Day 3826 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Jeremiah 6:16 NIV

The refusal

It’s clearly one we’ve all thought would work. One that we’ve all thought would help. One that most of us still seem to think will still do hopefully both if not at least one or the other. For the truth is that, perhaps only way deep down, we really do all know that we really need both hope and help, but yet are still apparently so afraid of the work and wait that such can take. Which is why we all think this thought that’s thought by all who think their ability to think thoughts is some sort of gift they gave themselves that gives themselves the right to refuse the very help and hope we all know we need and even sometimes think we want.

Meaning then that perhaps we have become the ones who’ve indeed made ourselves within this ability to understand understanding.

Just then that the understanding that we seem to understand is but that of our standing still both still and alone here in what is both a million miles and a billions mistakes from that place we could all so easily call home.

A hope refused simply because of the little He asks we lose in the looking toward the immeasurable more that He died to show He’s still in store.

Only for those who choose to refuse the refusal that they’ve always known inside a world that only knows to still refuse to lose what none can keep in exchange for the finding in ease the gift of an eternity in which, with treasures stored, will prove such a worth that all that was or is or even could still be within this world for you and me will be by then but a fading memory. For when those gates open I don’t think we’ll really care what all of what was once gets to come with us.

Which seems kind of the point of that whole needle thing.

And indeed, it is quite clearly the asking of quite definitely a narrowing in that for us to do what’s here called old, ancient in fact, it’s a cost that clearly equates to an exchange of our race for the mundanity of modernity as chased by all for what’s instead a path so old, ancient in fact, that it actually manages to actually find something, do something, lead somewhere, help somehow.

How?

Well, that’s the issue isn’t it? It’s that we literally cannot know unless and until we stop saying no and rather yes to that next step as is to be taken in a measure of faith or trust no matter what. It’s just then a matter of what or whom has our trust, our faith, the hope which upholds the both. For indeed, be it faith or trust or truth or trial, there’s just no denial that all the above have something that they seem to know of hope. And sure, it might well be a lack thereof as often felt in those moments of trial and torment.

But doesn’t the lack of something usually only inspire us to find a way to lose the lack?

And indeed, I think that’s His point in this path of the past. It’s to do something so old that it’s so new that it, even having been, can now become what will be for you and me who’ve only known what always is as what has to always be what’s always seen as being best. And this is because we’re a people of the present, a mankind making ourselves always mad in the moment, and that either over our love for something or rather in our hate for everything else.

Yes, we are a people of what are two baser emotions: Love and loathing. And the stark contrast has left us always having to consider only that everything has to be met with one or the other as there is no middle in our minds for things that ask of us our times, our efforts, our attentions, intentions, inventions and conventions as given unto the sharing of our interests with only those of a similar intrigue.

A grand grouping of those going both under and for some reason nowhere.

Which seems weird.

I mean, normally when a ship is sinking the people on board start moving. They grab whatever they can and head to the deck so as to jump off this impending wreck that’s headed for a rock bottom upon which we weren’t made to survive. Because, well, that’s usually the human tendency as acted upon in a common sensibility that seeks always the safety of a self’s security, and even perhaps, depending upon the presence of humility present amongst their hopefully present humanity, may even dare to try and help save some others in the process of trying to salvage themselves from the coming calamity.

And yet we don’t.

Or at least we aren’t. Or at least aren’t apparently all that interested presently in perhaps even pondering the potential that we might be on a ship at sea that isn’t floating very well and thus leaving us in need of heading to the surface to at least see what’s going on and whether or not we should be worried. And that even for ourselves.

Which is again just weird.

Because honesty says that we’re quite clearly a people quite selfish. And again, some of it makes sense as in the case of that sinking ship. It makes sense to try and save yourself, as best you can, when presented within a process or predicament that simply all but demands it. For after all, it’s no crime to appreciate being alive and wanting to stay that way, to keep at it as they say.

Making you wonder why we’re all standing so still still in that place in which we apparently think that we need to ponder what’s been so perfectly proven that even our entire understanding of something so obviously detrimental to life itself and thus our living thereof as death’s always been so easily understood to be. As if there’s some hidden message or meaning to be met and made between the lines on the page and the path He paved to walk them out.

Literally of this world.

Which could be the part that folks struggle with I suppose. Because well, yeah, it’s weird. It’s a pretty strange thing to think about. It’s something that asks us to come unto it without all our understanding, all the thoughts we’ve thought and the ways they’ve taught us to think about pretty much everything. And sure, that’s hard as it finds us without anything we’ve ever known. Which is basically then a stripping away of all we’ve become.

Simply because we’ve become a people who seem to know both the natural instinct to seek the preservation of life but also all these curious reasons why we just don’t want to try when it comes to faith.

Perhaps because even His path, this ancient one, well even it asks that we die.

But friends, is dying to a wounded life, a wasted life, a life lived and lost to lust and dust, is that truly a loss we can’t imagine? Is it really something that hard for us to fathom? Can we honestly not see inside this surrender the potential for our finding something different? Do we really not think that we need something different? Do we not want different than what we’ve found, felt, seen, been, become?

We should because, well, what we’ve found and felt and seen has caused us to be what we’ve become which has mostly only been but a people caught in the middle of where we are so lost and looking for something to help but also managing to only find reasons or excuses to refuse it.

Help.

And indeed, as we discussed a bit yesterday, the irony of human pride is that it always seeks to portray itself as being amazing at everything and thus obviously never needing any help. It’s what the world teaches us, convinces us to be the very epitome of human liberty. It’s to be so self-reliant that we can literally laugh in the face of anyone who either needs help or offers it to us. And yes, we’ve done just this in that act undertaken by those who did to Him what they’ve taught to us.

Which is denial as demanded for our to actually believe that we’re good enough, smart enough, strong enough to measure up to whatever this life may ask of us. And this denial is demanded as we’ve to be simply so utterly debased that we’ve no basement deep enough to measure our defiance of this deliverance from what is a life aimed at death into a death aimed at life.

And that’s the part that doesn’t make any sense.

It’s that we’re all so clearly on what’s a clearly sinking ship so lost in sin that the sin’s gotten in and is pulling us down because of the weight of all we’ve gotten wrong’s become so very heavy that we indeed seem to think that we can choose not to move simply because we think we can’t. Yes, I am convinced that that thought, that way of thinking, that’s just got to be at least a part of it. That perhaps we’re all so sinfully ashamed and so well aware of the flaws and failures we’ve found to be anything of everything better that we can all still always be that we indeed just use even that as an excuse.

All because pride tells us both how great we already are and thus how much we have to lose if we do anything that has us to lose anything of the amazingness that we’ve apparently become.

But friends, what’s all that amazing about being so ashamed that we seek only ways to pretend we’re not? What’s so freeing about this life we’re living that we’re promised we’re losing a loss that’s left us thus trying so hard to find and feel all we can before it’s all gone? What’s the grand reward in this life spent living for the minute when we know quite well that one day we won’t have any more minutes left? What’s the point in our trusting a clock that’s running out to help us find way to become convinced that it isn’t?

What’s the promise to be proven in a path paved in the kind of delusion that could look at the cross and know of the loss given upon it and still turn away from it as if there was no need for it?

For that’s exactly what we’re doing every single time that we who know of the Name turn our attention back to either our own and our commonly shared making thereof or that of another who is themselves likely doing only the same. Seeking to make a name for themselves by likely taking some stance, and that either for or against some moment or movement or message or meaning or malfeasance as manifest amongst a now mutant and muddied mankind.

Indeed, we’re anymore all so filthy and foolish that we take our stance only amongst those already standing for something, leaving then the world to do our choosing and determine our deciding and thus define our direction and demand our share of their damnation.

All because when we stand with a world that’s stood against God, so too shall we learn enmity thinking it nothing of the empty that it will most certainly be proven one day to be.

And that day is getting closer regardless of whether or not we’re moving at all.

Question then is why not begin?

Again, I understand why and it’s because His path, as proven in the cross, asks that we die. Such is the crossroads. It’s the cross’s road. It’s the path paved in a life so lost that it actually did find something beyond what we all still think we know. For Christ came to lay down that which we refuse to admit we’ve already lost so as to help us see just how lost we are so as to help us see that He’s done everything to find us and heal us and help us home.

That is literally all He’s asking!

That we just let Him help, trusting Him with our hope as done in realizing what He did and how that meant that He will truly never fail us as He would clearly rather die than do so.

And so, what are we doing here as held so still inside this same thought that has us caught still amongst those many who are said to be upon the wide as aimed at the destruction thereof? Friends, I get that crosses sound scary as even the Gospel proves what they do. And no, it’s not a picture all that pretty. But it isn’t what we’re asked to go through that should matter the most.

It’s instead what we’re asked to come to that means everything.

Because let’s be honest, this life is hard. It’s filled with pain. It brings us sorrow. It often meets us in some newly minted measure of a despair so unfair that we’ve perhaps some right to wonder why it just keeps going wrong. Friends, what if the misery of this life is meant to make the cross seem not as horrible a loss as we’ve long thought it be? What if the suffering we endure is sent to help us see that suffering is neither avoidable nor then something we should continue to avoid.

Especially if it’s a share in that kind that lays down a life in a cross taken up in what is then a choice finally made at the crossroads we’ll all come to in which we’ll all have to sort through the many options we have as to what to do with this life we’ve been given.

And that is a decision we will all make if not one we’ve made already.

What do you want that decision to say when upon that Day it is weighed and there determined either full of life and finding thereof or simply at a lasting lack of both?

I look back and see so many times that I made a decision like this only to now see me there standing so still that it looks like I was dead already. Because I did nothing. I changed nothing. I chose to chase nothing new, to be nothing different, to want nothing more than just whatever I’d already wanted before. And indeed, there is no life in the life we’ve already lived as it’s now a part of the past.

The crossroads is where we are today in which we have to say whether we’re going to repeat what we’ve already done, be who we’ve already been, or if we’re going to try a new thing, learn something different, do something different, become something different.

And no, truth is that we don’t have to. At least not right now. We can put it off and pretend that it’ll never become a forced issue. And to be honest, looking around it’s evident that we’ll have plenty of company should we so determine to delay and defer what then becomes defined as an indifference to the whole ordeal.

For that’s what we show in our standing still. That we just don’t care as to the chance we have to move.

And friends, I don’t care what your pride says, what your friends say, what the world says or expects, we’ve all already chosen plenty of our doing nothing.

Guess it just comes down to whether or not we’re truly content with the content of what we’ve found so doing.

Sadly it seems that many are as most aren’t doing very much that’s any different from what they’ve already done so very much that it’s all but defined who they perhaps see even themselves to be. And sure, there are things in my life, thoughts in my mind that have been there for so long now that they could easily end up defining me. But of the things I’m speaking, no, I cannot imagine being known for them. So then why continue to do them?

Why continue to do nothing about them? Why continue to do nothing?

I’ve done so much of nothing in my life that I haven’t any right to pretend I’m surprised by all the nothing I’ve found in doing it so long. And nor then have I any reason to imagine that He might change His mind should I end up “surprised” when He agrees to let me have what I’ll have clearly asked to find when we’re all found getting from Him exactly what we lived asking for.

For He is a truly just and entirely fair God. And so if we never do anything, never change anything, never welcome His doing of anything in us, with us, if we never allow Him to help us move toward Him, well then He won’t force us to be with Him.

Rather He will kindly give us what we’ve earned in light of our doing nothing.

Which is a forever spent without the ability, the opportunity to do anything about where we end up at what’s then the very start of a forever in which we’ll feel as lifeless as we’d lived thanks to our refusal to do something so simple as walk in the Way that already walked it for us and overcame everything we might experience on the way to where it is that He went to make ready a place for those few of the faith that’s willing to risk everything to find that hope of everything He’s said He has still in store.

So what’s it to be? Follow His lead and do as He asks, walk in ancient paths and there find His lasting promises? Or continue refusing His chance at losing what we’re losing anyway alongside those who can’t help but keep pretending that they’re not in danger of losing everything?

Yes, lose everything and find the same or do nothing and find the same?

It’s today our choice to make.

Just know that refusing His rest only seems to say that we’re not interested in resting from what we’re finding.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold