Day 3863 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Luke 12:34 NIV

Home

It seems as though there’s this unanimous longing inside every human inkling that’s inked in this hope that there exists some place, some thing, something someplace that will accomplish for us this feeling of feeling as if there we belong. As if there’s an outcome to come at some point in which we can look around at all there is and all we’ve missed and just admit that we’re okay. That we’re good with things and how the said have come to turn. That we’ve arrived at that place and time in which we’re content with the content.

A place where we can finally rest from our every pretense that assumed we needed our every preemptively tense testing and trashing to ensure the legitimacy of a line we could follow and not get lost again.

Because simply put, we’ve done lost too much already.

And that’s not what home knows. That’s not what home is. That isn’t where home is. No, home is rather where the heart is and so thus the heart is wherever home waits. And yet this is the difficulty of all life as lived here. It’s the weight of the waiting. It’s the gravity of so many days going against us as we’re just trying to go to that place in which we’ll find some peace. It’s the misery of meeting so many moments in which we seem to see only another setback or step back as are all taken away from where we all hope to go.

Which is home.

Because home knows no such misery but is rather always there with a warmth that melts it all away. It’s a place in which there is such little loss or strain that we even enjoy the rain as it falls softly upon the roof built over our head as it provides such a restful sound to soothe our ears that don’t itch anymore for those lies that once soothed during the day only to keep us up at night. It’s that place where trouble can’t come and help is always found and hope never leaves.

Yes, home is the place where we feel like we can stay and not even have to pretend to be something we’re not in hoping we might.

Indeed, home is hope as it’s everything we need: shelter, safety, security, solidity.

Home is the foundation of everything we do in life whether we realize it or not. And that’s simply because we know there must exist a place to which everything points as without that destination, well then, what does anything matter? What does anything that happens in life truly mean if we’ll not one day see the reason for our having gone through it?

Or do we just think that everything we experience is so randomly subjective that we’re truly nothing more than often unwilling participants in a game of choice and chance in which nobody wins and everyone dies?

What’s the point then in our being alive?

You know, just yesterday my family and I were talking about a topic that I can honestly say I’ve never considered. And as we discussed this discussion I realized why I’d never considered it before. And that’s because the premise, in literally all of its entirety, makes so little sense that I truly cannot even begin to make it make sense. It just seems so void of everything from reason to rationale that I have no idea as to even where I might begin to make it make sense.

And that topic is why some don’t believe in God.

See, we hear all time around here these people asking for our reason as to why we do believe. It’s a wondering almost always asked from someone with an almost palpable sense of anger or angst, some aggravation as to the very conversation that they’re oddly enough most often the ones to even bring up. In fact it’s almost always asked in what feels a tone at best disagreeable and at worst entirely demonic. Almost as if they planned to ask seeking to help us see the futility in a life spent dying to believe.

But friends, to what else shall we die?

For what else shall we die?

We do know that we all shall die, right?

What then is the grand plan for when we do?

See, what seems so strange to me, having been on this side of that line of what’s anymore such an intense line of questioning that you can even perhaps be killed just for being willing to be asked it, is that there’s always a willingness to answer without the same willingness to always consider. It’s just sort of this hail mary pass tossed up hoping to hear something that makes sense.

Something that would offer the foundation we’re looking for upon which to begin building what can hopefully become a belief in which we can believe that something better is always on the way despite the every day that’s still to come in which not much good seems to show up. Because let’s face it, things aren’t getting any better.

And yet still so many are still looking here for their treasure.

But friends, do you not see the issue?

It’s not that to be proven in how this world just doesn’t have anything to offer. It does. It’s not a problem to ever be proven in how there is no such thing as peace or purpose to find or feel within this place. There are. It isn’t even that this world couldn’t, at least theoretically, get its proverbial act together and unite in a common concern as to our all helping to untie the knots in which we’ve all gotten lost and seek together for the now antiquated goal of the greater good as had for and thus by all.

It’s rather simply that while this world may have some of those things, or at least some still hoping either in or for those things, the thing is that this world is passing away and thus too everything both in and of is passing too.

And so why then do some not believe?

Honestly, what’s the benefit? What’s the payout? What’s the point in literally anything that happens, everything that we do if all of this ends in a dirt nap from which we won’t wake up?

Is that hope?

Is it home?

Is home or hope truly to be never anything more than whatever we find on this side of that encroaching line? Are they hidden away in those things that we’ve yet to have or hold but still hope we can before we can’t? Indeed, is hope something that we should be so able to assume as something we can either lose or simply miss altogether? Is home supposed to be a place we may never find alongside then all those feelings of warmth and safety all unseen as well?

I can’t understand that.

Yet I suppose that such it why’s it called a “powerful delusion”.

“For this reason God sends them a powerful delusion so that they will believe the lie and so that all will be condemned who have not believed the truth but have delighted in wickedness.” 2 Thessalonians 2:11-12

What reason?

“The coming of the lawless one will be in accordance with how Satan works. He will use all sorts of displays of power through signs and wonders that serve the lie, and all the ways that wickedness deceives those who are perishing. They perish because they refused to love the truth and so be saved.” 2 Thessalonians 2:9-10

All because, in fulfillment of verse 8 from that same chapter, the lawless one has indeed been revealed.

We see it all the time anymore. Indeed, the entirety of the human race has fallen to depths of indignity and despair that in all honesty shouldn’t honestly be so possible as they are anymore sadly provable. And how are they provable? Just look around man! I mean the hills are literally alive with the sound of murder! We’re anymore so accustomed to hatred and violence that we don’t seem bothered at all by the loss of human life.

We’ve simply experienced too much of it in recent times. It’s truly like we’re Rome rebranded only the Colosseum is called a TV and we livestream tragedy all the time.

Even got folks cheering and laughing when folks lose their lives.

Tell me again how awesome we are for having progressed so much from the archaic ways of our ancestors.

They mocked Jesus, laughed at Him, poked fun and even spat as He hang there dying to literally atone for what they were in the very same moment still doing!

What are we doing? And honestly, is this place anything in the way of what we hope to call home?

Not me.

Sure, I seem to have once believed that such a hope could be here somewhere. I think we all do. After all, we’re all here! And so it makes some sense to look where you are for what you hope to be there with you. But friends, I think we can just about stop hoping to find what clearly isn’t here to be found. For in truth I just don’t know that something like widespread peace or communal compassion can come back around.

And even if they did, how long would it be before someone else arose to act as the divider sent to separate us once more into what are, at this point already, all but warring factions in a world so fractured that we all feel the sting of almost everything anymore?

There’s just so much sorrow and sadness, so much anger and disappointment, so much hatred and bloodshed.

I don’t want those things in my home!

And since those things are so common down here then I can only surmise that this isn’t my home.

Doesn’t matter what this place has to offer anymore. I don’t want it. Doesn’t matter that so many others still seem so willing to either.

No, as this world goes along upon the path that so many have so clearly chosen to settle for, I’m just done with settling. For I’m truly stick to my stomach with all I see that we’ve settled for! This place is rife with so much that so unhealthy, unhelpful, unhopeful. And again, those things shouldn’t be so welcome within what home should be. And they definitely shouldn’t be so expected as they’ve become.

Indeed, it’s almost as if we expect things to go wrong, to feel bad, to seem heavy and stay hard.

All because the world’s all but broken us into not really believing in anything better anymore.

Why should we? We all have eyes to see that better isn’t coming. We have ears that can hear the anger getting worse. We’ve hearts that feel the sting of hatred as known so commonly anymore in such things as political division and social incivility. We see it all but every day.

Tell me then, what do we gain by continuing to think that this is all there is? What is the point if this place is the only place that we can find peace? I mean, if that’s the case then I can understand why everyone’s so angry all the time.

I’d be ticked off too if I kept looking for what the world continues to prove entirely too willing to steal, kill, destroy.

Sound familiar?

You know, I pray all the time, multiple times a day in fact. And part of my daily begging is that He would help us learn to love one another more than we have and to love Him more than we probably think we can as we’ve been widely taught that we can’t. And that simply because we apparently can’t love what we can’t see. Much the same as we apparently can’t afford to believe in what are treasures unseen too.

But friends, if all we can believe in and hope for and trust to provide all we need for us is only what we can see, then can’t we see that we’re in trouble?

Because despite the asking, the love isn’t coming. Despite the hope, healing isn’t either. Despite the cry it seems the times are not changing for the better. For all we continue to see, and all we continue to hear, and we then continue to feel is just bitter. Indeed, this world is so upset and angry that every day it’s as if we’re walking into the face of such a bitter cold that we all know only to hate those stealing our heat and killing our hope.

Where is your treasure? Where are you going? What’s the meaning of any of this? Does any of it matter? Can it? Can we? Will we?

Sad to say but I fear the only answer to that is maybe.

And yes, even those asking as to treasure and where we’re going.

Anymore it’s all nothing more than a maybe.

For we don’t know. Don’t even seem in all that big a hurry to find out. Instead we’re all just here still bickering amongst ourselves as if we’re the only ones who have it figured out and everyone who sees something differently or hopes for something different is just wrong. Yes, the entirety of this human experiment has devolved into nothing but a debate over whose idea of better is better.

And yet all we continue to be is just bitter, so much so that anymore we commonly resort to murder just so we don’t have to hear someone else’s ideas any longer.

And the longer it goes on this way, the deeper I long for that coming day to just get here.

Yeah, I just want to go home.

And yeah, I know that I won’t until the work He has for me to do is done. But it’s even to the point in which it’s getting harder to believe that this work I’m trying is making much of a difference.

Sure doesn’t look like it is.

And sure, it’s probably fairly foolish for someone so small as I expect and elate to remain to make all that much of a change.

Guess I’m just weird like that.

Weird enough to even still believe in the idea of home without any of all that so many are settling for filling their ending versions with.

But let me ask you this: What’s weirder, filling this world with your hope and making this world your home or embracing that you’re leaving this world and not spending then quite so much time worried about who might be wrong or who probably isn’t right while the night closes in and threatens then to take away every treasure we’ve had?

Friends, I don’t care what anyone may make of me. Because to put it simply this world has lost its hold on me. I don’t belong here, this isn’t my home.

No, I’m just here on business.

And thankfully I know it a business that offers benefits that don’t perish, won’t run out, can’t disappoint, wouldn’t know how. No, that Jesus died for me proves to me where I belong, because He said He was doing so to go and get my place ready. And indeed, I’m doing my best to be more ready to go to that place every single day.

But I can’t quite put into words just how bad it hurts to watch as so many continue to so willfully refuse the same hope I feel whenever I think of home.

Though I suppose that if you’re among those many who still see this world as your home then I might should be happy for you. But I’m not gonna lie and say I can be because, well, there just doesn’t seem to be too much happy anymore. In fact, speaking personally, happy has become something so hard to find that I don’t really know what it feels like anymore.

Seems I remember being close at least, but truth be told that was within what seems now a vastly different world than that in which we’ve again awoke today. That’s not to say that back in the day was something as perfect as perfection can be. Seemed closer than whatever this is though.

And no, neither we weren’t home then either as home still wasn’t here. But then again Heaven seemed closer when there wasn’t so much hatred.

But I suppose that perhaps all the hatred we see and feel is only working to hasten the day in which those clouds will part and we’ll start for home.

I just don’t want for anyone to miss that chance as I know we won’t have another. And so I’ll set my hands as best I can to trying every day to find something to say that may plant a seed inside someone’s heart that inspires them to perhaps even start asking themselves where their treasure is held.

Not that I’m the one to bring the help, just that I can’t sit idly by as the world starts to burn and not do something. No, we can all do something, and well, that sort of hopeful unity around a singularly hopeful purpose is what helps a house stand.

But friends, a house isn’t a home as a house only holds what we manage to fit within it.

A home doesn’t agree to such limits.

So please do consider for yourself where you’re storing your treasure as is sought by the heart and that for the hand. Yes, what do you hope to hold in terms of hope? And if that hope’s still here then I ask you kindly to reconsider. Because the truth is that this place isn’t home.

And honestly, the lack of hope we continue to see upon the solemn faces of a growing many should be evidence enough that this world isn’t going to prove of enough good to make it one.

Let’s make our home somewhere else and spend this life as if we’ve then that somewhere else to be. May not help make this place all that better as, well, most seem quite set against that sort of thing. But hey, we can try! And since we’re not home yet, what else do we have to do expect fight to help someone else see that this doesn’t have to be their home either but that there is indeed something, somewhere so much better?

#LeaveNoSoulUntold