Day 3800 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Colossians 3:5 NIV

Every life’s debt

And yes, even owed by that which isn’t alive. For the truth is that anything to which we give our lives becomes itself alive in us via the time and intention we give to this attention as given unto whatever it is that we’ve at first considered and then determined to be worth such a loss as the time we can’t get back and the intention we can’t take back. No, for such things as time and intention are matters made monstrously important when seen in light of how few years we’ve left and how much wear we’ve already endured.

For even upon souls designed to last forever, still the burdens of a life borne inside such losses as delight and disbelief are bound to cause some strain.

Not that He intended us for such pain as all our past problems have made in the way of such things as either hindsight’s many horrors as held inside the sight of the things we wish we’d have seen in the moment in which we see now only another mistake being made or the worry now won within our wonder as to whether or not we can even get through a day without making yet another mistake. It’s all become quite cumbersome, but I suppose that doubt’s confusion was always going to.

Especially when we’ve lived this long giving life to the lifeless in the hope that the lifeless would bring the hope of life to us.

Never really worked out quite like that though. No, for the cold hard of it is that anything that asks us to agree to its importance or usefulness or necessity is the same as will always prove thus a lack of their own upon which we might lean when we run lean of the life we’ve lived giving away to what never had any life to give us in return. Been talking about this idea for days as considered in the light of the flame and He who is the Fire that bears still the Name which remains the only under Heaven given by which heathen must be saved.

And yes, we must be saved as we’ve gone and lost so much of ourselves and their souls that we’ve not even anything left to sell in order to pay the fare to get us there to where He’s gone. Not that we could, and even less that anyone would actually want to give us anything for any of whatever there may be left of us on this end of a long line of little losses always so discounted that we manage to deny the whole thanks to the petty parts of which it’s made.

But friends, there has never been anything pretty about all that’s petty and nor thus anything of any real worth as left within what’s been a life so petty that we pretty much live only ever worried about what we want as if wants can lead the way to our needs being met. Newsflash: THEY CAN’T! It’s just then that we too can’t apparently bring ourselves to see the sacrifices we’ve offered, and that of ourselves, unto all these things, thoughts, theories that have always asked us for their own life support.

And we just keep pulling up and plugging in, more than ready to do all over again the very same things that we’ve done all these years. All because this time seems different somehow. Not because it really is, we just still manage to always get distracted by the novelty of some novel tragedy as met within what every temptation has always been, still seems to be and will always remain. And that’s nothing but a blindness that becomes us until we’ve tracked down whatever it is that we want for us more than the life as given in the time and effort it takes to get it.

But what scares me anymore isn’t the sheer amount of me I’ve lost as is likely enough to encompass an entirely different way of life as could have been lived by a very different person that I perhaps should have been who didn’t make all the mistakes I know I’ve made because maybe He’d have had a little more room in my heart had I not filled it with every idol known to man that this man decided to agree was worth the loss as given in the time and torment that it took both to get it and then come up with all the excuses I’ve used to not feel stupid for eventually only wanting to get away from it.

Strange how that works.

For we go along for however many hours, weeks, years seeking intensely this thing, thought, theory that we’re just certain will pay in dividends worth such devotions (which could have always been given to all of anything else), only to eventually hunt them down, take our shot, hold them high, display them the same only to then one day at some point thereafter see this thing, thought, theory just hanging there collecting dust and taking the place of some newer idea or ideal, idol, that we’d now like instead.

And then we take down the old treasure, snap a few pictures, set up an eBay account and keep discounting the price until some lucky buyer manages to themselves have found their new treasure in what’s become to us old trash.

It’s a vicious cycle indeed! And yet one we know only to repeat.

And it’s one we’ve repeated so long that we have no idea who we are anymore as we’ve given so very much of ourselves to things we’ve only eventually decided to sell that we exist as but walking mausoleums of misplaced devotions as given to things now devoid of any welcome in our lives anymore. Or, and though that one’s quite impressively heartbreaking, we could also fall into this other category of the confused and confiscated and find ourselves instead never quite so willing to even admit we were wrong and simply allow the spoils of our pasts to sit and spoil around us rather than getting rid of them through either eBay or repentance.

Which, on that note, perhaps they’re a little more similar than they should be.

Anyway, the bottom line that I’m trying to drill down to is that we’ve given so much of ourselves to things we can sell, or set on, or drive in, or put a fence around or wear a suit to that we likely haven’t any real time to realize that we’re so empty inside that all we have, indeed all we are is but what we have, what we do, where we’ve been and where we go every day from 9-5.

We’ve become a people of lunch breaks and pawn shops, both filled with treasures and pleasures bought or brought by the express expectations lain upon us by a world around us seeking for our continuing to give ourselves to them in exchange for the most common idol there is or merely to find something we once idolized at a good enough price to take home and eventually find its way into someone else’s garage.

Again, a vicious cycle indeed, and well, one we’re here blatantly asked to just stop living to repeat.

Why?

Well you see, it’s because we've unwittingly become so affixed to our fortunes and figurines that we cannot anymore manage to see ourselves as separate from them. For again, all of these things ask of us our time and intention as given so that we can get them. And so they demand a part or portion, in whatever size for however long, in order for us to have them. And so they all add up then to what’s collectively become the vast majority of our journey thus far.

And granted, perhaps we only dabbled in lust for a few years in college, but friends, those four years when added to the three we gave to gluttony mixed with the twenty we’ve lived for greed all poured on top of the ten we lost to pleasing people as all placed on the platter of a life in which all that’s ever really mattered was some manifestation of mischief or malcontent, and well, what you’re left with is a sinful sundae that no number of church pew Sunday’s can ever really help with.

Because honestly, we even manage to get that whole experience wrong as it just doesn’t present itself in the same form or fashion as an idol, or at least it didn’t before the churches many flock to started offering concerts and coffee.

But sadly since some have we’ve started to expect even those things. Why? Because they bring us the life we want as opposed to leading us unto the life we need to start living instead. They keep us comfortable, and comfort allows us to remain complacent, and complacency keeps us complicit in the very confusions and consequences that the former can’t help us admit we’re literally choosing for ourselves!

We’re so lost inside this life spent serving ourselves that we can’t even feel the weight of the chains anymore!

Rather seems as if we’re not merely content with them staying in place but in fact continuing to define us without our ever really realizing just how much they do. I mean, what's the first thing someone asks you just beyond learning your name? What do you do for a living? And indeed, such things as our jobs or titles are what anymore all but define us. And that because of our devotion to them as a society that relies so heavily upon them to help us make the mammon that helps us afford the mansions we’ve made of every manmade expectation to fall in line and crave whatever everyone else is chasing.

And so we’ve added this addiction to our occupations to our many prized possessions as purchased by the profit we earn within these workplace monikers, and it all just collects into our entire existence being but a figment founded upon what we do and what we have and what more we hope to accomplish in order to achieve our having of the more we know we'll likely still come to want.

Which is also what we refuse to ever consider ever possibly becoming the same as everything we just might need to have one more yard sale to hopefully get a quarter for just before we simply throw it away so we don’t have to see it anymore.

And we've in fact wanted and won so many of such things along the way that we've again no way remaining in which to separate who we are from what we have or what we do. No, rather we are what we do as defined in value by what all what we do has helped us to have. And thus what we have is too who we are because we have spent so much of ourselves in order to have it.

Indeed, so much of us has gone in this lifelong giving away of whatever may have been asked in order for us to have such a getting of all we've wanted that we likely don't even know what to say in regard to who we are even if someone else were to ask for something else other than our title at work. Friends, are we really this okay with that being as common as it’s become? Are we good with things being allowed to define us like that? Are we good with what has defined us, what defines us still today? Do we ever even stop to think about such things?

He’s asking us to.

Why?

Because there’s a time coming in which we will give an answer as to whether or not we were ever truly content with the material content of our existence speaking for us and who we are/were and why we matter(ed)? For yes, are we okay with what this world says matters most continuing to define for us what matters to us? Are we okay with letting a clearly crumbling society still be allowed to lead us into what may perhaps come to define us still? Are we comfortable allowing delights to describe what we’re living for? Are we at peace knowing our only treasure may be in this place, and thus ours but for only however long we’re to be in this place?

Sadly it’s evident that many are, maybe most in fact. For in fact all of us have been. But that’s the question then: Do we stay okay with it? Do we continue going along with it? Shall we give one more day, one more breath of however few we may have left unto the seeking for something that will please or impress such a fallen and failing society? Will our own flesh be still allowed to define for us what’s best for us having already failed to find it for all the years we’ve tried so hard to do just that?

Or will we ever come to understand the debt owed by every life, and yes, even that owed by the things we’ve given room in our lives and thus our lives to?

For that’s the supreme beauty of Christ’s brand of freedom. It’s found in that while we have done things a certain way for basically all our lives, He’s for some reason still willing to forgive us for His having never been the reason for anything we’ve done. And it’s within His freeing kind of forgiveness that we can finally find that way of life in which we just don’t care anymore as to the social commonalities of a world so cancerous and collapsing. It’s there that we can begin to unlearn all we’ve come to love and learn in its place to live for more than we ever have before.

Even more of life!

And indeed, such is His promise as given unto those who, as James puts it, persevere through the coming apart from the world as won within trial and trouble of suffering through our share of His kind of surrender unto the gaining of the crown of life given only unto the same as they who so surrender their share of the common delinquencies for a share in rather He who came to sacrifice the same as done in a life lain down upon a cross taken up.

Which is in fact exactly what this very verse is aiming us at for such is now the call given unto us all.

It’s one testified as to its importance by His literally saying that if we’ll not do what He did then we’re not worthy of Him. But friends, if we’re not worthy of Him, well then, nor are we worthy of what He achieved. Which is victory over death. Which is what defines that crown as being the continuation of life even after we die. For, as His Word reads, they will live even though they die, those who believe in Him.

But friends, how can we claim we believe in Him if we’ll not do what He did? Which, granted, is nothing short of agreeing to the suffering of a life given away in sacrifice. Which seems to include a whole lot of loss, a whole life of it in fact!

And yet maybe that’s what we’re all getting wrong. For what if what we’re asked to sacrifice isn’t life but rather just the many lifeless idols we’ve lived it for?

Such as jobs or the apparently still socially impressive titles they tout? Or the trophies we won in the trials we entered? Or the money we have from the contests we won within either athletic competition or the vastly more common cultural complacency of those 9-5’s we hate more than life itself? Or the lust we look to in order to feel that rush of delight again after another day given unto that dead end job we despise? Or the gluttony that fills our stomachs easier and quicker than our souls seem able to heal from the regret we’ve met in those filthy websites we visit late at night before the morning brings us back to rush hour traffic and eight more lost to the emptiness of the cycle we’ve accepted?

Yes, what if all He’s asking us to sacrifice is all that’s kept us from living that free indeed kind of life? And sure, I can understand why it seems still such the heavy request as all of us have in fact a great many such idols in our lives. I mean, from houses to cars all the way to all you can eat food buffets and corner bars, we’ve all collected so many worldly priorities that we likely cannot imagine our lives without them.

But friends, pretty sure that’s what defines the problem!

Because one day we will know a life without them!

Question that will be answered then is whether that life we find will be one we spent this one looking for and thus forward to or rather the one we find only begrudgingly because we haven’t there any treasure stored as it instead sits in corner offices and storage units?

Friends, God never asked us to live for such things, let alone so very much that we’re anymore all but defined by such things. Rather He always asked us to revere Him as Lord, to love Him and others, and to have no other priorities or profits for which we seek as they instead only steal what should have been always offered to only He who is the only One who’s ever done what all of us need.

And that’s give a life to bring us a life.

Everything here only asks that we be the ones who do that.

But how much longer will we give our lives to things, thoughts or theories that cannot bring us life? And I’m not saying that nothing in this world matters at all. I’m just trying to help us start finding some way to ask ourselves just how much everything in this world has been allowed to matter, and if maybe some of it is being given a little more of us than we’re giving to He who came to save us from doing exactly that.

In the end, the fact remains that every life owes a death. We can either hope to bargain with all we’ve bought or believed to be worth something within this world and hope that God will agree it was worth our entering eternal life. Or we can share in Christ’s kind of death to the sin we’ve all lived in and, in putting to death all that we’ve given our lives to, perhaps find a little life left that we can give to Him to gave us everything He had in order to be seen as everything we need.

We just can’t do both. It’s either God or this world. And sure, this world’s got a lot of really cool stuff to offer us.

But friends, what’s worth more: A world filled with cool stuff or the hope of that place where we don’t need cool stuff to bring joy to us anymore?

For in Heaven joy is simply the way of life. And well, that sure sounds better than this life in this world in which we’re all still looking for something to do something better than only make us feel good for a moment.

Indeed, maybe if we stop living for moments we can live forever.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold