Day 3808 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Isaiah 29:13 NIV

The more we never really do.

It’s the very same as what’s caused this distance now found between us and both who we were created to be, the better we were meant to remain, and He who created us in the image of the better we’ve both never been but also somehow manage to still believe is out there waiting somewhere for us to track down what’s then always impossible to find by feet that don’t move and souls that gave up believing they should. Indeed, we’ve all become but frozen in this place of a faith that allows for us to go on as unchanged as we delight to be.

Each of us so retired from trying to improve our own lives that all we do anymore is seek to inspire those around us to give up working on or in theirs as well.

And why? Because we've each now long been disciples of dishonesty, learning only the burning of one another to the ground via the flame of our making a name that's all our own, and yet this always done by just us living alone only a life all but owned by the very teaching that's taught us to lie so much as we have. And we have each told so many lies seeking always to hide both ourselves from the better we can’t admit we still are not and too the same from all those who we seek now only to help to lose their own measure of a life bettered that we basically know of nothing else to do with all this time we believe we have.

And it’s this long line of a life of lies that left us standing here in the cold of a million souls sold in search of something warm to warm our hands just enough to reach always for something else that itself can only ever steal the heat from our feet as we walk only just far enough to have what we want and never quite far enough to realize we’ve only had to leave behind all we really needed to get it.

In fact, I don’t think most of us have any idea as to that difference between want and need as the two have become so blurred down here that it’s as if we exist in what feels a daily fog of friendship and folly, both spinning wildly around us and welling up within us while we somehow still manage to just stand so still that it’s quite reasonable, if not in fact entirely loving, to ask if we’re even still living.

Indeed, when’s the last time you checked on your loved ones to see if they’re alive?

And I’m talking about a sign of life far deeper than merely breathing mere human teaching.

For indeed, we’ve anymore so much time on our hands, thanks to our hands doing all but absolutely nothing as far as the betterment of ourselves or anyone else around us, that we’re rather even sat unto the teaching of one another better ways to breathe! And I’m not joking! I must confess that I remember a time in which I found myself watching youtube videos about how to breathe better while running.

And I don’t run.

In fact, if you ever see me running, you should probably start running too because there’s something big going down that’s caused me to start!

But the point is that we’re so engrossed and engorged and engrained with this life so empty and plain that we spend our days learning of ways to do things we have no intention of ever needing to do. I’m not training for some marathon, and yet at the same time I’ve never really seemed to live life like life is one. All because, again, that line between want and need is the one that we’ve been taught, implored, begged and expected to blur so badly that we’ve all just kind of given up on trying and determined to exist for mere human delight instead.

Yes, we anymore seem to care so little about even our own personal growth, as is always, if not only, done best both away from whatever worthless want we want to win and toward the gratitude for the provision God’s given that we take only such for granted whilst simultaneously granting those around us access to every reason and/or excuse we ourselves have thought of to make such make sense.

But friends, there is no sense in continuing to live a life with senses singed.

For what can we stand to win when we won’t stand at all?

And, okay, that may seem quite the pointed point to make, but again, ask yourself what it is that you stand for. What do you talk about when someone accidently lets a moment empty of their not having something to say about how great their life is? What do we find ourselves unable to keep inside? What do we even have inside that we’ve never given much thought about? What thoughts don’t we think? And what could those thoughts perhaps give us to say when found in the presence of someone who needs the same help that those thoughts might even offer us?

Or do we even realize how much help we all need?

Well, sadly odds are that we don’t. And why? Because, again, we know mostly only to lie. We lie to ourselves. We lie to our friends. We lie to our families. We lie to our bosses. We lie to our pastors. We lie to our Savior. We lie to the Spirit. We lie to God. And we’ve done all of this so very long that it’s basically become all that we can teach one another. For again, we can only share that with which the heart is full. And well, when we ourselves have bought so many of these lies we’ve been ourselves trying to sell, then all we really have to offer anyone are hearts that are a million miles from nowhere.

For that’s where we’ve chosen to live. It’s this life as settled upon a sitting always down for fear of the feelings and failings that we’ve both felt and found in a life lived upside down and thus just us waiting to die.

Yes, we even still exist amongst those who think the ultimate outcome of this life is a hole in the ground and our lifeless bodies thrown into it.

And, while that has some merit as that is basically the last thing that will happen to us here, faith tells us that such isn’t the last thing that will happen at all, but rather merely this sort of key that unlocks the gate of eternity.

Problem then becomes what it is that we’re living to find waiting on the other side, or if we even care to consider another side to this coin. Which, we probably don’t, or if we do then it’s only by some absolute miracle as, again, most folks live their lives down here as if life down here is the only life there is to live.

And if that isn’t heartbreaking enough to inspire in us something worth a little more than a little more dishonesty and deception, I don’t think anything will ever be. And that either to inspire us to seeking our own life bettered or, and thus obviously a symptom of the same, enough to encourage us to try and spend our waning days pulling our friends and families from the flames that are already wiping out large swaths of this sinking ship.

All because we’ve mostly only poison on our lips. And yet it tastes so sweet that we never seem willing, able to think that it might be too good to be true. Which seems a quite obvious fact about every lie and all deception, but, then again, as those who are at best still living amongst those so clearly going from bad to worse within their deceiving and being deceived, or we ourselves still living as one of those many going from bad to worse in terms of deceiving and being deceived, well, we likely can’t really tell the difference.

Which is a problem.

Because God can.

Which is the problem.

Because God came in Christ to help us see the difference as designed inside this distance as drawn between us by, not Him, but us alone. In fact, that He came speaking the truth and setting folks free from such captivities as blindness and disbelief, well, it’s pretty clear that He’s vastly more interested in closing the gap that we’ve created than holding said gap against us and basically just rubbing our noses in it.

Granted, there was, is and will be at least a bit of said rubbing as, well, it’s really just almost impossible for us to realize the many messes we’ve made, make and will make ahead without someone there to hold our hand and help us hold the truth that says we’re really good at only screwing everything up and falling short then of literally any semblance of the better that any of us might possibly have some excuse that we ourselves can try to use to make it seem still reasonable to never try for anything of any improvement in our lives or those of those around us.

Yes, we all just live to live and let live, letting one another die a slow, cold death as found in this furthering falling away from He who is the Life as lived within the Truth that came to us to make the way for us to come to Him.

And so, again, I don’t know what more He could’ve done, and nor then what more we’re still waiting for either Him or someone else to do.

I think it’s pretty much just on us at this point.

And again, that’s a really big problem!

Why?

Because still we lie! It’s all we know. We even read here that even our worship is nonsense!! Indeed, we’ve literally become a people who can’t even be honest when praising God! Even our prayers are loaded with lust and laziness, just us always asking Him for all that we want and to also help us avoid all that we don’t. And make no mistake, as much as there’s a massive list of things in this world for which we lust, the list of things that our laziness hopes to avoid is at least twice as long.

Why?

Because we’re all all but dead already thanks to the lifelessness that is found present in everything we say and the fact that all of what we do has nothing at all to do with whatever we’re talking about!

I mean, do we even know what we’re talking about? Do we have any idea as to what we’re doing? Or are we rather just here living a repeating of everything else that everyone else is saying and doing, a life given unto this search for a semblance of sincerity of heart as is taught to be achieved best by imitation? For that’s yet another of the countless things we’ve heard and been thus taught so much that we likely truly believe. That imitation is the sincerest form of flattery as it shows someone else that we like what they’re saying or doing so very much that we would like to exist, even if for a time, doing only the very same with and within our own lives.

And indeed, we’ve done this imitation thing for so long now that we’re all but endless reflections of a world inflecting this ideology of idiocy and idolatry upon the hearts and minds of those already empty lives lying beside us. And by lying beside us I mean both lying as in being dishonest but also as in dead. Because, again, that’s literally all that can come from all this dishonesty and deception.

We’re only killing one another with such kindness as this!

And yet that’s something we’re taught to do too!!

See my point yet?

It’s that everything we’ve come to do, as is the same as defines then everything we’ve come to be, it’s all nothing but the same as the world we’re in. For again, even our worship is based upon mere human rules and the expectations which guide them. Indeed, we even seem to have somehow come to believe that worship is all about musical instruments and lyrics that repeat 50 times in a 15 minute song sung by a singer with a microphone stood on a stage surrounded by about 8-10 other band members facing a crowd that’s supposed to do something with their hands so as to show that they’re feeling the vibe.

And yet we think we’re alive?

Friends, worship is limited to musical talent as much as prayer should be about only what we want. Worship and prayer and faith and hope and growth and trust and eternity, they’re all endless and thus endlessly important. And yet we treat them all as if mere addendums to the life we’re already living. Why add in some worship, some hope, some growth when we can live for the endless opportunities we have to do or endure all the above?

Indeed, why do we seem to live as if such things as worship or a church sermon or even some secular version of growth as gained in someplace like a gym, why do we still manage to see them all as something we have to endure?

Shouldn’t we so elate at the opportunity to improve that we can’t wait for Him to help us see the countless other ways and places in which we can?

And yet we don’t. And why? Because again we’ve been sold this lie that says we don’t need to by a world that doesn’t want to. Yes, this world doesn’t want to grow, to change, to improve, to believe in anything other than whatever each person has already determined to be best for themselves. We live this life as if we alone can ever know what’s best for us. And yet we seek still to intervene into the lives of those around us so that we can help them become the better we want them to be.

Friends, this has nothing to do with what we want!

This is all God’s story, and until we live it then seeking for only His glory, well, it’s going to keep going badly.

Why?

Because His will, which is for the good of those who love Him, it’s impossible to find ourselves living within when we clearly love Him so very little that we refuse to do anything of everything He simply asked us to consider. Yes, taste and see that the Lord your God is good. Alas, we’re still very much those who are barely willing enough to put our hand into the bowl, only to there find no willingness remaining that could bring our hand back to our mouth.

And so we have these mouths that aren’t eating the life-giving Word of God and thus have entirely too much time on their lips which is then used to again just repeat the common phraseology and failures of a society so crumbled and crumbling that ain’t none of us should want anything to do with it other than trying to help salvage some from the wreckage.

But friends, how can we do that when we just don’t care?

And how can we say we do when we won’t even do what He who laid down His life for us to have the opportunity to do what He asks us to do?

Which is to speak the truth in love, but also to love in action and in truth?

See, again He made it all so amazingly simple!

Speak the truth. Love God. Put others above yourselves.

What are we still missing?

Or is it not that we’re what’s missing having gotten so lost ourselves within the ways of this world and what they want us to say, do, look like and care about?

Friends, this world’s been our god for long enough. And considering as how everyone who’s ever lived here has only managed to die here, I think it’s probably best that we stop looking for life within the demands and expectations of a dying world.

Rather I think it’s time to put our lives where our lips are and start living out what we say, or at least realizing that we’ve been doing just that and that’s perhaps then why life is still so often so miserable.

After all, how great can a life ever manage to become when we remain so spiritually and socially numb that we just keep lying to ourselves and those around us?

That may be what we’ve been taught to do, but friends, if those lessons of such expectations have only ever come from people who are themselves destined to die in this place, well then why give our lives away to sharing in their chosen demise?

Pretty sure He created us to do something more than that with our lives.

And today seems a really good day to start as, well, contrary to another common human teaching, we don’t have an endless number of them left to get started.

Might even have less than we imagine.

At least here.

As whoever we are wherever here is.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold