Day 3864 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Isaiah 64:6 NIV

Missing

Anymore it seems that the common man is quite convinced that this is home. That this world is where in which always awaits whatever it is that we’re all supposed to simply assume is ever to be whatever is worth whatever a life awaits to win. And this then has everyone here, or at least the vastest majority of such, in such this rush to heap up wealth as if it will be theirs forever. All to be held inside of houses that are instead called homes as if we’re home simply because we have these hours that we can give to filling our houses seeking to make them feel like homes and us too at such.

Yes, each of us have this deep longing to feel at home, almost as if we were indeed created to all but consist of such a feeling as that found in our belonging somewhere.

Like we’re actually some piece of some puzzle that’s incomplete until we come to see where we fit and we just fall into place alongside then a life that does the same so wonderfully, so perfectly, so beautifully that we’ve left nothing in the way of this instead scarily common knowledge of want and lack and need and greed and every other worldly seed that’s ever been sown inside such things as indifference, disinterest, debate, disdain, despair and denial.

For indeed, when combined those things create less the puzzle and more the problem.

And friends, in case you’ve not noticed the issue as of yet, allow me to describe it in what is hopefully a manner decent enough to help us both define our descent and too what we’re going to do about it.

The problem is this: If this world is our home and home is where the heart is then where is the heart?

Where’s the heart?

Where’s the hope? Where’s the healing, the joy, the peace, the meaning? Where’s there any evidence whatever that any of us are doing the things that matter whether or not they do to another? I mean, we’ve fallen so far from faithfully following what remains the simplest of all paths aimed at the greatest of all promises that we instead dive headlong every single day into doing still the very same things that everyone else is doing seeking the very same things that nobody seems to be finding.

Are we just to then be only forever insane? Are we truly good with the insanity that we’ve seen, that of which we’ve shown? Are we really content with the things we’re shown in scenes seen inside some movie, tv show, infomercial or junk mail flyer? Are we to be forever here as but the perpetual buyer of someone else’s idea of better, and how they’re somehow already there?

Should we be still so quick to buy and believe in anything better coming from a world that’s clearly not coming anywhere near anything better?

Indeed, what’s happened to us? For still we all live as if we’re at home as we’re daily surrounded by so much excess that it would make even our parent’s heads spin. I cannot imagine what our grandparents and great grandparents would make of all this access we have to such things as technology and medical advancement and social progression. We should have such a degree of improvement to be seen thanks to all the ways in which we’ve clearly grown in knowledge and skill and ability and opportunity.

Yes, we’ve each so much opportunity thrown our way every single day that we should all be so undeniably better than we’ve ever been that nobody who sees us should even remember us from when they knew us before. We’ve all the daily opportunity at such growth, and at such hope that such should always instill and install, and yet instead we’ve stalled. We’ve gotten stuck. We’re in a rotten rut that we can’t seem to get out of.

And what’s worse is that it’s a rut we seem as if we’re not interested in getting out of at all.

Meaning then that we’re not merely stuck or stalled but we’ve indeed instead come to delight in falling behind.

Granted, not in terms of technological advancement or all of this so-called “social progression”. No, such things remain the very same as those we’re clearly willing to welcome into our lives via wants and wishes and, in light of this wishing and wanting in which we are quite willing to wait but only in eager anticipation and that with only bated breath for the latest iphone to hit the shelves, such have indeed all but become our lives.

Yes, we live anymore only vicariously through screens and the songs we see others getting to sing to this continuous chorus of discontentment and political division.

That’s all life is anymore.

Throw in some tattoos and few vaping sticks and a general lack of any willingness to even notice our fellow man and you’ve all but defined the entirety of mankind.

And yet we’re supposed to believe that this is home?

That we belong here?

That we should be good with whatever it is that we have to see as shown in the streets and on the phones that keep us from looking either of both ways whenever we cross them, rather just trusting in those likely distracted themselves to not mow us down on their way to town to buy a $12 coffee and flip someone off for cutting them off along the way?

Yes, we’re supposed to like it this way? To keep going this way? To agree with the world that life is supposed to be this way simply because we can somehow, and only ever self-righteously, call it our way?

Friends, what is our way but lost and lusting for only losing more ground every hour?

It’s as if we’ve come upon this belief that we’ve such immense power to be the very rulers of our own little kingdoms and yet all we’ve decided to do with them is launch verbal assaults against our enemies who used to be known as neighbors who may well share a privacy fence but they’ll by no means share our mercy! Indeed, anymore all it seems we’re willing to be is a people vastly without such a thing.

For we offer no mercy, no compassion, no kindness, no understanding. We seek no compromise, no opened eyes, no open minds, no such loss of time. We give no quarter, accept no surrender, most certainly offer none of such a thing. No, rather we are all so self-assured that we are right and everyone else just ain’t that we ain’t got no time to be kind or caring or gracious or grateful or giving or loving.

Those are all seen as losing as they mean the giving of what we could elsewise keep all to ourselves.

And make no mistake, we’re all perfectly fine with hoarding our gifts of faith and forgiveness to ourselves alone as we know that we need as much of them as we can get.

And yet we never seem all that willing to even care to consider turning around and looking toward He who offers them in such endless expression that He calls us into eternal life to find them!

Because no, we’re home already!

For we just love it here so much that we’ve so settled in that we’ve given up.

Yes, we’ve given up.

We’ve stalled out. We’ve quit trying. We’ve just decided to delight in this way of life in which we each exist as but a single ship on a solo mission to find some treasure that we never tell anyone else about thanks to the greed upon which we feed from what are troughs touting the entirety of this world’s ways and wares.

Who cares that some might call our treasure trash and insist that they see swine in line to lick up whatever we leave behind?

That’s their perspective. That’s their problem. It’s their loss that they can‘t see what we can in what seems to be a life so perfect that we apparently can’t see any reason to grow or try and give our lives as they lay for what could well be a much better day.

No, we’re convinced it can get no better because, well, how can you improve upon such unbridled freedom as this we’ve found?

Indeed, how much further have we to go when we’ve gone so far into ourselves that we see no shame in what we’ve become?

But friends, what have we become? What has life become? What can life become or will we have became by the time of that coming day in which our deeds are weighed and every single one of us found there then only wanting in regard to such wins as the wisdom we didn’t and the shame we couldn’t and the regret we wouldn’t and thus the repentance we should have but didn’t either.

No, there is very little of such turning in life. But then again I guess it’s hard to know which way to turn when you only live at night. And sure, maybe the light that is the Christ could help us see both where we’re going, what all’s gone and what of it we might get back were we to step back from the firing line and look again for something better in life.

But then again how could He when He’s considered by those same most that we look to and lean on as either the flimsy figment of the imagination of a few Bible-thumping freaks or just some plausibly historical jerk that said things that really hurt and left then our feelings not accounted for in the pursuit of a faith that only pursues life.

Indeed, how dare He speak to us like He did in those words painted red?

Telling us to give up all we have and stop trying to be like everyone else and thus turn off the path that He knows well is paved toward hell as He walked it Himself with our cross on His back. Asking us to let Him have all our cares, all our worries, all our fears and failures and hurry to have more of all that won’t help. Saying He came to help those who can admit they need it but that He won’t help those who clearly can’t see it. Laying down His life for all of us and simply asking that we lay down our death.

Yeah, hard to see how any of that makes sense.

Again, we’re good. No, better than that, we’re great! We’re so stinking amazing at living life that we can smoke weed all legally like and cover ourselves with clothes that don’t fit and blackened drawings that don’t make no sense and bumper stickers that claim we’ve seen both aliens and apparently some reason to keep voting for all these liars that couldn’t care less about our lives nor if we’ve ever again the chance to live them in at least some fractured semblance of peace.

We make our own peace!

And yet we don’t have any.

All because we can’t admit that both something is missing, that we know what it is, where it went and why we let it go.

For friends, we know. We know what’s gone. We know what this world doesn’t have anymore. We’ve seen the signs, probably painted some of them ourselves with such pigments as pride and pretense. Yes, we’re the ones who protest. We’re the ones who detest. We’re the ones who suggest that we know the way and yet all we seem to find is more of the same nothing to live for that we knew in the day before. And the day before. And the day before.

And the day before.

Indeed, all we seem to know to be is only whatever we’ve already been simply because it’s always going to be easier to repeat whatever already is than to fight to become the better that already isn’t.

No, make no mistake and please hear me out, there is nothing now that is in any way anything any better than whatever can still be should we simply determine to fight to find what we’ve all clearly not found yet.

For better must always remain a matter meant to be made later.

Otherwise all we see is all we can be.

And maybe like many you’re okay with that. Maybe like many you’re good with however far you’ve gotten. Maybe you’re fine with only ever finding more of whatever you’ve found. Yeah, maybe like most you might be willing to just coast out the rest of your days following the many wonderful ways of a world so filled with rot and rejection and spiritual, emotional retardation that is anymore so neck deep that it’s a daily struggle just to breath as it only seems that everyone else is all but fine if you don’t.

Indeed, we’ve become a people who are so indifferent toward even the sanctity of human life that we see it taken away on an almost daily basis.

And yet we mourn those who get to leave as we have to stay in what is a fight that so many have simply given away.

Friends, what is it that we stand to gain by continuing to all but refuse to stand for anything? What can ever possibly improve when we live as if we’ve so much to lose that we’re unwilling to let go for the fear of our thinking we’ll never again know something so good as what we already have? What do we already have, who are we already that has us so settled on staying?

No, something’s missing. And I think we all know it because we all seem to feel it, to see it, to show it. And it’s not the feeling as if we’re at home as so many seem to so clearly believe they are. It’s not hope as most seem to have such a thing for something, mostly only what they can see. It isn’t even faith as we all believe in something too, even if our belief is that there’s either nothing to believe in or at least very little reason to.

What’s missing is the heart. We don’t care anymore. We don’t love anyone. We don’t want anything, at least not anything better. The latest phone? Sure. A fancy coffee? Why not. Faster car? Absolutely. Bigger house? You betcha. Need the room to store our junk and give us a few more walls between those we “love”.

As if we’ve not already walls enough.

Indeed, it does seem as if we are some pretty impressive builders. For we’ve each of us built up walls that store our so much of everything better as we sit rather inside these little kingdoms of self so dramatically ensured that we’re just sure that we’ve found the best that life and love and faith and hope and honor and mercy and madness can offer.

And yet our best is anymore defined by indifference, hatred, hostility, vengeance. We show daily our refusals to try, our rejection of those few who do. We give the world our very worst all while not merely asking but expecting the best in return. All as if we’re kings and queens.

And maybe we are.

But not of things we should have so hoped to become that we’ve become only forever willing to deny everything better.

All because better we just can’t be.

Right?

For we’ve made it. This is what we’ve wanted to find. This is who we’ve always wanted to be, a people so very free that we fight to deny the very existence of such limitations as personal consequence. After all, what cost is there left to pay when all of life’s a game we not only play but do so as if we alone make all the rules and never lose?

Sure, that all seems to work for now. Probably will for a while yet. In fact, all of us have the freedom to choose that path of such little restraint that we refuse ourselves nothing and accuse ourselves of the same. And indeed, there are vastly more who’ve gone that way than there are who’ve humbled themselves unto the other.

But the issue is that Heaven’s never been the reward to be given as in a beauty contest or a popularity contest or a contest of worldly wit or its wanton “wisdom”. No, rather Heaven is the hope of those who have no other upon which they’ve left to lean having learned to leave the things that cannot give us such a hope in not only something better but indeed everything bettered for all of forever.

And yeah, there are so few who walk this life with crosses in tow that the rest seem to know there’s no reason to join them. After all, we can do whatever we want and we watch people doing that very thing every single day.

But that’s the question: Is this what we want?

Is this the home we’ve always hoped to find? Are we the people we once hoped to be? Is this as good as good can get?

Or can’t we see that instead we all just quit?

It’s up to everyone to decide for themselves when they’re done with what can only ever be a personal pursuit of better. Problem is that we’ve managed to redefine that pursuit as one best taken together and we now live to lean only on the world to tell us both what to be, where to go in order to be what they want us to become, and also where we can go if we don’t so agree.

Either way we’ll all end up finding our home and thus that place in which we do feel as if we belong. But looking around at what society has so clearly settled for, sorry but I just can’t stay. Can’t agree. Can’t see anything that even remotely resembles life anymore.

Maybe you can. And if so, congrats! For if the best you want out of life is filthy rags and a mankind so revolting that they cheer at the loss of life, then you have in fact managed to find just what you’re looking for as that’s exactly what this world has to offer.

But please do understand that it’s not what we have nor the little of it we care to offer that makes us feel at home. Rather home is indeed where the heart is and that heart is willing to die to keep that hope of being home alive. Issue then is that everything here will die if it hasn’t in fact already done so. And looking around, yeah, seems like a lot has truly already done so.

But hey, if you feel at home then good for you. I just don’t see how seeing this crumbling world as our home is good for any of us.

Not when it’s so clear what we’ve already so sadly become.

Because something’s missing, and yet so few seem to notice the hole.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold