Day 3838 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Isaiah 59:14 NIV

The reward

And that given as a result of our revolt into what’s remained a mostly revolting way as always aimed both right at God but still so far the other way that all we know of His Name is the blame for our frame’s fame having failed to have been found upon this ground by now. No, we’ve long been of the belief that it was on us to find for us a way to make this life into what we wanted so badly for it to be. And well, wouldn’t you know it but He did indeed let us succeed!

For all along all we’ve known to want was nothing more than a way in which everything was gray but still somehow okay.

Yes, we wanted it this way. We wanted what we’ve gotten. We craved this cave in which culture has caved as a result of a cavernous cavity created by a cancer so commonly caustic that it continues to chew away at our every day in which better still awaits. But alas that better we could still become will only wait for us to want it for so long. Eventually it will just agree that we apparently see no reason or worth to endure the work it would take for us to get there and it to there become us.

And it will simply decide to then abide beside our every chosen betrayal as it’ll have nothing left for us to see, to be. Because better is a limited-time opportunity as given in the form of these new days in which to try new things seeking always that better way that our every past mistake says and shows clearly we clearly haven’t found or felt reason to be by now. We simply cannot have this chance forever as, well, forever is but the reward given unto those who endure the making of the many choices that form forever’s very foundation.

Alas we live as if we honestly don’t know that, or at the very least don’t care to admit that we might. We exist in this consist in which our every decision isn’t seen anymore as a dilemma in which there might truly exist one good choice as hidden softly alongside a million wrong turns. We don’t want to embrace the degree of personal responsibility as known inside such gifts as discernment and discipline as to us they’re what they’ve long been to others.

Just burdens.

Can you believe that? That something so vital to a life’s not falling to pieces as personal responsibility has long been has long since been considered a matter best left scattered to the winds of want and win? That we’ve become more concerned with dreaming dreams than finding scenes in which a decent life is being lived? That our society has settled for screaming at God for the evil that exists, and that somehow only around us?

Yes, that we blame Him for the bad we’ve become?

How did it all get this way and why do we seem to so like it here?

I mean, what possible good can ever come from our only fear being that of a fallen man? What improvement might get underway when we’re all still walking away from the only Way by which a life is saved? How can we grow when it seems we don’t seem to know that such is such a need? And indeed, how on earth might we be freed when it’s upon earth that we seem to have seen this scene of something we just can’t help but want to have or hope to hold or wish we could just become?

All so that we could be just like those to whom we look up as we stroll down the very streets that are anymore lined with liquor stores, strips joints and weed shops?

And again, we’re good with it!

We’re in fact so okay with where and what we are this day that come tomorrow we’ll be only more of what we’ve all become. And that simply because the only thing considered dumb these days is the speaking of truth as it always leads almost immediately into some offense-ridden controversy that leaves every ear involved the victim of every tongue that calls only upon the name of dishonesty and deception to lead us in the direction we’re apparently okay to keep going.

All so that we can avoid the offending that’s considered just about the farthest thing from loving that one can be or become.

Yes, we’ve arrived at the foretold time in which basically the entirety of mankind has become so stinking blind that all that matters to the masses are only the passage of laws that legalize what was once a crime and the passage of time into the past that will be repeated tomorrow thanks to our all but staunch refusal to learn from what we’ve lost to a life so far gone that it’s amazing that we don’t mind going back. In fact, back is basically the only direction we know to go.

Back to the bar. Back to the party. Back to our ex. Back to old habits that can’t die hard because we exist as if we’re only here to keep them on life support until we manage to prove them the key to life that we’ve long hoped they could be. Indeed, all we know in life anymore is to rehash the past trying still to find once more that same feeling we felt back when we felt more alive than anyone cares to be these days.

We’re all seemingly quite content with the chaos, or at least so afraid of even speaking out in the voice that claims we’re kind of actually worried about how bad things are getting that we just keep going along with them for sake of not offending someone.

Yes, anymore it’s considered more tragic to offend somebody who is likely doing something they shouldn’t be doing, as we’re all really good at doing so, than to risk once more letting God down. And that despite the fact that not a single human on earth has done even an atom’s worth of what He did for us. We give more credit and credence to those around than He who freed us from the very chains that this place has forged on everything from our hands and feet to our hearts and hope.

And again, we just don’t really seem to mind it.

We don’t mind the violence. We don’t mind the silence. We don’t mind the expectation of our compliance as preferred in the latter and all but demanded by the former. We’re okay with things as they are, if for no other reason that we worry that change might be too hard, take too long, go too wrong and leave us there even worse off than we are now.

Friends, what’s worse off than dead?

What can ever prove harder than lying to everyone, even ourselves, about where it is that we’ve come and how we apparently couldn’t be more proud to be here in what is a world all but on its knees either begging for mercy or just a bit of money? Indeed, what could go worse than whatever this is that we’ve got going on? I mean, from all the sex and violence on TV to all the drinking and drugs in the streets, what more are we looking for in the way of a reason to maybe start thinking that perhaps we’ve gone the wrong direction?

Granted, it’s all been gained under the fame of freedom’s name, and as a people so fond of freedom apparently overriding personal responsibility, well it’s pretty easy to see why we are so good with things. Again, we wanted it this way! That’s in fact why freedom has become something all but hijacked into meaning nothing more than a lack of rules and thus expectations. Yes, freedom, to us at least, is nothing more than the opportunity to do as we please as if consequence and reason have no say.

And we like it that way!

Why?

Because it helps us to live as if we’ve not already died, and well, that really helps us with our utter rejection of any call to change as is seen as the uncalled for indictment of our every personal failure to have actually become the better that our mistakes clearly prove we’ve never actually been. Yes, we have been telling this lie about how great we are at life, and so any hint at our needing to change is only a voice that seems only to say that we’re either wrong or simply mistaken.

But friends, one cannot be only merely mistaken when we’ve been at this for so long as we have. At some point the mistakes become the modus operandi, and thus our very way of life.

And indeed, such is where we’ve arrived at what’s the bitter end of every better betrayed that we could have, at this point, simply stayed. And yes, I know it’s deemed not wise to ask why the past was better than today, but friends, fact is that things are getting worse around here and so, well, it does seem that this world’s best is sadly now behind us as we continue to watch the degree of depravity and degradation only deepen with every passing day.

Just yesterday my family and I took a drive to the place we used to live and I gotta be honest in that I was shocked at just how little I recognized it. It’s all overgrown and falling apart. It just looked and felt so dark, so small, so still the same but yet so much so changed.

And driving back I realized that what changed was me, was us. We left. We moved. We wanted something better and we’ve embraced every debt and doubt that’s come along along the way to where we are today. And knowing how little we refuse to settle, I know that we’ll keep trying to keep on finding something better than where we are and even what we are.

Doesn’t seem the world will do the same. Rather, yes, truth has fallen in the streets. People are living it up now that more drugs are legal to do. Even saw a sign that now has to ask folks to not drive drunk or high! When I was a kid it was just asking to not drink and drive. Now we have even more possible inebriations that could potentially cause even more accidents.

And we pat ourselves on the back for overturning the laws that once made this a safer place.

All while coming up with whatever dishonesty may prove needed to make it seem like we mean it when we say that we’re okay with how things are, even with who we are.

All as if there’s nothing wrong, nothing to bring harm in this way of life we seem to have found in a world that’s falling down thanks to truth having fallen into being considered an enemy. Again, can you believe it? The one thing that’s said to set us free has become the very same as is considered hostile, offensive, intrusive, even hateful? Yes, this world considers it hate speech to speak the truth as, well, this world does in fact seem to prefer the darkness to the light.

That’s right! The way our society has come to live life has begun to prove the very Word against which it fights!

Now if that not’s ironic then I guess I just don’t know what irony is!

But perhaps what’s most ironic is this: The vast majority of our society has become of this justice-centered culture in which we even take to the streets to march for whatever cause is close to our hearts all while not stopping to ask if there’s any heart found in the cause. Because by heart I mean love. Is there any love in what we’re doing? And if there is, then what of the dishonesty, the deception, the violence, the wreckage that’s anymore all but always left in the wake of these folks that’ve apparently awoken to realize some social discrepancy that demands actions, even if the action is hate-filled and angry?

Indeed, anymore we see so much screaming and shouting and fighting and arguing and this incessant drawing of lines seeking obviously then to divide us up and find for us there reasons to despise those on the other side.

Friends, how is that supposed to help us heal what we’ve broken? How is that supposed to help us fix what we’ve become? How can we even confess what we’ve become when we’re so transfixed by what we’ve become that we’ve become unable to see it a matter in need of confession?

And if we can’t admit that we’ve gotten things wrong, make some mistakes, taken a wrong turn or twenty, then honestly, how can we ever hope for anything to get better?

If we’ll never reach that place in our fight with humility that we can finally see that we ourselves have had a hand in the downfall of humanity, then friends, I’m afraid we’ll all just keep falling down. And that simply because if we never stand for something then we will fall for anything. And in this world in which something so life-giving as the truth has always been has instead become something seen as hate speech and thus offensive to those listening, all we can find by tossing it aside is only more of the lies that keep only dead the better that we’re just not becoming.

And that’s not to say that there aren’t things that aren’t getting better nor that there aren’t people who are trying to improve. There are. The issue is that we’re even to the point in this story in which those who are trying to improve or those things that are changing for the better are both so few and far between that it takes some serious searching to find them and too the very same as those catching blame for causing someone to be offended somehow.

Likely because someone bettering themselves is a pretty clear reminder that all of us can and actually should.

But instead we consider these people to be toxic or diluted or vain or petty or fake or foolish for trying what’s so much harder than the nothing that most folks are doing.

And that simply because the vast majority has chosen to live this life lying to themselves so that they can feel better about becoming nothing better. That’s why the truth is so vilified anymore. It’s not because it’s honestly lacking in merit or meaning. It’s rather because it doesn’t play the games we’ve insisted basically all of life either is or should become. The truth just stands there ever unwavering as it’s simply unwilling to bend to what would be the very betrayal of itself.

No, honesty will not play with dishonesty as it’s nothing more than its opposite, its opponent if you will.

Problem then is that almost the entire world is opposed to the truth and thus living in opposition to the life and love, the freedom and hope found only within it.

And all the while folks are just grinning as they go on sinning as if that’s the only reason that the sun came up again. Just to find for us a few more hours to show off our power as best put on display in our doing of everything our own way. It’s just that we can’t actually know where our way goes unless and until we consider both where it came from and how it may have gone wrong along the way.

Friends, such a thing will never be popular around these parts of a life lived seeking peace but finding only pieces. It will never be commonplace to refuse complacency and seek instead, and that incessantly, the bettering of anything and everything that we can possibly improve. It will never be deemed okay or acceptable to accept that we’re not okay and have in fact so much to do to get where we hope to be that we can barely afford to waste time on sleep as we’ve already slept enough on the betters we’ve thus never been.

But then again, we never needed something to be popular or common or even comfortable in order to be worth it. Rather we merely need to determine for ourselves what we want our lives to be as defined best by where it is that we hope to go both in them and too then after. Problem is we still spend too much time letting this world have too much say and sway. And well, when this world is allowed a seat at the table, this world’s trouble is also to be invited into remaining one of the possible outcomes we manage to find.

Is that what you want? More of this way of life in which so many want what they claim is justice for wrongs done but is really only to be justified for doing wrong? More of this idea that just because the truth hurts we should hate it? More of this suggestion that the best is something we can each define and then find for ourselves, and that it’s thus easy to get there? More of this ride in which righteousness is pushed out of the way so that we can have a bit more fun and feel a bit more pleasure?

More of the pride that’s built on so many lies that honesty is considered basically a hate-crime?

Friends, point is that nothing ever has to remain whatever it may have become. We have so many things both around us and within us meant to help us become the better we can always be. And we’re even given new days like today in which to try. Truth is that such is exactly what we need, to try. But alas the truth has also long been something then that refuses to play the part of accomplice to our remaining so complicit to everything this world says we should be.

Choose for yourselves this day what and who you follow as based upon what you want to find and who you want to be. Just know that nothing good can come from following a place where the truth lies battered and bleeding in the streets and crowds continue to gather to cheer on the brutality of it all.

Because yes, we did do the very same to He who is the truth. All because this place has always hated honesty as it would require us to be honest with ourselves.

And well, that just wouldn’t go very well considering what it is that we’ve become and the fact that what we’ve become are the very ones who didn’t get here by accident.

No, this much can’t go wrong and continue to get worse without some help.

And that perhaps even mostly from ourselves.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold