Day 3810 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Colossians 4:6 NIV

Unasked questions

Such are what we’re answering every single time we happen to find that we’re again found around anyone at all within this world with both so many walls being built and yet still the call to treat them all as if our own march about Jericho. Yes, we’re here to “demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God,” and to “take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.” And we fight this fight that is this life with what “are not the weapons of the world” which are words spoken without meaning.

Rather we have instead been asked into a faith granted to, grafted in to the wielding of weapons that have this “divine power to demolish strongholds.”

And these weapons, or at least some of them, are the words with which we engage and interact and converse and yes, even contend with what is a further falling man. For that is the background of this battlefield. It’s set in the scene of a society that’s lost its sense of both time and reason, always finding only reason to imagine they’ve all the time in the world, and never then seeming to see that they’re actually right for once!

For yes, right now all of us have all the time in the world to do whatever needs to be done, say whatever needs to be said, change whatever needs some change, and apparently then too to put off until tomorrow all of whatever we’re not quite ready, willing, able to do, say, change.

Which is what’s found us so firmly affixed inside this fight that is this life that is lived by sight, at least still by most. And yet what makes that hard, so hard that most think it easy, is the fog through which we’re wading, this life in which we’re wasting so many chances to say something worth hearing. It’s in fact a folly so thick that we cannot even manage to see our hands held before our face as we look always to the excuses we’ll use to excuse what we’ll do inside of what is now another today that we’ve already planned to live like yesterday.

A day when all we had to say was only whatever the world around us wanted to hear.

The danger of itching ears!

It’s a tragedy that finds us so faithfully failed with this heart that’s filled with what is a fear we should have, alas almost exclusively a fear of man which we shouldn’t know anymore. But yet having each known that worry as won within what the world wants, expects, prefers, so too have we become all but built inside the very walls that we’re here to tear apart. And thus this call unto conversations seasoned with salt has left us vastly lost as to the way we’re supposed to afford the cost of what is a fight we can only see ourselves struggling to win.

And that becomes it too comes at the expense of our life.

Indeed, how are we to wage this war when it’s fought in both the words we know how to say but yet them always somehow now arranged in what are novel ways so very strange that we often times cannot even comprehend what we find ourselves saying? I experience this confusion almost every single day as I sit to write these offers the same. Doing this every day has so many times found me with something to say that I’d have never in a million years imagined myself saying.

Even writing this much is something I never intended upon doing!

I mean, we all hated book reports in school because of the sheer time they took to write.

Who would do that every day for what’s now more than a decade of their life?

It’s preposterous to imagine that something like this could be fathomed by the same mind that once thought it alright to never really say anything other than whatever others wanted to hear. In fact, and beyond that, should there ever be a contest for such a role, I would have to nominate myself as the posterchild for introversion, a person always so quiet that many have still no idea I’m here at all.

For I, despite my past lived saying so much that so many wanted to hear, I now don’t find that there’s as much worth saying as so many others seem to believe. I rather spend so many of my life’s minutes wrapped in silence just listening, just watching, just reading and realizing the many ways in which my path’s diverged from that being well trod all around. Yes, this life often feels as if it’s spinning violently out of control around me.

And here I sit even once again still upon a bedroom floor with a laptop on a shoebox seeking for something to say that I hope, that I pray is worth being heard.

Or read.

You get my point.

And for today my point is that it’s not how much we say that means the most but rather that what we say actually means something. Sadly we seem to collectively gotten lost inside this fog of figuring that the more we say the more will be heard. It’s something of this endless numbers game that society is playing. We have all come upon this contemplation that considers more to be more, and thus less to mean less. We do this, believe this in everything, about everything from food to friendship.

The more we have the better it is.

Such as with prayer as spoken in Matthew 6:7 where we’re expressly warned to “not keep on babbling like pagans,” who “think they will be heard because of their many words.” Or as in Proverbs 10:19 which helps us to sort of unravel why. And that’s because “sin is not ended by multiplying words,” which is why it’s said that “the prudent hold their tongues.” Something that is itself further considered in, say, Proverbs 15:28. “The heart of the righteous weighs its answers, but the mouth of the wicked gushes evil.” And again In 1 Peter 3:10 which reads that “whoever would love life and see good days must keep their tongue from evil and their lips from deceitful speech.”

All of these wordings and warnings as aimed at our understanding the gravity of our own words as won within what’s written in Matthew 12:37 in regard to the coming Day of Judgement in which we’re told that “by your words you will be acquitted, and by your words you will be condemned.”

And that simply in fulfillment of what’s warned against in regard to a properly placed reverence as evidenced in Ecclesiastes 5:2.

“Do not be quick with your mouth, do not be hasty in your heart to utter anything before God. God is in heaven and you are on earth, so let your words be few.”

Indeed, “let your words be few” and they always “seasoned with salt” so that we will “know how to answer everyone.” But yet the problem which society has caused, created, constructed, considered is that built of such realizations as that fact which says that nobody really asks us any questions. I mean, aside from the random “how are you doing” or “what do you do for a living”, no, we don’t really ask anyone all that much.

Verbally.

Which, ironically, seems to be one of the very few ways in which we’re all kind of walking in step with Scripture’s aiming in that we’re often not really saying much of anything. Alas, in this case, it’s our not saying anything in regard to even the slightest semblance of a caring as to the lives, hearts, minds, hopes of those with whom we’re walking. Rather we all just sort of walk beside those around us in what feels often this fog of chaotic dissidence.

Yes, all of this constant disagreement and argument has mostly left us each squared off into these corners in which we live our lives and let others live their own with as little overlap as possible. Leaving us all to this asking of so few questions as to the hopes and prayers of those around us and their destinations. Indeed, we all live and breathe as if we barely care that others are just here doing only the same. All just living and breathing this life spent believing in something, but apparently something so meaningless and miniscule that we don’t have much to ever really say about it.

Rather we just stick to asking one another about the weather and the plans we have for the weekend.

Is that really what matters most? Are those really the questions we’re worried about asking? Do we truly still believe that those are literally the only questions people are asking whenever they finally crawl out of their own little lives and dare enter that of another seeking for some sense of community or continuity? We really think that those scant few people who do talk to us are truly only worried about what we make of the day’s weather?

No, such are just the opening gambits of a life desperate for some sort of human interaction at what is always this collective end of our rope in a life spent mostly always alone and there left to always alone carry all the weights and worries we’re winning within a world in which we, and everyone else, just keep on sinning and losing then the sleep that evades at the end of those days that never seem to end thanks to night only there again to keep us awake as we retrace every wrong turn we’ve made and the many mistakes we found along the way.

But sure, let’s stick to the weather and weekend.

For that seems to definitely be what the Bible meant when here asking us to ensure our conversations are always seasoned with salt so as to make whatever it is that we say both worth being heard and yet even leaving someone interested in listening.

Which is itself one more opportunity that’s sadly been only mostly left lost between the cracks of a life lived but at best in half. And we do live at best in half because we’re missing so many opportunities to fill one another up with encouragement and inspiration and correction and grace as given in the giving of everyone around us a taste of the life we’ve found in this faithfulness that we ourselves are so often only failing to figure out.

What if we helped one another along this Way? What if we talked with each other more about this Way we’re hopefully all on? What if we cared enough about our brother, our sister, our mother, our dad, our neighbor to ask them where they’re headed, and for once refused to accept their rehearsed answer of “to the store” or “to the bank” or “headed to the lake this weekend as the weather looks like it’ll finally be nice”? Yes, what if we didn’t begin and end at errands and dinner plans?

What if we instead asked one another where the other was headed in regard to Heaven or hell?

And yeah, that may come off as what the kids call “salty”.

But friends, isn’t that the point?

Not to be blatantly rude or so overly religious that it turns someone’s attention and interest off in an instant. No, but rather to have something to say, a question to ask, an answer to give that is something novel, something new, something that means something for once? And sure, we may not be asked all that many questions, a fact leaving us confused as to how we’re supposed to answer these questions unasked.

But friends, the fact is that people are asking us questions all the time! They’re asking us who we are, what we believe, what means the most to us, what life’s all about from our point of view. And this they do every single time they spend their time looking at or listening to our lives. And make no mistake, here in what’s become a world so vastly interconnected thanks to instabooks and facetweets, it’s left us an opportunity to share more than ever before who we are, what we believe, where we’re headed and why we’re desperate for others to come along with us.

And yet we even seem resolved to share only pictures of what we had for dinner and a few shots from our weekend at the dock.

Do we not realize the endless chances we’re missing for mutual advancement into the path of Jesus? Don’t we understand that everything we say, sure, but even more so all that we do is sending a message through to those who are looking, listening, hoping, praying, begging, barely breathing or believing that there’s anyone left who cares that they’re here?

We’re all just forfeiting life and faith and the longstanding intention for the two to be lived as if the same.

For what is life without faith, and what can faith mean if we’ll not give it our lives?

Friends, the point is that we’re all here so surrounded by so many others for a reason. And sure, that reason may be to stay locked inside this endless competition being waged to see who wins the most or lives the best or leaves here last, and yet still then leaves everything that seems to matter most to everyone else. What matters to us? What are we living to leave behind? What mark are we making? What words are we saying?

Are the words we’re saying worth another’s listening?

Or are we, like many, only doing a whole lot of talking without much being said at all?

You see, I fear we’ve lost our salt. I fear we’ve misplaced our meaning. I worry that we, like so many who’ve lost this fight before us, that we too have become worth only to be thrown out and trampled underfoot where we can at least give those walking all over us a bit of traction as they continue on their platform of plans and personal pride.

Aren’t we tired of being told what matters? Aren’t we tired of being told then what we’re allowed to talk about in light of what this world thinks to matter? Aren’t we tired of having nothing to say, no answer to give for this faith we claim we have?

Or do we even have any faith at all in anything other than just getting out of this life as unscathed and unscarred as possible?

Friends, this life is a battle and it’s one fought inside every word we say and lost inside everything we never really find the courage to talk about. So what are you talking about? What do you have to say? What would your answer be if someone did actually ask you for the reason you believe what you claim you believe? When will we realize that everything we do is saying more than our words ever could?

Our life is a sermon and it’s therefore saying something to someone that is an answer to some question they have. And we know this is fact because, let’s face it, all of us have questions about life, about love, about faith, about forever. We all want to know more so that we’re not left unready and ill-prepared for what may be coming.

Question remains though:

Where are we going? And does this hope-filled destination have unto us just enough meaning to say something about it? Do we care enough about where we’re headed that we ache to ask others if they’re headed there too? Do we even care about anyone else enough to ask them such a tough question? Why is asking someone about their plans for forever considered so much harder than asking them their plans for dinner?

Guess it might just come down to what we’re eating and just how good it tastes.

And yet, as those who’ve apparently tasted and seen that God is good and Christ is love, shouldn’t we want others to know what we know?

Make no mistake, those around us who are still starving and thirsty would love to know more about the Bread of Life and He who is the Living Water. Maybe we’re just so scared thinking we might lose what we think we found that we’re afraid to tell anyone else as they might cause our hope to run out should we ever dare begin to share.

But friends, if our faith is in a Father that can end or a Savior that might run dry, then yeah, we should probably keep that faith inside and not ever let it out.

But if we believe in a Father that daily fills our cups and a King who overcame the grave, then yeah, we should probably have something more to say whenever asked for the reason for this hope we claim we’ve found.

And that answer is that Hope found us, and that He’s been looking for them to start looking for Him too.

Let’s stop waiting for the world to ask for help and start walking within the understanding that most folks have been begging so long that they’ve simply run out of ways to ask for what they’re desperate to hear.

For that’s why we’re here. Not to offer up some well-rehearsed nothingness but rather to tell others where our faith is and why we contend that losing this life is gain in the end.

That’s something that everyone needs to hear.

Please don’t live to leave their unasked questions unanswered.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold