Day 3840 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Isaiah 59:16 NIV

The intervention

Of such a grand intention that it demanded the very invention of a brand new direction as was thus never before decided by any of all who’ve had always a chance to choose what His choice so clearly was. For indeed, death to self was always a need made necessary whenever a self seems to assume that itself is all that matters. After all, when we find it in us to do as He doesn’t, we’ve both done something actually amazing but the amazing is actually amazingly corrupted.

For it was never His intention for any of all of His creation to have so created this alteration unto a life’s investigation that we seek daily this continued insinuation that our destination is to be determined by us alone.

Yes, His destination at which we were aimed right from conception was to walk with Him forever, basking endlessly in the goodness of His then ever-present kindness as poured now seemingly always behind us as we battle ahead into the betrayal of even ourselves in what’s become a cultural inability for us to see any of the good things He’s doing in and for our lives.

Much less the good His plans had, plans still, to do with our lives.

Indeed, each of us are but seed as sewn into wherever we’ve grown meant to have here a purpose, a reason, a rhyme for this time in which we’re here to do whatever it is that so defines the oddity of it all. Alas it seems that the oddity of the fall has found us too fallen in such a way that at this point we all but choke the good out of ourselves without really needing much help from any of the weeds around.

No, we all do just fine on our own in this life spent finding everything from every wrong we delight to do to every reason we think able to make such a determination as reasonable as we so clearly seem to assume it to be.

But still a part of us seems to always wonder why the skies sometimes darken and the headlines sharpen into one more bit of breaking news regarding some tragedy presently underway that’s literally ripping apart the lives of those caught up in the chaos of a culture collapsed thanks to our having chosen to think we’re incapable of falling either any further or then any farther.

For we’ve come a great distance in this worst of all possible direction.

But what’s scary to imagine is just how much farther we can go in what continue to be days sewn on to this story in which we seek always our own glory and yet find only stories so gory that none seem quite so able to find the silver lining as our selfishness can in our doing the same.

Ever think about that? That amongst all of this individualized determining of what each of us think is right that others in other places living other lives thinking other thoughts somehow use their brand of selfishness to determine that it’s right to cause harm and withhold love as they instead unravel this marvel of mass hatred that just wants to hurt whomever it can?

What makes us then trust our brand?

Is it because we’re not in jail? Or is it only because the comfort never fails? Is it that we find in it still plenty of fun? Or just that it’s all we’ve known under the sun? Is it that it brings us riches and power, if not more of both on the hour? Or merely that time means nothing anymore as we can’t help but basically insist that we’ve always more in which to fix whatever our power and possessions may have compromised?

Or is it simply because we’re so used to being compromised that we’re just unwilling to compromise?

Or that we honestly still think that God will?

To be honest, I honestly don’t know the reason for why so many things are done the way they are. I don’t know why people hurt people. I don’t understand the benefit of betraying life, be it that of another or just continuing that of ourselves. I don’t have the ability to make such make sense anymore. And this even at the arrival of what is another today at what’s been the novel end of a life spent apparently seeing otherwise.

For I’ve done so many thing that I, in the moment, thought the right thing to do in, with, for and or to life. Indeed, truth is I’ve got a list of chances missed to be the better that I’m still trying to find. In fact, I’ve got already this morning a renewed realization as to the destination at which I’ve arrived and how it’s not, at least in some ways, that of anything even I’d hoped for in life.

And yet still we awake to trust only ourselves as we seek to please often only the same.

Or at least those who look like us.

Indeed, anymore it seems that we’re quite content with following the leading of mere flesh. Guess it just comes with an ease that aiming higher simply can’t offer. And as a people so perfectly prone to failure, well, I suppose it was only inevitable that we’d find a place to pull off the path to something better in fear of the battle we’d find should we go a little further.

And well, we’re just worn out from all the fighting we’ve had to endure in order to make our lives appear as if pure to those who themselves seem to assume that they too are already as good as they can be despite all the violence in the streets spilling onto TV and being there considered entertainment simply because it’s on a screen and thus not really the real thing.

Problem is friends that the inspiration’s the same.

And that is the kind which comes from a place venturing toward an indifference toward life. And indeed, most of us do live as if many things mean all but nothing. How else can you explain all we’ve so clearly agreed to so take for granted that we don’t even notice it anymore?

You know, having just recently moved into a new house in a novel place, I’ve been ever since nightly amazed at this longing to just look out the window and see a whole world of life that’s been alive these past several years in which I had no idea it was there at all. It’s not that I necessarily forgot about such things as fireflies and starry skies but just that the places I’d been hadn’t been in any way conducive to my being able to see them.

I often now find myself wondering as to all the places I’ve chose to live in which I was living a life not in any way conducive to being able to see Him.

See, we live in a world that’s quite clearly convinced that God’s not there, that the Bible’s just another biased bit of fiction meant to scare folks into submission and that those who believe in either are just fools for doing so. And try as we might, or might not ever have, the reality is that we’ve all been around so much of such an assumption that the same has, at times at least, become our own presumption. Yes, we’ve each found ourselves sharing in the world’s vast ability to doubt in any idea of divinity outside of their own lives.

And this has led us to ourselves being left at odds with the idea that there might be a God who is both higher than we and thus deserves far more than we’ve ever clearly been willing or interested in giving.

And this is a reality in which we can only find ourselves having helped the world fall apart in whatever unique way(s) we may have long denied we have.

Indeed, there was a time in which I was apparently convinced that stealing wasn’t bad as it helped to get things that I elsewise couldn’t have had. And that pornography was a reasonable replacement for love simply because it didn’t ever come with any semblance of rejection. And that laziness was an okay way to live life as it asked nothing and expected the same. And that not reading the Bible was justifiable simply because I couldn’t pronounce all the weird names.

And that praying was overrated as I could easily talk to myself with my eyes open and no kneeling involved. And that the cross was just some wood affixed to those buildings that you drive by with empty parking lots six days out of the week. And that what I had was the only best way to tell the world who I was whilst never stopping to realize that nobody ever asked as I didn’t really have anybody around me that cared to truly know me as a result of my having chosen only to chase after ideas and ideals just as empty as those parking lots not filled with people who clearly then weren’t there reading the Bible or praying to God or fighting to understand what He meant by asking us unto our denying ourselves and following Him.

After all, if nobody else is doing that, and yet so many are doing the things I too had come to do, then why should I ever think that it might be wrong?

I mean, sport stadiums attracting bigger crowds than church services ever have is proof of what matters most, right?

Sadly, it is. Or at least it proves what matters most to most, and well, as a people consumed in a way of life in which we still seem to assume that more is always better as it affords us an alibi, so too then have we come to apparently believe the very same lie that we too have come to live the very same life doing the very same things that basically everyone else is doing.

All because surely not everyone can be wrong.

Right?

Well, in truth it comes down quite simply to a measure of authority. And sure, while this seems to tip the balance in our favor considering the sheers numbers involved, it would indeed seem that we have the upper hand simply because there are billions of us and only, at least theoretically, one of Him. If He’s there at all, which again most here clearly doubt, then still the numbers give us what we contend a proverbial helping hand into a life spent believing the same.

And we have.

Yes, be it theft or lust or just plain human laziness, it’s quite clear that all of us have, at least at times, thought that this life was worth only as much as we were willing to give, and thus as little as we determined to offer.

But that’s what utterly destroys our case for our having ever had any authority.

Just look at where we’ve ended up at what is the end of a long line of a life lived with us making the decisions. Now I could do as I normally would and list out a bunch of examples of how rough the shape that our society’s in, but friends, I feel like trusting you to be able to come up with at least one or two things that you’ve seen of late that just don’t make any sense or seem to accomplish any measure of anything bettered.

Don’t let me down.

Why? Because my point is that it’s painfully obvious that we’re letting God down in every way imaginable. In fact, I can’t imagine all the ways we’re failing Him. I can see a lot of them. I hear a lot of them. I know of a lot of them thanks to headlines that either show or say what is evidence of the direction we’re still headed this day. But that’s never going to be able to encompass all we’re messing up or missing along the way to wherever it is that this road will end.

And yet He told us.

Even showed us.

And oddly enough in His so doing He also achieved such a perfectly profound victory in this war for authority in that He determined to do it both by Himself and completely backwards to how we’ve so often approached the war being waged between us.

He emptied Himself by becoming so obedient to God’s will, as was done as a Son seeking to please His Father, that He even endured the death of the cross abiding there the necessity of a life lost so that those lost could find life in their sharing in their doing of what He’d done in every ounce of its backwards beauty that we can be shown into seeing.

At always the expense of the apparent clarity we’ve so often seen inside of such things as porn being better than real love and never being content with what we have but rather just resorting to stealing what isn’t ours.

And yet still we hesitate. Still we question. Still we ask why it has to be us that has to die. Still we seem to assume that we’re still living a life that either shouldn’t have to or even never will.

But friends, all arrogance aside, that Christ came and died leaves Him now the only One with such keys to life and death, and thus us nowhere in the vicinity of having really any say in the matter outside of what we come to find matters most to us.

The thing is that in Christ God proved that He doesn’t need us. He can literally do whatever needs done all on His own. In fact, that tomb shows He’d rather die than live with those living in sin.

Where then does that leave us my friends?

Odds are it’s still quite impressively indifferent to the whole design as still we all so often live as if this life is nothing more than our time in which to do as we please as if our pleasure is all that matters. Is it? And too, considering as how it most certainly has been, what then have we been so able to find or feel that’s left us so sure? Money? Fame? Personal enjoyment? Public praise?

Can any of those add even an hour to life?

Friends, fact is that we can go ahead and keep living as if those things are as important as most everyone seems still to assume. We can keep ignoring God and taking His kindness and patience for granted. We can literally live every minute we’ve left looking only to the world to tell us what matters most in life and thus what our lives should mean.

And God will let us as He’s again shown us that He’s not willing to compromise as, well, He just doesn’t have any reason to. I mean, He’s the only One uncreated who thus has no needs and answers to nothing, to no one.

No, God answers to Himself and thus to Himself He is obligated.

To what then are we obligated? To what are we obliged? To what are we oblivious?

To what have we become so very indifferent that we can still live as if our lives depend upon the indifference as opposed to perhaps the doing of something different as necessitated by the need of our doing something different if we’re to ever find that hope of our being something better?

Or are we just so used to not caring that we don’t really care where we end up or whatever anyone may have to say once we get there?

Even God.

Friends, again, we’re free to live this life as we please and we’re thus amongst a great and growing many who will continue ahead doing that only. Just know that there is no safety in numbers as in Christ God shows us that He’s perfectly find with going it alone.

After all, why wish for the company of those who killed you and never found in your dying any reason to question why they were so excited to do so?

No, He who died on our behalf doesn’t then need some sort of halfhearted interest in Him feigned only on weekends or whenever life gets too hard to face alone. He deserves more than that as He did more than that. The cross proves all He’s willing to do for us to both know He’s there and just how much He loves us. But the amazing thing is that it also proves He doesn’t expect us to love Him in return.

Rather He knows just how far gone we’ve all, well, gone.

The beauty is that He’s shown that He will indeed come just as far to get us back.

The tragedy is that for this we must ask.

And whenever that becomes again to seem too much to bear, just remember that He’s already proven He can live without us.

But who of us has proven we can live without Him?

#LeaveNoSoulUntold