Day 3762 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

1 Thessalonians 5:6 NIV

For comes a day.

And that a day comes is something enough to speak caution unto the nights in and for which we’ve lived in what’s long been a love of the shadows as shelters of sorrows on rafters drying by dying to what was a life we were meant to have lived had we not rather learned to love what we’ll have to leave. And indeed, that we will all go somewhere that’s not here is a thought which should prove plenty to rouse our reconsiderations as to the overall directions we’ve both determined and thus delighted to go.

Simply because every delight demands a death as died inside the choice we didn’t make as made by the voice we didn’t speak that thus didn’t say what we could have said in regard to the questions to be asked us upon that day.

No, all we’ll then have to say is that we alone did choose to go wherever we ended up being found by He who we’ll then either be found hiding within or rather still all but running from. But friends, there is no amount of human ability that can ever possibly prove able to outpace He who has long offered us grace in place of our thinking this place our home and thus our souls being allowed to always slumber within. No, there will be nothing to say for such a choice being made.

I even dare imagine that sorry will then prove all but perfectly shallow and thus unable to swallow enough of our guilt to get us through those gates.

Rather we’ll find upon Heaven’s shore that proverbial wind which blows and beats against the house we’ve built within what’s been a life in which we were given years to test ourselves our building ourselves into whatever it is that we’ve both been and can become. And make no mistake, the two needn’t be so much the same as to leave all perfectly unable to tell the two apart. Indeed, such is why He asks that we come apart, both at the seams of this life we’ve sewn, and thus unto the doing of new deeds sown into what is a harvest of hope that we know we couldn’t grow by ourselves.

Alas, such is all we’ve known to try for so long now that it’s both all we know to try and too the very trying that’s already left us so tired that closing our eyes to the problems we’ve purchased seems but so very natural that we daily agree to the new hours and opportunities we’re given within a new day’s gifts to be themselves naturalized to what is an all but neuterized normality that is so far below the standard set that slumbering and sleeping should be the last thing on our list of things to get done.

Definitely not the first, as so they seem to be.

And indeed, if sleeping at the wheel of life were an Olympic event, well, we’d all have long run short on room to hang our medals on what are walls of hearts so filled with this idea of this place being our home that we’ve only sought to build on in what are addendums of assumptions still stuck to this presumption of our preferences and pride being neither prone to problem nor then ever possibly able to have become some.

But they are, and that in so many ways that we should thank God to have so many days through which to not sit in some sort of selfish assurance as to the promise of the Son coming to get us but to rather rouse ourselves unto the chasing down Heaven as if the train’s already leaving the station and we’ve just found out our feet can’t fly fast enough to ensure we’re aboard.

Not that it’s on us to do enough to afford enough to purchase the ticket back home. No, just that it is on us to live as if home is indeed found within that elsewhere and that all we’re then here for is the shedding of as much of all that doesn’t belong where we firmly believe we’re heading that we’re, by the day we get there, left no doubt as to our ability to be passed through that needle that He spoke of being the overall size of the door through which the hope of home is said to be found.

And indeed, the irregularity of a life fitting through a needle’s eye is as was meant to be, an idea so very sobering that it incites us unto the incinerating of all we’ve been living to remain in exchange for the then intenerating of all He calls us to be into literally the only everything we desire to become.

For once you see the difference between been and become, or at least finally come to believe it there, well, so much for resting upon laurels won as if we’re already all but done under the sun and there able to enjoy the rest of our days giving the rest of our ways to those ways already walked within we’ve already won what will upon that day be gone.

Yes, why continue to live for what all we’re going to leave? Or even simpler, why continue to sleep and thus stay unready for the day’s coming?

Is the hope of Heaven truly worth missing simply because we’ve become convinced that we’re tired of trying to be the better that asks we first agree to see that we’re not there yet? Neither to better nor thus the home which begs it? Just how sternly do we want Heaven’s peace? Just how much does it mean? I mean, we know what it means to Him as He came to make that part clear.

What then does it mean to us, and what then are we doing about it whilst here?

Alas, truth is that we’ve all lived a life most vastly doing nothing at all. Not that we don’t physically move or act or speak or eat or anything like that, for we’re all basically fine with all of that. But there’s become a massive lack of movement seen inside the spiritual side of life, such a lack in fact that it’s fair to ask if our spirit is alive at all. Because let’s be honest, if it weren’t for the fact we go to church once a week, just how much hope for Heaven is there in us to see?

And too then, what else is easier seen? And what then does that say about where our focus is stayed, our treasure stored, our hope held and our faith fixed? Indeed, what needs fixed in our faith? What of our hope has proven only hollow? Just how much of our treasure already torn or turned out tarnished? Why doesn’t our focus find it easier to focus on what matters most?

Indeed, why does what matters most seem to change so much?

Is it not because we’re drunk? That we’re living a life all but inebriated, perhaps incapacitated at that? After all, what’s the difference? What’s the distance between inebriation and incapacitation, the inhibition in both? And well, to that, what’s the overall outcome of a life so uninhibited that said lack of restraint is allowed to inspire us to think it fun to faint toward faith, feigning a fealty to the Father whilst not at all faking our friendship with foolishness and the many living in the enmity therein?

Or have we become so drunk upon this world’s delights that we can’t even tell the difference anymore between dark and light, day and night, wrong and right? No, sadly it seems that such lines have become so blurred by their having been so continually moved that it’s made us all but forbid us the sternness of faith as met within the sobriety that the definitions of Heaven and hell’s destinations should all but insist inside. Indeed, we see a strict lack of a sternness such as that.

I suppose only because it would ask that we do something about what we’ve allowed to become of our lives before that day when upon which we’ll be asked why we chose the losses we won and the wins we allowed lost to the lust of what we’ll then lose. And again, I think we all know quite well that even a solemn symphony of sorrows and sorry’s won’t be able to assuage the anger we’ve incurred in light the drunkenness in which we’ve all indulged.

And again, I’m not talking about liquor, though that is the drink of choice for some. No, I’m talking about anything that hinders our seeking to help He who came to help us unto the finding of both what hope is and the home in which it waits. But that seems to be where we’ve gotten things a bit backwards and blurred. For that Heaven’s promise waits for us to find that we’ve been found by He who came to ask us unto changes made that show we’re ready to go, we took the waiting as a sign that we should do the same.

So much so that all we do now is just wait for Him to show up again, like a rock seated upon the desert floor both unable to move and largely disinterested in the idea having not done so for so long.

But friends, what semblance of life does such a lack of movement show? What life do we live when passed out on a bed? What growth in hope can we ever hope to hold if we’re so unalive, a faith so cold that it cannot be told whether or not we even believe in it at all? Is belief begrudged by being asked to prove we believe it? Or does not such an opportunity to put our faith where our feet are only offer us an excitement to move closer to He who left everything so as to die in order to inspire us to do the same?

And yes, the thought of leaving everything we’ve ever known behind is a very sobering suggestion indeed. But friends, considering that this place and these ways we’re going to leave anyway, why not then be on our way so that when, upon that day, He who is the Way won’t have to seek us out? Not that He doesn’t know those who are His from those who don’t care to be. No, such a distinction He most definitely does see!

Yet that’s the idea of sobriety as considered inside asking us what He sees in us?

Is it a willingness to leave? A readiness to do so? An eagerness to do so? Or does He see instead what seems at best a faith mostly asleep? Motionless, meaningless. Is that what faith should inspire in us? Just a lack of effort or involvement unto its being worked out? Again, not that it’s all on us to work it out, but simply that it should mean so very much, this promise of a place within His permanent peace, that we’re willing to do anything and lose everything that might stand in our way of being as ready as we can for that coming day.

But are we? Or are we sleeping? Are we resting? Are we at best guessing as to the difference between what might honor Him and what might instead help us to enjoy a life spent still honoring only ourselves? Ah yes, the brutality of it all! For such is the harshest of truths, one which is indeed a sword sharper than needed it seems. But yet, then again, apparently not! For it would appear that something so drastic is vastly needed if we’re to ever be separated from who we’ve become in light of where we’ve been willing to remain.

No, friends, to remain where we are living as who we’ve been should be the last thing we’re willing to entertain. Alas we only do just that because it’s easier to be entertained than to be inspired unto giving our efforts not to resting here and now but rather to the fighting through what’s here now toward the better that we know isn’t.

And we do know, at least I hope, that this isn’t as good as it gets.

Yet all this resting and refusing to try seems only to say that we’re okay with life and how it’s lived. That we’re at peace within this place and the paths we’ve picked, the problems we’ve paved. That it’s all just fine as it is, and that, as such, this just fine, that we’re good with it being the outcome should nothing better ever come later.

But what of that sounds like faith?

No, rather that nonsense sounds only like a drunkard unwilling to give up the drink in order to sober up unto the severity of the fight we have on our hands in light of our having taking our own lives in our hands and lived them with our blood on our heads!

Friends, we’ve messed up so much in life that we shouldn’t dare imagine that our doing nothing until we die is as acceptable as it’s so sadly become. No, mistakes beg us to stop making them, but instead we’ve just keep drinking them, denying them made and thus us continuing to think we’re okay. We’re not! Why not? Because we’re not ready.

Because if we ever reach a place inside in which we think we are, then we have no idea as to the gravity of eternity.

For the difference between Heaven and hell should be something so sobering that we embrace the fact that we cannot ever be ready enough for that day that’s coming to judge our lives spent living within this doing of mostly only whatever we’ve wanted. This life was never meant for such a thing! And that we’ve lived it as if it were, well, that should be a realization so sobering that it dries up every single doubt and denial and then every indifference thus far allowed within our decisions and directions and determinations as to the meaning of all possible destinations.

And how we refuse to settle for anything less than Heaven’s best.

Because Jesus didn’t.

Rather He left nothing undone of all that was needed for us to have that hope. How dare we then ever come unto the thinking that we’ve done plenty enough ourselves to ensure ourselves in Him? Friends, what is enough of hope? When will we have had our fill of feeling joy? Can peace ever prove something pitiable? And if not, then why don’t we fight like it’s not worth missing?

Sadly we don’t fight much at all, other than with one another and that over matters so transient and trivial that it’s amazing we can even pretend we care at all. Maybe that’s the best way to sum this one up: Do we care at all? For if we did, if we truly cared as to the promise of that place He’s made in the palace of Heaven’s peace, well, we’d not stop fighting for it until we got there. Definitely wouldn’t have given up so much as we already have.

Just how much longer will we continue to refuse to try for what we know is the promise of everlasting life?

Friends, that promise deserves all we can give it, not just whatever happens to be left at the bottom of this bottle that we’ve all come to live our lives within. Yet that’s often all we seem inclined to offer unto He who offered Himself unto us. Even those who knew Him best couldn’t stay awake for an hour with Him before His death. What then makes us think we’re ready enough to face that coming day?

No, there is no such thing as ready enough. And that’s why He asks us to stay awake, to keep watch, to get ready for His return. Get ready, not be ready. Because, well, ready is something we cannot be but rather something we can always get more of. So yes, get more ready than however ready you may think you are already.

Because that day will prove that most are not ready enough. Let us not run the risk of being amongst those left to be sorted. No, let us instead leave no doubt as to who we are, where we’re going, and just how eager we are to get there.

And sleeping and resting, well, they just don’t help us much in that regard.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold