Day 3841 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

2 Timothy 2:13 NIV

The realization

It’s something blending in seven parts humiliation, five consternation, four concern, two sorrow and ten confusion. And sure, there are several other little aspects and attributes to be attributed to this assimilation unto humility and thus out of our own arrogance as will come to be better understood along the way toward wherever this Way may go. And what’s in fact often the first that we’ll find is that of fear as found in neither our knowing where it is that we’re going nor then how we might possibly get there should we get turned around along the way.

In fact, all we’ll eventually come to know, and that many times over, is that we can’t get there.

That’s the terror of both what we’re trying and also why so few are. It’s proven in that we can’t. We’ve simply not the ingredients needed to ensure this recipe turns out as anything other than what we’ve already proven well capable of making. Which is mostly just mistakes, mayhem, misunderstanding, a veritable mockery of basically every part of life itself. We’re indeed perfect in that regard, mocking life and making light of all we might have elsewise done with it.

We even make hobby out of mocking He who gave us life as what was and will for at least a while remain a gift given unto the then getting of a people to call His own, and that despite the fact that He’s no need by which to might be pleased by who are a people who do know pleasure but alas that as if treasure as has been long stolen from both where our treasure always was and defined instead by all that treasure always wasn’t.

For indeed, we are anymore so confused as to what matters most that it changes more days than not. I for one honestly cannot remember all that I thought to my life might matter. But I can surmise that I was wrong as, well, the inability to remember it now proves that it clearly didn’t matter then as, well, if it did then I’d have not forgotten it. And yet such is the makings of our memories. They’re these little scenes of the life we’ve seen, and the few we have left are but either those pictures of our life’s best or perhaps only lessons we’ve left either behind or still to learn.

Either way what I’ve coming to realize is that we’re not good at this. And this is a fact as found inside what are an ever-growing number of reasons. In fact it seems as though our reasons are increasing with every matter that we make believe might matter more than it might. I mean, anymore there’s something new morning, noon and night that takes us by the eye and leads us into what’s likely but another lie added into our life as has been already all but lived in and by the same.

Nothing then new, never then changed.

No, all we know is this constant confusion as created of both delusion and that in all that is disgusting. Which even that is an issue of increasing clarity these days. So many are pushing the envelope proverbial seeking this shock and awe sensational from all thinking that stirring us in one way or the other will prove a fatter wallet or wider platform. Yes, we’ve become a people unable to stop ourselves in what remains this war for words and ways by which to win whatever it is that we want.

Problem is that we don’t even know.

And that neither what we want nor likely then why we will when we do. We just exist upon this constant influx of influence, guided along by those going away from both reason and even reality anymore. It’s truly amazing the state of our world these days! So very many things which simply should not be or should by now be no more but that are instead both things indeed and thus the seed of more of the same then still to come.

For that which remains unchanged is then the same as that which cannot challenge. And they who are not challenged can then thus never be changed.

And thus we see that whoever this is that we today be, this society so confused and somehow quite happy, it is who we will remain for the foreseeable as we delight to daily deny that there is anything wrong being done either under the sun or by the Son.

Rather we contend that the sun’s just there to shine its light and go away to help us sleep at night.

And that the Son hopefully isn’t as that would really ruin our plans for sleeping.

Yes, we live in a world that’s so terrified of God, which is ironically logical, that they’ve found all of these reasons to delve instead headlong into the illogical fear of man seeking there to still prove something of the faithful existence into which our very substance is called but simply chosen so as to forgo the necessity of embracing that fear of the divine simply for the realization that it would bring to mind.

Which is, again, that we’re not good at this. So not good that in fact we can’t ever be.

But we are good at pleasing people! We are good as seeking our own pleasure. We are good as denying our wrongs and even pointing out those many we see in others, who somehow manage to think that they’re as spotless as our own stain-filled pasts prove we aren’t despite our words and wins saying otherwise.

Indeed, we’re even to the point of being a people who point again at things hoping that they might tell the world how incredible we are so that we don’t have to rely on an empty story of a lifetime thus far spent seeking for our own glory only to have found so very little that we rather glory in the gold and glitter we’ve gained along the way to the nowhere we are thanks to our strength and ability proving only ever able to help us reach the same.

Just nowhere. And here as a people of nothing who are as empty as everything we can hold in hand. Sure, there might be some meaning we can hopefully keep gleaning from the glimmer we’ve gained, and perhaps some of it does have a purpose as proven in our appreciating what God’s given us the ability to appreciate. But even then, it’s still probably not as fine a line as our heart and mind might likely wish it was.

For there is still but one God and we ain’t Him and thus then neither is anything we hold.

We’re just really good at getting lost thinking otherwise. And that that both we might be God and thus that what we know we hold might really be worth the life we’ve apparently not lost in getting it and/or going there. What and where? Well, that’s what different for each of us. Because yes, anymore it seems that we’ve all pretty much agreed that the meaning of life is whatever we make it as is then whatever makes life mean something to us.

And in the world today, well, that list of what makes life matter and thus might make life’s meaning is made up of so many different things that a new store is built almost every day.

All so that we can keep looking for what we apparently haven’t found, never once then seeming to see that maybe there’s a reason that we haven’t found it and that said reason could be, at least theoretically, that it’s only ever found in our turning around.

Something we simply cannot do as we continue to believe that we’ve just too much to lose should we miss a day within the way in which the world is walking, warring, wanting the mooring which acts as an anchor holding us in place in what’s become a life lived at sea and there bounced to and fro by every wind of whatever it is that we think we know or hear others might think they may.

Alas the moorings are affixed to a dock that’s breaking and we’re only held to them by what is a rope that’s fraying at both ends thanks to our making friends with both darkness and denial.

Yes, every life here continues to unravel as we grovel at the thrones of a world throwing itself upon every altar seeking to see finally something that might make us feel as if we might matter more than everything else we’ve trusted to do the same has managed to thus far. Again then never once seeming to realize that our having to give meaning to something then only means that it can’t bring meaning to us.

And too thus that we are so lost that while no matter what we find may prove for a moment that we feel found, all we can here find is but more of this life as has been already completely spent seeking the substance of something that will help us to mean the same.

Leaving us then leaning on all that, like us, isn’t here long.

No, rather everything and everyone that we can see, hold, hope to be, we’ve all somewhere else that we’re going whether or not we live this life knowing that we’re leaving both here and thus behind all we hope to have or be by the time we do. And I honestly believe that we spend so much of this life so distracted by the stuff we know won’t matter in the end because we know the reality that we’ll meet at the same.

And that is that we’re not needed.

Honestly, this world would get along on the way it’s going just fine if I weren’t here. In fact, considering how many people I’ve met, interacted with, prayed for or fought against, I know my life cannot even make a dent. I mean nothing as I can accomplish the same. As a character in a TV show once said, “I am an ant, toiling on the forest floor. I see only the leaf above my head. That leaf brings me some relief from the sun.”

And indeed, I’m just here doing as everyone else as is only whatever it may be that we might feel is so very important as to give it the time we have and the toil we can offer unto it. And we all so often seek only the relief given unto us via the shade of something that blocks the normal beating we endure in this task of living a life and trying our best to do it right.

All while never appreciating that our estimation of our best is but a self’s deprecation as is always done never knowing we do. For all this life we’ve lived convinced that our very best can come to matter so very much that it will accomplish for us our being owed something. That a long line of good works will earn for us what we might come to need. That pouring every ounce of persistence and perspiration into whatever it is that we’ve become convinced is perhaps most important will achieve for us a payout as if we’ve truly proven ourselves deserving of a wage won.

But friends, the wages of sin are death and as those who’ve made that our career a thousand times over, so too then have we earned that wage the same number of times. And each one of them is deserving of such a violent demise because it was only done, wanted, won via our turning our eyes and ears and hearts and minds away from Him who came to find a people that He could call His who would be then eager to do what He created us to.

And yet still we dabble most in only whatever we want.

Still we worry mostly about only what we need. Still we live as if we almost feel this need to worry about wants and needs and our somehow making them seem the same so that we can feel then better justified in our having given our lives unto the getting of what mattered most, but only once and there only until something else came along that mattered more.

Problem then is that God’s never mattered as He isn’t made of gold or silver or wood or plastic or paper. He isn’t bindable in a book nor in a church. He’s not findable in a store filled with shelves selling the things that guy on TV yells about our needing so badly that nobody knows how we’ve made it this far without having around to help. He isn’t formed nor fashioned by the hands of those He fashioned as that would be an illogical fallacy as built upon an impossible reality in that that which is created cannot then created they which created it.

Yet we even manage to get that wrong!

Indeed, we’ve made an idol of so many things in this life in this world, and each of them, though always just different enough to prove novel, they all write the same story. And it’s always been that one as written of our commandeering God’s glory and giving it to something or someone else.

All so that we don’t have to face the fact that He doesn’t need us and thus that even our best means so much of nothing that it’s almost no wonder that none try for it anymore.

No, this world can only have gotten in the shape it’s presently in by our having all all but unanimously agreed that our best was always only theoretical at best and thus something that we can even change if, when and however needed as determined by the interest we have in reaching for it within any given moment. And that interest has indeed waned in light of the influx of technological change that has afforded us the ability to all but give up on pretty much having to do much of anything.

Yes, we’ve worked so hard to prove ourselves a people without need, and yet we stand still amazed if not offended that God still managed to beat us there.

Indeed, God has no needs as, having created all we can see and the vastly more than we never have and probably never will, He can thus speak into existence whatever it is that He wants. We’re even told of this elsewhere in Scripture in that passage posed upon the promise that even if we stay silent in regard to God’s existence and the very gravity of it as proven so perfectly in the Gospel of Christ Jesus, well, then even the rocks can be made to do what we won’t.

You read that right, or at least I hope you did.

It said that God can squeeze His praise from those things that we use to pave our driveways and throw into lakes.

What then does He need us for? And why then should He continue much longer to endure our indifference in terms of both faith and thus faithfulness?

And even further, what does He, having again no needs, stand to gain from our being or eventually becoming a people of faith who then strive to finally live faithfully unto this very same God that all of us spent a fair bit of time all but blatantly denying?

Sure, He gains another soul or two who find in Him a testimony that aches to help others find this hope we have. So what? Every testimony ever told hasn’t managed to change the world. He gains a people who live to praise Him, even try and please Him perhaps, however that might prove possible. What then does that matter though? Can our pleasing Him, even if such a thing is possible, ever prove of enough power to stop others in their displeasure?

Friends, we can do nothing. Granted, there’s said to be a great rejoicing in Heaven anytime a sinner becomes another saved. But maybe that’s just it. Maybe this life is only about us. Maybe our greatest achievement is but the hope of our souls being saved.

But even then, Heaven isn’t to change whether live forever or die the same.

Because God doesn’t change. He will not change. Indeed, His very Word even rings that He will not even share His glory with anything that isn’t Him.

Why then do we?

I mean, sure, it would seem that nothing we do matters that much having long thought so much to matter that only turned out to not really mean all that much. But can’t we try? And that not because our lives depend on it, though to a certain extent they might. But simply because nothing else we’ve ever tried has ever proven of any staying power?

Granted, God isn’t to be changed or really even all that impacted whether we have faith or we don’t. But, because of His love rather than His need and lack thereof, perhaps we can live a life that means something, that offers something, that achieves something. Maybe not to God, but for God. We might not be able to offer Him something He needs, but what if we could give Him something He wants? Now I know we’ve become so vastly confused between the two, but what if God having no needs only finds us freed to focus on striving for what He wants?

For again, we can’t ever manage to satisfy a need He doesn’t have and thus be found as deserving of thanks for our having helped Him in some way. We can’t help Him. But He can help us. He can help us find that way of life that does matter. He can help us do something that means something to someone else. And even if we can’t manage to change the world, does not impacting the forever of someone else for the better matter more than we might imagine?

Might our attempt at such a humbled service even perhaps make Him proud of us for once?

While I can’t imagine anymore that I might somehow do something that will so impress God that it will all but erase all the times in which I didn’t even care to consider Him there, I can believe that hitting my knees and there learning more every day to better lean upon Jesus, the very Son He sent to free us, I can believe that such is something able to show Him that I want to know Him even though I can’t.

Because it demands a change of heart.

For we’re a people who’ve become convinced that we can’t know that which we can’t see or hear or find or feel.

But maybe we can’t see Him because we don’t look. Maybe we can’t hear Him because we won’t listen. Maybe we can’t feel Him because we don’t try. And maybe we won’t find Him until we do.

Sure, all of this would be far easier and make a lot more sense if He just had some need that we could fulfill. He doesn’t, and honestly, we don’t need this to be easy either. What we need is to be better, and oddly enough, that’s pretty much exactly what He wants. And no, while we can’t seem to get to better on our own, we can start embracing the humility that finds us finally helping Him help us get closer all the time. And no, we will never get there, at least not in this life.

But if we live this life seeking to be faithful to God as is done in a reverent fear of that realization that He has no needs, He will get us where the cross says He wants us to be.

Just know that we will never find that place alone. And the sooner we realize that, well, the sooner we’ll understand that He never asked us to but that rather He only ever asked that we stopped doing what He never will.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold