Day 3872 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Jeremiah 51:45 NIV

For and from

Because sometimes in life a choice is made both to and toward. And indeed, the case of our faith is by all means one of those things that both begins and ends with what truly is a choice as is made to both go and leave as, well, you really can’t do one without the other. And that’s simply because such is the defining identity that makes any and every journey into the journey it’s sought to be. For nobody seeks to take a trip to someplace without the understanding that it means they’ve to leave wherever they already are.

Though, granted, we have even tried to make this idea come to life.

Yeah, we’ve now this idea of a staycation in which we plan a vacation spent staying where we already are, thus shifting the very premise of vacationing into something that’s more readily taken as opposed to the commonly held, and quite well understood expense of what would be a normal vacation without the stay. All because we all know well the cost of leaving. It’s one paid in gas to get where we’re going, time taken off of work, plans made for dogs and such, perhaps even calling in favors to have folks keep an eye on our stuff until we get back.

And yeah, in this world that’s so busy anymore, who has time for that? Who has that sort of willingness to spend so much, in either the form of money or favors seeking what will only amount to what will end as a few day break from whatever mundanity that life’s been allowed to become within what is a place we’re all but so desperate to get away from that we’re willing to go broke just to break free?

Guess the problem is that a normal vacation, be it one in which we travel elsewhere or just stay right here, is that they’re always made with plans to go that are so well thought out that nothing is left to chance.

And well, when it comes to faith, there’s really not much that isn’t left to chance.

In fact, when it comes to faith, we’re all but willfully throwing basically the entirety of our lives to everything from chance to change in what all but, at least for here, remains this continued uncertainty in regard to where we’ll go, what we’ll do, what we might see and what all we might even find that we don’t really miss. And indeed, this is where faith is found as a choice chosen in what is just about the furthest problem away from what vacations are usually seen and expected to be.

For a vacation is taking what’s a planned break in which we spend a set amount of time away from what we’ve then every intent upon thus shortly returning to. Faith on the other hand is a choice chosen with what will become, and once there should remain the understanding that there is no going back. There is no return flight. There is no first day back at the jobs or schools or plans and parties that we only wanted a small break from having to deal with.

No, faith has nothing to go back to as it asks that everything behind us is left on what is the opposing side of what is basically a bridge so burnt so that nobody who meets us on this side of it would ever even imagine that there was another side to our life.

Because that’s how much faith changes us.

Problem then is that is doesn’t seem to change us.

Rather we’ve either stumbled upon or simply sought for this approach to belief that allows us to leave when we need a break. Indeed, I’ve read a lot of late of those who’ve recently decided to “deconstruct” their faith as they reach this place in which they feel as if they need to take a break from what their faith has become. They need a vacation from what once started out as something so hopeful that they indeed determined to leave the life they’d known for the one they knew they can never know enough.

Perhaps that’s where the breakdown comes as it can only come unto we who see this incessant need to know everything and understand as much of it as we might. I know that’s been my struggle with faith, or at least one of them. For I too am someone who feels best when I’ve the chance to understand the fullness of something. I am by no means what you might call a risk taker. No, I like my feet on the ground, my head under the clouds, my days pretty routine and my hopes then all but the same.

Which is what’s caused for something of struggling along the way.

Because God sometimes asks us to trust that we can fly, to look beyond what we can see in His most upward of trajectory, to break free from the ruts our routines are known to carve and learn to hope in what probably won’t seem possible.

How’s that to work when you’re someone who would readily settle for the sure thing of the already seen?

Indeed, I too have found myself often wrestling with God and yeah, I’ve had my share of tweaked hips causing limps and even busted lips thanks to saying what I knew I shouldn’t have even thought.

I just oddly enough don’t mind the beating as I seem to find that of it I’m usually deserving.

But still, that doesn’t mean that we’ll not sometimes want a break from it. But friends, what if the break from it that we need isn’t that as taken from the beating but rather from the places and plans that make the beating necessary? What if it isn’t the misery of having to leave all that we’ve learned to like that causes the struggles in life but rather that we’re slow to learn that what we like doesn’t love us back? In fact, what if what we like is the same stuff that hinders our growth in His love?

Bet we don’t think about that too much.

Yet these days I seem to find myself thinking about it all the time. And that because I’ve this really strange tendency to apparently love breaking back into the very jails that He’s done so very much to set me free from. Who does that? Well, in truth we all do. Some call it nostalgia. Some call it glory days. Some think of it as simpler times. Fond memories. A trip down memory lane. And that’s not to say that those things are inherently bad or wrong or anything.

It’s just that we need to understand the slip they slide into our lives.

And indeed, it’s a trip that I awoke this morning realizing that I myself have recently taken. Alas it’s one that I thought so entirely harmless that, like a life we’d only taken a small break from, would be quite ready to welcome me back as if I’d never left. And I guess that’s because we have this really strange issue with time in that we think so little of it that we don’t really realize how much of it has really gone by. Rather we’ve these eyes that see only the plans we’ve made and how perfect they’ll be.

Or even how what was is maybe a little better than what is and how we might should thus welcome at least some of it to come along with us.

Indeed, we anymore see vacations as nothing more than two week journeys spent from normal. And indeed, I think it might be fair to say that we see faith as all but the same. Just a little trip we take via a quick skim through Scripture or a simple prayer we’ve repeated so many times that we literally don’t even think about the words anymore. And I’d surmise that such is why so many seem to find that they need a break from faith as much as they need a break from life.

But no, what we need is to break away from the life we’ve known to live that’s left us looking at faith as something that’s more or less just an addendum to our normal.

That’s why God here calls it ‘running for our lives’.

It’s because the lives we’ve lived have been lived in basically what is lockstep with a world running still away from anything that could even remotely resemble a reverence of or for anything other than self. That’s the way of life that this world sells. It’s this idea that seems to tell of this plausibility to make all these personal plans, for vacations and such, that will all go always accordingly to everything from what we want to what little we won’t admit we don’t understand.

We want every aspect of life to align with the way of life we’ve come to understand as that simply affords us an ease that we know we’ll not need a break from.

Simply because we’re all but unwilling to break from that which is breaking us.

That’s the trip we need to take. And again, it’s one that can really only be taken when we bring with us not what we’ve had but rather only instead lighters and torches and, well, a little gasoline wouldn’t hurt either. Why? Because we’ve an entire life to leave behind! One that’s been spent so shallow and sinful that we shouldn’t want any part of any invitation to come back. Back to what?

Indeed, what is it about our past that has us always so interested in maybe going back?

Don’t we understand that going backward is pretty much the worst possible way to try and move forward? Or is it rather that we’re not too sold just yet on whatever it is that we might be interested in moving on toward?

That maybe the unknowns held up ahead won’t be as okay as the knowns we’ve known in the lives that we’re asked to leave behind? That perhaps the life we’ll find in the places we’ll go won’t be seen as quite as acceptable as that which we’ve learned to accept by mostly just accepting that maybe not all that much should change in life? That perhaps we just need a little break every now and then? That maybe we’ll feel better should we be able to destress for a week or two before flying back into the very life in the very place that caused so much stress we just about went broke just trying to get away for a couple of days?

Don’t we see the stupidity?

It’s found in that we’re called to flee from what we’ve been, what we’ve known, where we’ve been and what this place has grown to be. Flee. Run away from it. Don’t even take the time grab some stuff on your way out. No, just go. Run. Leave it behind and make that decision so final that you don’t even want to look back at whatever you’re leaving because you know you’ll never return as you’ve resolved in your soul to never again know that from which you’ve chosen to flee.

Yes, run your lives. Save yourselves. As even the King James says, “deliver ye every man his soul”.

Almost as if to say that we do maybe have a part to play in this story of our salvation.

Granted, it’s not the salvation part as that’s pretty much been perfectly put to rest. Literally! I mean we physically saw to it that He who achieved our salvation was laid to rest in what now somehow remains an empty tomb that’s known of by basically the entire world and yet still considered something so impossible by many that it’s foolishness to most.

See why we need to leave?

It’s because the way of life we’ve all learned to love is the same as that which this world still loves and refuses to leave. It’s that way of life in which we only see what we want to see and never hear what we need to hear. Like God asking us to run for our lives from what is His fierce anger. And sure, like most we could pause the cause to consider why God’s so angry when He’s been made out by most to be nothing but this great big teddy bear that doesn’t really mind dying anytime we feel like being idiots again.

But can’t we rather see the kindness and grace that He’s given us in warning us that His anger is coming?

And honestly, if the fierce anger of God, known for things like tearing down walls and dropping arrogant giants and raining fire upon the unrepentant and drowning entire armies of His people’s enemies and flooding the entire world because all but like eight people were living as His enemies, if that same anger is said to be coming to wherever and however we’ve been living, does it really even matter where we go?

Is not anywhere better than staying where His wrath is going to be unleashed?

And yet we stop. We wait. We go for a bit but then feel as if we need to take a break. We are all living like Lot’s wife, always looking back to see what we’ve left behind. Always wondering if maybe something we’ve always known could have been something we managed to bring with us. Always asking if maybe the past was the best and maybe we should just go back to living however we did back then.

It did seem simpler, didn’t it? It was easier, was it not? I mean, I think back and find so many amazing memories that I too wonder if perhaps I could find my way back to what is a world that doesn’t exist anymore.

See how slippery this idea really is?

Friends, God isn’t calling us to come away from what we could, at least theoretically, perhaps find a way to make work well enough to call a life. He’s asking us to come away from the death we’ve known as a life and leave behind every way in which this world walks still as if dead. Yesterday is gone. Now that’s not to say that we shouldn’t appreciate the memories that God’s given us the ability to remember. It’s not to say that we shouldn’t enjoy or appreciate the things He’s given us the ability to enjoy and appreciate.

We should.

But we should not fall again into that same old assumption that where we are is where we should stay. That doing what we’re doing is all we’re here to do. That having what we have is what makes us who we are and thus that losing any of it or being so bold as to willfully leave any of it behind is thus akin to basically killing ourselves.

No, grab what you can of the good He’s helped you to see, feel, experience and enjoy.

Then run.

Don’t look back. Don’t rethink. Don’t ask questions. Don’t wonder why.

Why?

Because He’s told us.

Tells us right here in fact. It’s because His fierce anger is coming to a town near you and a life so near yours that you won’t live if you’ve not left. It’s like these extreme weather shows my family and I have been watching in which the local authorities issue these warnings, right up to the point of mandatory evacuations, all to help try and save people from things like hurricanes or wildfires that are burning their way.

Does it matter what you think you need to have to enjoy the life you’ve known when if you stay you might well die?

I personally cannot tell you all the things that I’ve had in my life that had more of my life than my life did. I’ve given so much stuff so much of me that the stuff I’ve had better defined me than I could. And indeed, I still find myself falling victim to this idea that what was or is is all that can be. That what I have and where I am is what and where I should be. That the already known is safer than the unknowns that He calls us into.

But friends, don’t we know enough to know in Him we can trust?

Let’s just hash this out.

1. He created us

2. He tried to help us live decent lives by giving us His Commandments.

3. He sent the prophets to keep trying to point us back toward them whenever we’d wander off.

4. He died for us when the prophets clearly stopped getting through.

5. He offers now to lead the way to what is a promise too amazing to imagine.

6. He tells us what’s coming before it comes so that we can, as He asks here, run.

7. He helps us do so by helping us to see so much that’s so wrong that we shouldn’t want to stay.

What more can He do or say that could help us understand any better the dire dilemma we’re facing?

Just this morning I literally woke up feeling angry, tired, frustrated, upset, off balance, truly physically sick to my stomach. And now if I were to tell you why I think it’s happened you’d probably think I’m crazy.

Trust me, sometimes I wonder myself.

But in recent years I’ve so narrowed down my life to the point that even if I eat something I used to eat I’ll feel like a steaming bag of garbage for a bit. I’ve cut so much out of my life that I physically can’t tolerate it being let back in. Apparently even down to music. (trust me, even I’m trying to figure out how it works)

But the point is that He calls us away from things for a reason, and, as His Word promises, those reasons will always work out for the good of those whom He loves and who love Him. His plans are for our good, and well, I don’t know that we need to look much further for better proof of that than this verse which asks that we leave behind the way of life we’ve learned to live in the place that is a stop on what will be His world tour.

Only He ain’t playing concerts as, well, trumpets don’t draw the crowds! And indeed, even if He was the shows definitely wouldn’t sell out because, well, nobody seems really interested in what He has to say.

Rather the entire world is vastly okay with all but leaving things as they are. Hey, if it ain’t broke why fix it, right? And even if it is broke, just ignore it and you won’t feel like you might ought to fix it.

Indeed, there’s no problem we can’t ignore if we try hard enough.

But friends, there will be no ignoring what He’s told us is coming. And now that He has told us, if we choose to stay and find out, well, that’s on us. He’s asked us to come apart from the world, from the very lives we’ve lived within it, and to run for our lives from what will obviously then take our lives if we haven’t done so.

Yeah, we will lose a lot in our leaving behind the way of life we’ve always known in the only place we’ve ever been. But losing what isn’t a life, but is actually promised death, well, maybe that’s not such a bad thing.

Definitely not as bad as we’ll probably find a way to make it seem along the way. And even then, just let it feel bad.

After all, won’t that still feel better than being dead?

#LeaveNoSoulUntold