Day 3866 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Matthew 5:19 NIV

Flip it

Because for days now we’ve been wandering through this discussion as to how the home is supposedly where the heart is and how on earth that’s still even possibly believed whilst living within an earth in which we see so little heart anymore even though so many live as if this world is their home. Indeed, the topic’s centered upon this single question: If home is where the heart is and this is our home then where is the heart? And I’m truly trying to understand the general mindset as it seems I used to and see still many who still do but I don’t anymore.

Rather I woke up this morning to the sound of a storm coming and the answer to the issue hit me like the lightning that flashed outside.

It’s not that we’re wrong necessarily, even though we are quite wrong ordinarily. Because indeed, home is where the heart is as we’re in truth told expressly to set our hearts upon Heaven as is done in the storing there of our every treasure and thus our many hopes as housed within them. For indeed, a home is a place of such hope as love and peace and mercy and meaning. And so yes, the home is where the heart is, and yes, that is a truth we can, even here, still believe in.

Problem is that here we live only focused on trying to find a place only here in which we can feel at home and there offload our heart into a hope that is all but drown upon worldly delight and social deception. And this now violent clarity has left me to realize that to address the many issues we’re facing within this world will require us to understand our vast tendency to get most things both wrong and that so much so that we so often see them only upside down and backwards.

For the only way to a better day found in this world is for us to understand that while living as if home is where the heart is can bring us a measure of hope in such hopeful things as love, as peace, as mercy and meaning and the gleaning of our getting the gaining of some traction up and out of this pit we’ve dug all by and for ourselves alone is to begin considering the backwards and upside down.

Because sure, home is where the heart is, but friends, so too is heart where the home is.

And it’s this hard reality that defines all but every single one of every single issue we’re facing as a community.

For anymore, just as this verse defines, the heart has been left open wide and thus willing to allow to reside all manner of miscreant and malfeasance. The heart has become home to such things as hatred, animosity, greed, a general hostility as shown to everyone within this approach to life as lived amongst others just trying their best to as if, instead of neighbors who are struggling, all we seem to see anymore are enemies, adversaries, the very obstacles that we’re to overcome if we want what they probably do too.

And indeed, anymore we all seem so filled to overflowing with malice and maligned intent that we’re all but content to continue to at best absorb the violence if not in fact cheer it on.

And these past couple of weeks have shown us this very reality upon the only source of such for which we reach, a reality shown and thus seen on social media feeds featuring people cheering the loss of the life of someone they knew so little about.

Proving then that it matters not what we know but rather that we’re daily willing to awake only to roll right back in to this fighting amongst ourselves as to who is right and who is not and what we’re willing to devolve into doing about those many who may disagree with what we ourselves may well find disagreeable too.

If only we’d ever actually stop following the herd just long enough to hear ourselves think and have ourselves then some thoughts of our own.

But no. No, rather we’re anymore owned by the hatred that has invaded every human heart and now even holds hostage every human mind. You know, I’m daily amazed, and I mean that in the most utterly heartbreaking of way, as to just how consumed we are with all the discontent as being designed in the goings on that are all but thus devouring us at this point.

Just last night I talked to God about how afraid I am because of how distracted we’ve become.

Because anymore it seems as though all we know to feed upon are the unrested aspects of what’s clearly a now failing civilization. And why do I say that we’re a “now failing civilization”? Because the root of civilization is civil. And well, there’s not much that’s civil about us or amongst us anymore. We are instead becoming more and more uncivilized as we cut up and criticize those among us who are in any way different than us.

We don’t even stop to consider just how severe the difference anymore!

No, we just catch notice of some difference of opinion or outlook or personal design of the personal hope we each personally hold inside and we run to the kitchen and grab the knife that we’re all so entirely eager to wield in what is a world in which we wound first and ask why later.

But no, no I’m asking today. I’m asking us right now:

Why do we do what we do when what we’re doing so clearly isn’t helping?

For we know beyond a shadow of doubt that such things hatred never really help us. Anger doesn’t arrive at anywhere we want to be. Resentment isn’t where we’re going to find any rest. Violence doesn’t seek to involve or educate or edify. Staring at the specks in our enemy’s eye only keeps us focused on how they’re wrong as defined by how we think we’re right.

Yes, we think we’re right, and we’re so deathly afraid of it being proven otherwise that we always end up resorting to killing those who say otherwise, or live otherwise, or see through open eyes that way of life that we’re all so clearly not living in a world in which killing is considered a response justified to even a simple disagreement over what’s truly a rather insignificant issue anyway.

And so, getting back to the question I just asked, why we do it is because it’s all we know to do.

Because, in keeping with our often and vastly unacknowledged tendency to ourselves prove the veracity of Scripture itself, the mouth does indeed only speak that of which the heart is full.

And if we can’t see that that has clearly testified to the fact that we’re at best only half-alive then I’m afraid we’re far more blind than we could have ever hoped we weren’t.

For we see it every day anymore. We hear it all the time. We are daily, hourly surrounded by some breaking news story of some heartbreaking tragedy unfolding both in real time but to eyes blind to the significance of our continued fall into the black of hearts that have become all but the same. And indeed, there has been so much violence and hatred and division in our lifetime that we’re all but used to it. We’re accustomed to it.

We’re desensitized to it, and that’s left us all quite indifferent to it.

But is that who we should be? Is that how we should live? Is there any part of that that shows that our hearts are the home of something so good as even a shred of love?

Or does not the fact that we’ve arrived at the place and time, the place in time in which we can still cheer at the misery of another only prove that we’re so far gone that it would take an act of God to even bring us back to six feet deep?

For indeed, there were those, and many we can surmise, who did themselves cheer as Christ hang there losing His life.

And my, (oh my) just look at how far we’ve come!

Not because we do things any differently, as again the past couple of weeks have shown how we don’t, but we do have now the ability to do it on cell phones that cast our venom before the eyes of those who are themselves quite hungry to feast upon it even on the other side of the planet!

Yes, we’re indeed not at all hesitant to show forth our very worst to whomever may wish to see it.

But friends, is that truly who we want to be? I mean, it’s certainly who we’ve become. But that’s just it, the very beauty of what is both forgiveness and the new beginning that such a gift can give us. It’s that we can set aside, lay down if you will, whoever it is, whatever it is that we’ve come to become in order to make some room for our to become something else, something different, something better even.

And indeed, such is so obviously the point of Christ’s calling us still to those crosses we’ve largely left uncarried all throughout our lives. For He called us into that share of what He did here so that we, like He, can find the better that He had to leave here to lead toward. Because better does not exist for a people who exist with hearts so filled with hatred and a willingness to resort to physical, mental, emotional hostility to show it.

And why do we do it?

Because we can only give what we’ve allowed in.

We can only share what we’ve accepted. We can only offer unto those around us what we ourselves have let inside us. And that’s why I’m so afraid of what’s clearly this direction we’re going. Not because it’s already bad, which it so clearly already is. Not because it’s daily getting worse, which daily it is. Not because we can’t probably make it another 10, 20, 30 years living like this because odds are we can.

No, what defines my worry is thinking about where it will take us, both as a people and each of us then as a person.

For indeed, I’m one of those who looks ahead to what could come from our doing of what we are right now. And friends, I just don’t see any good coming from where we’re all so collectively so clearly going.

Because how will more hatred help? What can more anger accomplish? How are we to make life here better for anyone if all we continue to do is only see all but everyone as our enemy that we then can take quite an easy drive to seeing as our being then justified in leaving unalive?

Do we not see just how razor thin this line is that we’re walking?

We’re so worried about so many things, and each of them have become so politically polarizing that while we fight and bicker about our personal understandings as to those things like freedom of speech, we’re starting to only see that we’re rapidly losing our interest in leaving one another free to stay alive. Indeed, we are to the point in which murder is mainstream as it’s anymore streamed on the nightly news thanks to another school shooting, public stabbing, an assassination attempt.

An assassination success.

And we just go on about our business as if we’re fine with it like this.

Friends, how did we get here? How did we arrive at this place in society in which we’re so increasingly indifferent even toward human life? I mean, in just recent years we’ve devolved into talking about changing gender? Teaching kids sexual perversion in the classroom? Boys being allowed in girls locker rooms? When it’s appropriate to kill babies as determined by how close they are to being born?

How did we get here?

Where do we go from here?

Where can we go from here when we got here following behind hearts that are so very much deceptive and beyond cure?

Sadly I must surmise that we’ve failed, as we so love to do, to appreciate enough the asking found in Proverbs 4:23 to avoid the warning against which it was aimed.

For in truth, yes, everything we do does flow from the heart, a fact which should have had us perpetually on guard against our then letting in anything that we’d not otherwise want inside from where we share what is that everything we do.

But no, instead we’ve allowed in every form of this world’s continuing fall.

Leaving us ourselves to only fall in line behind the rest of those so increasingly blind to what we’ve become and how we’ll not become anything better so long as we house hearts that are themselves home to everything bitter, everything violent, everything hateful, everything sinful, everything wrong.

Indeed my friends, what can ever possibly go right having become a people whose very hearts are allowed to not potentially become but in fact now only sadly remain the home of so much darkness and depravity? We are broken, and we just can’t be anything else if we keep doing what we’ve been doing which is letting in everything bad and expecting that it won’t leave us with only the same to share.

It will.

Question is do we care?

Because if we did, well, wouldn’t we do something about it? Wouldn’t we try something different? Wouldn’t we flip what’s become the latest table needing to be upturned in our lives? If we truly saw what we’ve become would we not be willing to do whatever it takes to become something better?

Even to the point of indeed taking up crosses and flaying what has been upon them so that it never again dares to try and define what we, in that action, a most humbly hopeful one it would be, find ourselves willing to fight to maybe one day become?

Again, that’s why Jesus came to lead the way by going the way that none of us have. It’s because He understands that doing the same things will only bring us the same results. And so He came to do a new thing that has indeed now sprung to what is the springing us from these jails we’ve become housing hearts that are anymore only the home of every horror and indifference known to man.

He came to set us free from what we’ve become, and He died to help us see just how bad what we’ve become really is.

And He left to the promise of creating in us new hearts of flesh to replace those of stone we’ve all come to know.

What do we have to lose other than a lost way of life in which all we’ve ever managed to find was only our every heart filling or in fact filled with an impressive ability to hate those around us.

Even to the point of nailing to the cross He who came to save us from doing such a thing!

Friends, I contend that it should be quite easy for us to say that what we’ve become is not in any way what we should delight to be. It’s definitely not what God created us to be. And sure, while there are many who likely still don’t believe in Christ or the truth and authority of Scripture, even though we again have each managed to come upon a way of life in which we ourselves are living testimonies to the truth it speaks, truth is that I don’t think any of us would agree that the world is going in a very good direction.

I mean, yeah, some are cheering, but friends, does that not pretty much prove the point?

We are literally watching the world burn itself alive through such things as hatred and division and the violence to which such things inevitably descend.

Is that where we want to go? Is where we are right now where we want to stay? Do we truly like living this life this way? Or do we not all seem to share this hope of and in and for something better?

And how on earth can we get there to that better when our hearts are allowed to remain the shelter of such things as lust and greed and theft and, yes, even murder?

Sure, not many of us have actually killed someone. But friends, is not the fact that we’re so used to it that it barely affects us anymore say all we need to hear about what it is that we’ve become?

The point is that all the things listed out for us to read in this verse right here in Matthew should have never even existed, never been possible. And so they definitely shouldn’t have become so widespread that they’re anymore seen as our normal. There is nothing normal about what we’ve become. And yet we got here to this normal thanks to our letting in everything the true enemy says is acceptable.

Friends, I think it’s clearly time that we stop accepting what the devil wants us to and start instead crawling our way back to the foot of the cross where we can finally start asking God to help us rid our lives of everything bad we’ve let inside and to begin actually guarding our hearts so that nothing else that’s so clearly dark is allowed back in.

For the heart is home to all we allow in, and what we see and all we say is only evidence of what’s found a home inside our heart.

Time to shake the rafters my friends.

Too much death has gotten in.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold