Day 3852 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Luke 12:15 NIV

Abundance

It’s the now general understanding of a life’s general standing as is supposed to be, apparently, stood upon the standard affluence as is measured anymore in millions rather than milestones or memories. It’s something believed in best when brought to the bank and borrowed from the same. It’s the famous frame of those framed by fame into their too fighting to find the riches and near regality so often attached to the same. Indeed, abundance is something that we daily bear as if not burdened at all by this burning for all that is around us.

Problem is that while fire, like water, can sure mess some stuff up from the outside in, it’s only once it gets in that the real damage begins.

Because the issue has never been our being surrounded by so many things that are technically temptations in training. The training in this case being only always ours as is done in regard to either continuing to learn to not look with lust upon all that this world is learning, and at this point pretty much just living to lust for or learning to lust for all that this world is learning to keep living their lives for as is done in our looking to the world to help us understand what life is supposed to be.

And I suppose that this is, in some ways at least, something of a fairly logical undertaking. After all, I think we all know deep down that we’ve each a relatively miniscule measuring of life’s meaning considering how shortly our stay here’s been thus far. I mean, even should someone reach 60 or 70, well there’s still folks out there at 80 and 90 who’ve thus decades more experience at what it is to live a life here. And so I think we all know, whether we admit it or don’t, which we don’t for what are plenty of reasons we talk about all the time, but I think we all know that there’s always more to realize and understand in regard to life.

And well, it does then seem, in some ways at least, as least somewhat logical to look to the world around us, filled anymore with mostly only those many of whom are walking so clearly in an abundance we both know nothing of but would always be interested in learning more about to, well, help us learn both more about the abundance they know and how, if so interested and inclined, we might come to find the same inside our lives.

Because that’s just what we know to do. It’s this endless looking at first through the highlights of those whose headlights have helped them find their way to the wins of wealth and want that we’re wondering if we might should want to win as well. Indeed, every single day we pull a seat up to our pocket buffets and feast upon the feeds we find of so many someone elses living the kinds of dreams either for or in fact already with the fancy finery of a life we’re all but on fire to find.

It almost makes you wonder if it was all part of some twisted design.

Which I both think it is and almost know so for sure without even having to do all that much thinking about how I think it is as compared against how I’ve not thought it may not be.

It’s actually pretty easy to see whenever you’ve “accidentally” misplaced your rose-colored glasses and happen to actually realize just how much wool there is in life. As in the kind that’s used to be pulled over the eyes of those this world wishes to keep blind. As must have been shorn from some source of sheep that’s proven so able to keep providing this blinding material as bound inside our being blinded by material.

But then to keep sheering said sheep you’d need to keep them alive long enough for them to continue growing the wool that you need to sheer to keep others living in what’s basically a blinded fear of failing to find what so many others seem to have already. Which means that you can’t blind the others too quickly as they might notice something’s off and start asking questions like why does this matter and who says that that thing is so important and what does it actually profit my life to gain all this worldly stuff.

And why is it again that I’m supposed to agree that my soul isn’t worth quite so much but only more of this stuff that so many other sheep already have alongside an almost palpable unhappiness despite all the glaringly apparent haughtiness as is being bought hand over fist by those fighting amongst themselves to prove who’s either the best producer of wool for their sheerer or at least the least blind among the batch?

Yeah, the devil may be dangerous but he sure does it in just such a way that it becomes so popular, so normal that even the normal can become popular if not in fact famous.

And they even give you the devices for free with the agreement unto a new contract for the very service that feeds you these feeds of a self serving itself upon the substance of both things hoped for and the more we only come to learn to hope toward thanks to the coming soon idols that it has an algorithm designed to help you find that you might need in your life if your life is to be as happy and meaningful as it only looks like everyone else’s is.

I digress.

For now.

Because for now the point is still abundance and how it’s something that we both already have but so clearly then just don’t need in light of all it’s bringing to light in what’s become a way of life in which we live to lust as we learn to look at what others have as the definition of the more we don’t which leaves us then feeling all alone in what are then seen to be only lives in which our screens can’t show the same glow of those who know the more we don’t about the life we won’t find unless and until we do the things that they have done to get the things that they have won that have all but come to become the things that we want for ourselves as well.

And well, as we’ve been talking it’s this endless comparing that’s leaving us so self-prescribedly empty that all we can see is all we don’t have in terms of the abundance that we walk by every day as is sold in everything from that new pair of shoes that just came out (that literally does the exact same job as the 5 pairs we already have) to those who have that new pair of shoes and seem to be getting all the attention all of the sudden.

Leaving us thus feeling even more empty and alone than we were holding last year’s phone in clothes we’ve had long enough that they’re kind of faded as worn atop shoes that are now just boring because they only do what we need shoes to, and they’re even our only pair that we care to wear as the other 4 just stay indoors as they’re just not cool enough to care about anymore.

Oh the humanity of being an ordinary part of this humanity!

Yeah, we hate the idea of such normalcy as modesty, morality, humility as opposed to the vanity in which the world spins and seeks then always only more of the same. Yes, we hate our name because it’s not known because we’ve not known the more that so many others have.

Still looking at the fire from only the outside I see.

Indeed, and that’s probably by design as well. Because, well, who in their right mind would step inside and stop running after the world of whom we’re already falling behind to spend some time trying to realize all the damage that we’ve done in all of our trying to find all that we’ve all but forced to fit where, dare I say, better things were already found? Yeah, who would want to stop and take stock of not what we have and how much it is or isn’t but in fact just how much of all that was better that we have lost trying to find this more we do have that isn’t able to measure up to what we gave away?

I think about that cost all the time anymore.

And it rips me to shreds nearly every night as I lay in bed retracing my steps back away from all the abundances that I’ve come to know back to the simple life that I barely remember. I guess that’s just because you’ve got plenty of those steps to retrace in what’s been a 20-25 year journey both to and through so many dreams for so many things that you actually managed to have that actually managed to have nothing on what you had to leave behind to learn to love them more.

Which is the one word that causes all of this cultural cancer that is comparison and every personal choice to care to continue agreeing to it.

More.

We always just want more. We seem to all but honestly believe that more is always better and thus that better is only always more. And so we seek forever this idea of more thinking that it has a better life in store. In fact, so much of what we think is better anymore is nothing more than the more we go shopping to buy from some store as if better is so able to be discounted and hung upon a clearance rack.

And please remind me, why do we keep agreeing to this?

Because it’s everything from easy to then obviously normal. It’s normal to want more. It’s normal to lust after what all the world has. It’s normal for us to now look at those around us and see them for only what they have that we want as we’ve been all but denaturalized into these newly minted yet mindless lives in which all we think about is the more we want of the little we have as is had by those who have the more we crave and offer it to us with, get this, not much of a price to be paid!

It’s like I said, they’ll even give you shiny new smartphone if you just sign up for service.

But friends, question is who’s paying the bill and just how much might it cost? Because the truth is that nothing is free. Nothing in life is truly void of cost or consequence. There is nothing in this world that is sought by this world that comes without at least a choice being made as are always paid in the realization of the other choices we didn’t make as is often only realized, and most sadly at that, when that bill comes due and we see all the lies we’d lived through to thinking that we could afford it.

All because the devil doesn’t tell us the catch as we’re the ones he wants caught.

And wouldn’t you know it but nearly every single hook that he uses comes with some sort of upfront freedom offer attached.

Free phones. Free trials. Free accounts. Free donut when you buy seven. It’s all free.

All free.

All this more that we want so badly is so easily found that we find it being given for free. Sure, there are some things, like those shoes we mentioned, that do have something of a price tag that asks that we fork over the funds to find ourselves finally having found a way to be cool again. But even that is so easily achieved by our working a few more hours of overtime at a job that all but gives us free money so long as we agree to keep willingly showing back up and at the very least pretending that we’re doing something useful whilst there.

It’s all easy. It is indefinably simple for us to find so much of the always more that this world will always have in store for those who just can’t let themselves be the one who lose out or miss out on this addition to what’s an abundance we already have. All because we’ve become quite convinced that, again, more is just better. And thanks to logic telling us that life should be better than whatever this is that it’s so sadly become, we go off every single day in search of both the more we’ve come to want and the means by which to get it.

And we sign up for so many accounts and apps and trials and tournaments that we just live as if this is normal.

But friends, who needs so many pairs of shoes when we literally have but one pair of feet? Who needs a refreshed wardrobe every year when last year’s clothes keep us from walking around naked just as well? Who needs an all-you-can-eat food buffet, especially considering our tendency to see everything as either a competition or a challenge? Who needs a $1,000 phone to do what you used to be able to do with a quarter on the street corner?

Well, problem is that we do because we seem to have so perfectly fallen in line behind the rest of the sheep who are anymore blind to what’s being done thanks to their too having been gifted a free screen to stare at filled with everything from ad-free games to an endless stream of filth found in the form of an abundance of sites that offer an endless number of attractive options that won’t say no or give you a fake number.

It’s all just a great big world of yes.

Do you need this new thing? Yes. Should I buy that new dress? Yes. Can my house be a little bigger to maybe better store the room I could really use for shoes? Yes. Can I eat just a little bit more and maybe win that free hat and my meal paid for, along with my picture added to their wall of fame for having conquered the 10-pound burger game? Yes!

Yes, yes, yes.

More, more, more.

Less life lived.

Simply because life does not consist inside the abundance that we’ve all but come to believe it must. And yet we believe this because we see so many around us with so much we don’t have in what seem to us lives being spent far happier and more meaningful than ours have ever felt.

Ever wonder why?

Not why their lives look so much better, because the fact is that that’s all a lie, but why we think and in fact so often feel as if our lives are empty or meaningless or just stuck inside of some perpetual misery that no amount of money or material can ever seem to help us escape. Why do we always feel so stuck in this cycle of wanting more only to get it and still feel like we’re less? And maybe even better yet, why does it seem like we can’t see the cycle at all?

It’s because we’re still looking for life inside what doesn’t have it.

And well, if there’s a choice more idiotic I don’t know what it is.

And, yes, I say this from what has suddenly become such a personal experience that it’s all combined, over a weekend, in so much change in my life that I feel as if I’ve awakened from a 20-25 year coma and have to learn how to live life again.

All because the life I have lived in that time was only lived for so much so fake and empty, so much that was so lifeless that I in fact never learned how to live life!

And that despite all the stuff I’ve had.

Yeah, throughout the years I’ve had so much stuff in my life, so much I wanted to find, so much I was so excited to finally get, finally feel. And yet here I sit having only found that I don’t know how to be happy, don’t know how to be bored, don’t know how to exist without a screen in my face, don’t know how to talk to pretty girls, don’t know how it all went so wrong.

Because it all felt like it was going just right thanks to all the stuff I was able to find and afford inside what’s been such an abundance that surely life would make sense by now.

If life was to be so proven in such mediocrity as money and/or possession.

It isn’t.

Just takes us a lifetime to learn that.

Question is how many lifetimes will you have?

And while the answer is clearly one, the promise is up to 77.

For that is how many times His Word says we’re to be forgiven for even doing the same stupid things that we probably come to seeing as at least questionably dumb around the 14th or 15th time we try them. All because He is, if anything, so loving that He is in fact patient with us thanks to His not wanting for any of us to perish but rather to come unto repentance in which we finally find all of life turning back to life away from all it never was.

And there is a great many things in this world and that this world does that isn’t life. And no matter how many may claim otherwise or offer you a free trial to try it their way for yourself or may hold high this probably photoshopped picture of how much better they are for having had this thing, truth is that nothing here, nor then any measure of an abundance thereof can ever measure up to what life is really all about.

Because life just isn’t about what we have. It’s about who we are, what we do, why we do what we do and how that helps define who we are.

So that’s the question for today:

Who are you?

And friends, if any part of your answer has you mentioning or pointing to anything in this world, then I’m afraid that you’re not much more than that thing to which you point, upon which you lean.

And yeah, that may hurt. Trust me, I know it’s hurt that cuts so deep you don’t know if you can survive.

But you will, and in fact you’ll find that you can find life again.

But only when we finally stop looking for life in all the stuff in which it never was.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold