Day 3772 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Revelation 16:15 NIV

An alleviation

The kind of which bears about an abbreviation as to the common consternation of the coming evacuation of every nation from what was never more than a simple vacation of vocation that should have never been met with such an objectification as such has been told plainly as the same will be those as He will find upon that day entirely objectionable themselves. A problem thus leaving us to be rejectionable due to our having treated this life as if life was not ever a gift but rather only a gain in which we were always then meant to get as opposed to give.

Indeed, that life is a gift is a fact itself a gift as is meant to inspire us unto regiving it in return unto the will of He who gave it to us as such is what fairness is as it's what gratitude does and thus would always delight to do.

But alas we've come to see that instead we have this life and thus seek within this life only to have of a life as lived unto what we’ll lose.

Simply because we seem to have missed the realization that none can steal what all we’ve freely given.

A fact to be met imminently now that He has alleviated the power of if.

Which is quite precisely the problem as presented within this present as is still poised upon what’s proven a pretty impressive string of truths as gleaned for our gain from the Word which is the Truth who is the Life as lived here only to die so as to show that we might both do the same unto an outcome then similar as such is what sharing in a path following does. It alleviates the necessity of our being the first to boldly go where none of us have ever wanted to be.

Which is dead as proven by a grave filled as was even that in which they laid He who is our lead as was taken from within the place we’re called to go if we’re to ever be found where He left to help us one day be. But again, instead of the outcome we see only the input as is defined as our being put in to the very ground that upon which we’ve come to believe life is meant to be lived. And this confusion, this consternation has befallen every man, every woman, every nation upon this earth.

For all of us have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God as is done always in what’s always been a choice unto a life spent living unto the pleasing of the flesh, that of those around us, but even that done unto this flesh that is our own. And as a people who’ve so vastly lived to clothe ourselves with everything this world has to give, everything from public praise to pride’s approval, we thus know now only that way of a life as lived within a world that is passing away.

Issue then becoming that we all still manage to live as if we’re somehow not bound to do the same. Rather we awake almost every day unto the treading of life as won within the wake of our every past mistake as was then made only to still now remain so unresolved due, at least in part, to our incredible resolve to deny that any mistakes were ever made at all. Simply because we don’t want to endure the guilt that we’ve gained of a life spent so out of frame that we’re instead filled with only death and blame.

Just can’t bring ourselves to see it that way. Which is why He plans on bringing us there.

One way or another.

And that one day or another. Which is the problem at hand for both today and literally every other of the however many we have left. It’s that worry as won within our not having the ability to know when the sun will set and the Son thus rise to do as is deserved by the way of life we’ve lived to abide behind. And make no mistake, we all do indeed seem quite content to hide behind the way of life we’ve come to live. For we either live to hide what we’ve done or we hide behind the lies that tell all who care to listen that we’ve not done anything worth hiding.

It’s something of a general distraction in all honesty. For we know the wounds are there, but rather than meeting the healing which would allow them to finally stop hurting and help us to thus stop hiding that we’ve lived in pain brought mostly only on ourselves, rather we just paint a smile on our face that tells the world everything’s okay and that there’s nothing to see here, nothing to worry about, that we’re not worried about whatever any may ever see.

Simply because we’ve gone all but completely crazy trying to find a way to feel okay about a life coming apart.

A fact that has in fact already found its start. Which proves an issue well worth our tissues as torn from both a box and the box from the betrayal that is the many lies that we’ve all lived behind that have even come to convince us that we’re not in as rough shape as we know deep we really are. No, as much as I may hate to have this to say, the fact is that there’s not much of any real depth left to our lives.

Guess that was just about bound to happen considering we’ve learned to live for only the surface.

Because again, that’s where we are. We’re walking on top of a world filled with all that glitters, and some of it even gold. And perhaps the worst thing to ever happen to us is that some of it we’ve been allowed to hold as it’s all now bought and sold, a reality in which everything has a price attached and thus too a worth that we needn’t worry nor weary ourselves trying to figure out. No, we don’t have to struggle to understand what matters as the world tells us plain every single day.

Indeed, from flashing lights to colorful flyers we get in the mail, we’re daily bombarded with things this world offers our lives to wear. And well, we’ve since bought so much of what this world believes to matter most that few if any of us know what matters at all anymore.

Rather we exist clothed in confusion and delusion as was designed for us by those who came for us wearing smiles and soothing our ears with talk so velvety that we should have known all along that something was fishy. Alas, knowing that we’d have to admit our part as played within all we’ve come to know, we now have agreed to never admit we know anything of everything we know may well prove a problem at some point.

Instead we just live in denial of basically everything.

So much so that denial is hanging now in our closet too. And indeed, it’s got friends! For we wear dishonesty as well. We wear greed. We put on pride some days. Others find us leaving the house wrapped in worry. Some days we feel like strutting around in our arrogance whereas others only draped in doubt. There are suits of sorrow and jackets of jealousy. We walk in shoes sewn in shame and yet at times throw on flip-flops finding faithfully the foolishness that keeps us buying more of these wears as worn within this world’s wardrobe.

Yes, we are nothing but actors changing costumes between sets in what seems a life in which we just read the lines and take the falls. And we’ve been playing all this pretend for so long now that we may not have any idea if anything’s even real anymore. For all we know to do is deny, debate, decry the design that is our life’s time simply because it’s both designed to run out and thus us then find out what we’ve done and whether or not any of it is or was fit to find us found not only by but only hopefully within the Son who came to win over our lives from the loss we’ve lived them for.

But that we’ve all been found by Him has sadly never clearly come to become a commonality unto the way of life as lived as if we’re to be found then in Him. For by is fine, but in just asks too much. In fact, for our to be found in the Son demands we share in thus all that the Son did and then chose to ask us to as well become. Which, as we mentioned yesterday, and many times before, is truly nothing but a fairness of sorts.

I mean, if we truly hope to share in His victory over the death of our sins well then so too must we share in the rest of Him. Meaning then our share within the tomb as was chosen as it’s a perfect place to bury the flesh.

Which is a problem.

Because we know what we have to lose. And our having to lose all we have to lose is something we widely consider best left for when it forced. But friends, since when has leaving any matter until the last minute ever proven to have met with the approval of whomever might be involved. Our bosses don’t like us showing up late. Our friends are smart enough to tell the difference between a birthday present bought last second and one that we actually gave some thought to getting for them. Our families have never appreciated our rush to do everything else first so that we can finally squeeze out a half hour for a rushed dinner.

No, that’s our problem. It’s that we live in a hurry to focus on what means nothing, but that having done so for so long as we have, well, we now have next to no ability to plan ahead accordingly.

Thus He comes as if a thief.

And thus, unto those who are to be surprised at that last moment of this life, they too shall be the same who know then hope as only something left behind. Because, again, hope simply does not come by surprise.

That’s been a thought in my mind for nearly a week now. It’s that proven in how all we hope for are thus things we spend time looking for, working for, yearning for in what is a desire so desperate that we deny any moment its asking that we worry about something else for a second. No, anything which brings us hope should always come first as hope brings life. And we know this why? Because Christ is truly the only hope we have, and He’s the One that brought us the hope of eternal life as bought by His laying down His own so that we might do the same.

For such is the if what was alleviated on the cross. No, all of us will lay down our lives. All because of all we’ve done with our lives is to live them as if they were truly always only our own.

But friends, life cannot be owned. Rather life is always only owed.

And make no mistake, that little ‘n’ that’s taken away to make the change, well, it will prove an even bigger change in the end.

Why? Because again this life is something meant to give as it was never ours to begin with. It was given to us from our Father, and thus it’s for our Father that we should have lived it. Why? Because He designed it and thus retains literally the only set of plans as to how it’s truly supposed to function. For they which design something thus are the ones who know best the purpose for which it was designed. And since He’s given us our time, He too then knows when it will run out.

We don’t. And yet rather than admitting that, accepting that, instead we’ve lived only denying that.

Not that we don’t, no, just that it won’t because we don’t like the idea of it very much.

Because again, we’ve just got too much to lose. We truly wouldn’t know what to do without all these clothes we wear. I mean, how could we function without such things as deception or desire? What would we do with all our free time if we weren’t living in doubt or denial? What would we do if we didn’t spend so much time dreading death? Yes, what if we emptied out our closets, saving only the full armor of God and wearing it repeatedly?

Oh, the humanity!

Yes, we hate the idea of repeating an outfit. Which alone proves just how diluted we’ve become to have such the ability to worry ourselves over matters so petty as clothing and how we look whilst wearing it, and what others might think should they happen to catch us wearing the same ensemble as any day prior.

Friends, what does any of it matter? The clothes we wear, the things we fear, the people we seek so often to please? What does it matter? Can any of it help us? Does any of it offer unto us a hope that will not prove hollow or helpless? Has any of it helped us thus far? Or has not our helping ourselves to continuing to worry ourselves about all this worldly nonsense only kept us so very distracted that we’re in fact all but divided from Christ and thus living without perhaps any care toward the fact that we don’t know when He’s coming back?

Why do we not care?

Sure, I understand that we don’t enjoy considering those things that we know we cannot ever know. We want those finish lines in life. We want the completion of projects and the judging of our efforts as if always given unto what seems always a competition for worldly approval and public praise. Yes, we want to see, as quickly as possible, the worth of our work. But we do it seeking trophies that fade in a world that’s doing the same.

It’s just that we’re all so faded in terms of being faithful that we’re forcing Jesus to come by surprise due to the way we live our lives always unready.

Leaving us, if left like this, to be found that day only naked and ashamed as all the world is stripped away and thus too our lives if all we ever lived them for was the world that’s then gone.

Yes, what are we clothing our lives with, and will it still be there when everything that’s here isn’t?

Friends, I know the difficulty in letting go what we’ve learned to love. I know the feeling of loss as found within misplacing something we enjoyed having around. I know the loss we feel in having lost people that we weren’t ready to go. But such is life. It came and it goes. We have it now, but one day what we have now we won’t anymore. And so my worry has become that as measured in just how tightly I allow myself to hold onto anything in and/or of this world.

Because I know well my tendency to hold so tightly everything that I’ve come to want, refusing to let it go or have that risk of it being taken away. And yet, so much of what I’ve had and held has been lost. It has been taken, stolen, broken, sold on eBay. And as I sit here I find this awe and wonder in that reality for once. For what can anything matter if it can find any of those ends?

And what then will it matter when I meet mine?

For all of us will have one, for all flesh passes away. Maybe it’s time then to start worrying a bit more about the soul. What is the soul clothed with? What is our hope wearing? What outfit does our heart enjoy putting on? What all do we hate having to wear? And why not then strive to lose what doesn’t bring life so that we can wear better and more often that which does?

Like Jesus?

Indeed, His Word instructs us to be clothed with Christ and, in doing so, finally find how to stop living to satisfy the desires of the flesh and its fall. Because, again, that’s what Jesus did. He denied the flesh’s desire to be pleased and instead forced the flesh to succumb to His will as was won upon that cross. Yes, His desire was to die to what brings death so that life could be brought to what was once dead.

Which is each of us.

For yes, we were once dead in the darkness of sin living a way of life that had us hiding within every form or facet of every foolishness and failure to fight for more. And yet now we have the promise that those who believe in Him will live even though they die.

Thus again alleviating an if. Because there is no if in regard to our losing this life. It will happen. And that we don’t know when should be enough to inspire us to live as if it could be any moment.

And so, just how ready are we? Ready enough to show Him that He couldn’t take us by surprise?

Or rather simply so unready that He will come like a thief?

Friends, while we all have, let us no longer live to make Jesus a thief. For that is not what He desires to be as thieves only take.

And that cross contends He only came to give.

So give Him what all you can knowing that none then can steal any of it. For nothing can be taken of whatever is freely given.

For either way, everything here will either be given or taken away. And that’s not a matter of if. No, that promise has only now a wonder as to when.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold