is it that plenty is impossible to prove perfectly within this place so packed with impiety and the indifference it inspires? No, for daily our cups runneth.

Our mouths just keep running past them.

Taking our daily bread for granted is what’s granted our ability to be always so angry. We forget how good we’ve got it in what’s a life in which we’re given so much of all that’s good that we have more than enough to give unto others. Why then do we not share anything but our frustrations, our disappointments, our divisiveness?

Because as much as the mouth speaks what the heart is full of, so too then will the life be lived in light of whatever is allowed inside.

Thus meaning that if we allow hatred or anger or discontent to pitch a tent inside our hearts, eyes, minds, lives, then our lives can only live with such darkness to shine. And make no mistake, the darkness is doing all it can to shine as bright as the Son. And in many days that’s a battle it seems it’s already won within what remains a way strained by the seeing of things that shouldn’t be, a hearing of words that needn’t be said, a doing of things that have us living as if none care that we’re all but dead.

For we are. Because again, there is no eternal life in the heart of a murderer as any who can take this gift of life that lightly deserve not to continue the living of it. It’s just simple justice. And yet we live as if justice is something we’re all separately justified in our trying to define behind lives lived under the guise of caring despite any real evidence unto it.

Because if we cared, we’d not allow anger or hatred to win the day, not even a minute within it. If we loved we’d not live to leave others as broken as we found them, or perhaps even worse off because of our face-off with our selfish frustration and foolish disappointment as allowed to rage over matters that don’t matter at all. Yes, if we had even the slightest inkling as to the dwindling of hope itself, we’d likely be less quick to allow our tempers to flare and feel then another fire to face for someone else who may be among those facing all they can at the moment.

And that’s what breaks me.

It’s the scarcity of our realizing, or acting as if we can, that someone else may well be struggling, suffering, unsure from stumbling in ways that leave them so unsure about their need to go on living that they start contemplating the alternative. It’s the watching of some live their lives as if all that matters is all they enjoy whilst finding some of that enjoyment at the expense of someone else. It’s watching society tear itself apart trying to find some worthless win as won within the feeling of power or importance or whatever other pursuit that’s been allowed to become popular.

Yes, the popularity of pleasure as met with the then rarity of compassion is something that should inspire all of us unto mourning. Why? Because a life lived looking for pleasure no matter the expense as lived in tandem then with one which finds pleasure at the expense of another, it’s death incarnate. And death should inspire mourning as the loss of life is a grand loss indeed!

How much less then should we be heartbroken from all this watching and reading and hearing and feeling this entire world simply give its life away to what is anymore the everyday seeking of the selfishly doing whatever we want without caring as to the impact it may have upon another?

Why don’t we care? And if we do, then why doesn’t it show? Where’s the fruit my friends? Where’s the proof of hearts rent from watching a world run away from the love of God as given us all in Christ and yet given by so few to anyone else from us? For what benefit is there in loving those who love us? What reward might we win within the extending of compassion to only those who show the same to us? Why live this life in such a reactionary retrospect as to insist upon the conflict first to always then, and that always only maybe, be followed, eventually, by some worthless apology?

I can’t count how many times I’ve wondered as to just how tired God must be of hearing me say I’m sorry for the things He knows I’ll keep doing. For He knows the very heart of each of us, and that nearly the every inclination therein is only to evil all the time. That’s Genesis my friends, thus it’s been this way for a long time.

Why let it stay this way?

How can we let it stay this way? How can we not do something, say something? Why won’t we say something, do something? For those truly heartbroken want not to stay where they are as sorrow is no place to live. And yet in this place we live sorrow is anymore unseldom. It’s constant. It’s consistent. It’s all but anymore insistent upon the content of our everyday going only the very way that our yesterday’s gone. And yet we don’t even seem to be sad over that all that much.

Not until hindsight kicks in up somewhere up ahead.

I’m sick of living for hindsight having to be the one to tell me what I could have done better. I want to do better now. I want to be better now. I want to love more right where I am. I want to serve Him more than I have. I want to honor Him more than perhaps I even I can. I want to help those around me to feel, even if only at least feebly and in failed portion, the very love of their Father who sent the Son to help us come apart from a world that’s come undone.

Yes, I want to recognize the many things that are happening that shouldn’t, all so that I can then, and only ever then, finally realize the things that must be so heartbreaking to Him that they break mine too. And friends, there are plenty of such things to see.

I’m not saying that we should never be happy as His Word indeed calls us to enjoy our lot, being perpetually thankful therein for all of His goodness, kindness and provision. But it also calls us to mourn with those who mourn as we too rejoice alongside those few who can. And while the latter we do, that the former is far more normal means that maybe our mourning should be too.

Not because life is nothing but miserable, no, but simply because this place is dying due to the living of a life lost in the loving of lies and lust, dirt and dust the lot. And while we can, and should, rejoice over the many blessings and beautiful beginnings that have already come our way, so too must we then sorrow over the sadness seen inside a place so filled with so much that shouldn’t be allowed to stay within what’s long been a way in which life cannot exist.

For there is no life in the death that is sin. And so we should rejoice in the gift of salvation, but we should all lament at all that makes it so necessary.

And too that so many live as if it isn’t.

And while I doubt that any would readily come right out and say it that way, friends, isn’t our doing or saying of things without ever thinking them through basically but a saying of the very same thing?

Either way, all’s I’m saying is that this way of life we’ve all been known for living should be so very heartbreaking that we perhaps slow down and take the time to reconsider the whether or not we’re still playing a part of the fall apart. Because simply pit, selfish pleasure is still considered far too important.

And as was already proven, there is no life in living to please ourselves.

That’s the Gospel my friends. And it’s something which brings both mourning and rejoicing. But make no mistake, the latter comes always after.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold