Day 3807 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Matthew 15:8 NIV

How far is far?

Well, what makes this hard is that the answer is different for everyone. And too that it’s found at different times thanks, at least in part, to our differing depths of denial as to the asking of the question as is posed upon this pride-shattering proposal which presents itself in such a way that points out quite clearly that we’re both the ones who’ve long lived choosing the ways in which we’d walk as chosen in response to where we thought they’d help us go, which probably still sounds nice and leaves us feeling all powerful and in control and stuff, but it also brings about the slow-burning realization that our having chosen the direction also leaves us having a hand in choosing the disaster.

Meaning then that our very own delights and our every decision to always chase after them is what’s designed our demise as set to the tune of a life of lies and so many eyes watching on in approval that we haven’t any willingness to entertain those which may see something different.

And thus far less likely to be entertaining or worthy of being approved.

And that simply because there are some, however few, who do live to do what the Bible asks us to.

Which is to not look upon anything God detests with approving eyes due to the warning against our being condemned based upon that which we approve.

And well, this is what’s left us all in quite the quandary as it were. For as it is, well, we’re both a million miles from who we should be, miles each paved by just as many memories of all the “good times” we’ve had along the way here, and sadly surrounded by at least a million others who themselves have messed up so very much whilst always looking for any logical way to excuse it that they too have come to live this life to all but forever lose it.

Which is honestly quite the reasonable outcome to be promised in light of how mindlessly simple God made all of this to get far more right than we ever have. I mean, He literally carved His requests in stone, went so far as to send His Son to physically show us how it’s done, and even gave His life in order to help us fully understand the price of our both choosing to get things wrong and the danger then of our continuing to so do.

Yeah, He made it as clear and concise and simple and straightforward as He could. Honestly, what more could He do to help get through these thickened minds that we’ve been living behind all this time?

Jesus died folks, what more is there?

No, the hard reality is that all that’s really left isn’t something He needs to do but rather just our coming around to that whether in regard to if ever we’ll measure this distance between us as defined by everything from doubt to denial with a billion delights in the middle. And indeed, this is something that we don’t really ever seem to see. Why? Because where does one even begin as to the measuring back to when they made a mistake that they’ve since lived only to never see as a mistake?

And how then do we do that a couple million times, you know, the same number as the mistakes we’ve made that all managed to combine so wonderfully into both this map to where we apparently always wanted to be and yet now just a map to nowhere and nothing we want to remain?

It’s that strange how delight and desire and dream manage to paint that scene? I mean, we go through life getting all these ideas in our heads and letting them fall into our hearts as these hearts fall in love with the idea of our having this new thing or experiencing this exciting opportunity or earning this impressive title or getting that promotion or finally becoming popular and in all the above finding the understanding of love that we’ve come to settle for.

And I say settle for because that’s exactly what we’ve done with basically everything in life. For there’s always something better, always something more, we just rather always seem to find ways to miss it, reasons to not want it, fear which keeps us only from fighting to find it.

Probably because we are honestly pretty okay with where and who we are today.

Not that we’d put it that way as we’ve still got all these plans and goals and stuff that we’re looking for, pushing toward, wanting more. But, in the event that we either never find them or feel them, we’re okay with the comforts we’ve found in a life all but drown on the excitement of our thinking about the better we know is out there, whilst always willing to concede to the good enough we’ve already found.

It just comes down to the amount of work we’re willing to put in.

And well, when it comes to figuring out both where we are, how we got here, who we are and how to make sense of it all, it’s a ton of work indeed!

Because again, we’ve gone through life getting all these ideas in our heads, which, once there, fell into our hearts as our hearts fell in love with the idea of our having that new thing that we may have found or experiencing the exciting opportunity that we did get to experience or earning that title that still manages to impress folks from time to time. Problem is that we’re the only ones impressed.

And yet we’re all depressed sometimes too.

Which again brings me back to the question we need to start considering:

How far is far?

Because the reality is that, again, it’s something that literally only we can know. Nobody else can know the extent as to which someone else has gone in search of either whatever they’ve managed to find or rather that for which they’re still looking. We can’t know the desires or deceptions that have combined to form the very foundation of someone’s existence. We don’t know all the thoughts they think, all the fears they have, all the plans they’ve made, all the love they’ve never felt.

We can talk about it. And make no mistake, we do that perfectly well! We all talk so much that it’s amazing how we never really manage to say anything. I think we just like to hear ourselves make the noise as it gives us something of an evidence toward which to point that lets everyone know that we’re still here. And if we were to ever to become willing to be honest, which we’re usually not interested in trying, we’d have to admit that we need that evidence more than anyone else ever could.

Why?

Because we don’t know where we are, and despite our perhaps having tried to make sense of our lives at times in the past, the truth that it’s all so convoluted and confusing that we haven’t even the whisper of an idea as to where to start looking for the better that we ironically know we’ve never been. And indeed, again it’s a really strange thing how we can all have this undeniable understanding that where we’re standing isn’t actually all that amazing but also no idea as to how to actually make things better.

Simply because deep down we know we’ll likely stay entirely too prone to choosing more of that chasing after all that got us where we are, only doing so because it looks different or feels a little more alive than the last death we chased only to find, you guessed it, death.

Yes, we know our penchant for pursuing emptiness. And yet we don’t even know why.

And friends, if we don’t even know why we do the things we do, well then how are we ever to retrace our steps back to where we first lost our mind?

The problem is that we can’t because the path we’ve taken has been one paved in lies. That’s something we’ve been talking about a lot of late, all this dishonesty and deception as designed inside of hearts and minds that beat and think that they know what they’re doing despite any real semblance of anything that could even be accidentally misconstrued as an understanding.

We know we don’t know what we’re doing. And yet we just keep lying to ourselves, and to everyone else for that matter as what is a clear result of our decision to deceive is bound to eventually spill out onto those around us as well. And indeed, we do this very thing every single day. We live behind lips that lie trying to hide the lives that we only wish we were truly living in light of just how much better they sound to those listening to the lies we tell them about the lives we’re not living.

It’s something of a self destructing. We do the things we don’t want to do but yet tell ourselves, and everyone else too, that we planned for this new problem we’ve found and know then how to find that work around that will leave us right back on that path that leads us to this life we’ve imagined being so very perfect that we neither have anything left to do, having done it all and found all all by ourselves, and thus have nobody else to thank or honor or even recognize for their help in our finding our lives.

Leaving God then always at some random distance He never desired as designed by our mind’s willingness to measure all the mansions we’ve desired in which to house all the dreams we’ve had for all the things we’ve wanted and probably want still. And that we still want things, still we have dreams, still imagine things going a certain way as met always alongside a checking off of every dream and desire we both have already and haven’t come to want quite yet, well it only shows that we’re still growing apart.

From God.

Because we’re both chasing after so many things that aren’t God and that don’t lead to God, but we’re also talking all this nonsense about how He’s the most important thing in our lives. I mean, just listen to people talk and try to hear what they’re literally saying. They refer to God all the time! Problem is that it’s all in vain! And you know perfectly well what I mean!

This world is consumed with using God as nothing but a word. It’s something done in such heartbreaking ways as the entirely too common OMG. And there are countless other ways that people throw around His Name. I can’t help but feel this almost palpable discomfort whenever I hear someone speak the Name that is above all others as if it’s nothing but a pair of words meant for and thus only best used for a little flair or to increase the feeling of whatever it is that they’re saying.

And that we can all say God or Jesus or Christ whilst doing so in the most distasteful, disgusting, depraved and disheartening way while also doing such despicable things, friends, it only proves the point this verse is trying to make!

Indeed, we’re walking amongst a daily proof of mouths that can form the words while the hearts residing in the very same body seem to quite clearly have no regard or understanding as to their meaning.

Yes, our lives have been long lived void of meaning.

And that simply because nothing can mean anything when we determine to take everything so lightly that we still let our lips do the talking.

And that’s the problem!

Because how can we ever remember every word we’ve spoken? How can we take back or ask forgiven of things we’ve said or done that we don’t remember? How can we claim that we know the difference now when we’ve nothing against which to measure whether a difference has been made against that which we can’t remember? How can He forgive what we’ve chosen to forget? How can we honor Him when He’s the One we’ve chosen to forget most often?

And how can we claim we haven’t when all we have to show for this life and how we’ve lived it is often at best a semblance of faith painted by words that have obviously no meaning as they match up to nothing we’re doing?

Don’t we get that yet?

It’s one of the very first lessons I remember learning along this daily journey spent writing these posts. It’s that our words are meaningless up to and until we undertake actions that prove we meant them. For the truth is that words are just air as breathed through a mouth that God made able to form air into sound as is done by the inflection of the tongue and the holding of the teeth. And yeah, we all know how to say all sorts of words, and even make them seem to mean plenty of different things.

But the question is whether or not we know how to put them into action.

Because in all honesty, words are easy. I mean, again, all it takes for us to say something is to expel a little bit of breath from our lungs that is then formed by the way we hold our mouths as said air escapes our lips. It’s an entirely simple process. Babies literally know how to use their mouths to make a sound. So it just seems that somewhere along the way to wherever it is that we are living as whoever it is that we’ve become we’ve become unable to understand how to take that ability and act it out.

For still our mouths can say all sorts of things regarding God and faith and Scripture and hope and healing and love and joy and meaning. We can all string together sonnets and stories of a million glories that man has gone in search to find. And we can regale the world with tales of all the times that we ourselves managed to find a bit of glory all of our own.

But friends, what does any of it mean if still we’re sat a million miles from He who gives everything its life and thus defines its meaning?

What does anything we say ever manage to prove if all we’re saying is something we want someone else to hear? Is God pleased by even our praise being prayed only to make Him aware of our presence? Or should not His presence be the very reason for our praise regardless of what we have to say or how well we have it rehearsed before using our mouths to say what He already knows?

I find myself thinking about that all the time as I always find that I take a minute or so before I start to pray to sort of collect my thoughts and plan a path forward that will sound okay and hopefully make some sense.

We really think that God needs our help making what we have on our hearts easy to see?

Friends, He sees everything, He knows everything, He understands everything.

And that’s the problem.

Because we do nothing, we change nothing, we know nothing, we understand nothing.

And we sit in place as if that’s all made okay by words that we speak endlessly trying to prove that we’re here doing something.

My friends, words are never going to be a replacement for action. They’re merely the smoke that tries in vain to hide the mirrors we’ve become of what are lives lived as but reflections of the world we’re in and how they tend to live their lives doing everything from vocally taking God’s Name in vain to doing all the same things that show Him what’s essentially a doubling down on the vanity problem.

Yes, we have a massive vanity problem as nearly everything we say and do is only said and done for mere appearances. But friends, that’s again exactly the problem. Because words are shapeless, they’re formless, they have no color, no mass, no meaning unless we put them into action. Words are just air, and well, we can’t see the air.

And so we need to start asking ourselves what He sees. What does God hear? What does God know of the difference, the distance between what we say and what we do? For again He knows everything. And thus He knows the difference between what we say to those we want to hear and what we do in the lives we live that we don’t want anybody to see.

And maybe there shouldn’t be such a drastic discrepancy!

Why? Because we’re all dying and we’ve not the foggiest idea as to when.

But again, He does. And yet that He knows when we’re done and yet has given us one more trip around the sun seems to say that there’s still a little bit of time left for us to try and find or force some way to make our mouths and our hearts finally meet up and match far better than our pasts prove they have. For let’s be honest, we’ve all got a million stories to tell, but friends, do we have a million improvements we’ve made? And if not, well then what’s the use in talking about it?

For if we’re not growing then we’re apparently not alive. Because life grows. Life gains. Life gives. Life lives! And if our lives are only filled with the air we’ve breathed, then our lives are nothing but air themselves.

And well, it just seems like He created us to be more than wind blown about by every wind of cunning and craftiness created by man so as to help man cover and conceal the very clear lack of any sign of life.

Let alone any semblance of faith therein.

No my friends, God deserves to see more than words spoken by lips that live as if they’re but strangers to the hearts hidden inside. And yet that’s quite ironic too when you think about it. For we’re told that the mouth speaks that with which the heart’s full.

And yet if all we ever seem to say then is something of a lie then it seems that our hearts are only full of deception. And yet if our hearts are full of deception then how they could be considered temples of the Holy Spirit seeing as how He who is the Spirit is the Truth?

And so it seems that while our lips can pretend to acknowledge God, such can so too be a lie should He be all but nonexistent inside.

And if He is still kept at a distance, well then it just doesn’t matter what we have to say.

Because He’s promised before to not hear those who think talking is a worthy replacement for honest reverence.

Yes, perhaps we should stop revering our words and instead come to fear He who both gives us the time and ability to say them, but also knows the distance between what all we say and what more we never really do.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold