Day 3873 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Jeremiah 51:6 NIV

Free to flee

And that simply because it’s becoming quite clear to see that we can only be free when we do flee. And that simply because if we were to stay then we would stay in what is a lost way that can thus find nothing other than what’s already been. And that simply because that which already is and/or always was is exactly what the world in which we walk wants to keep seeing, doing, being. And that simply because there is indeed nothing new under the sun as all things without the Son are still the same as almost everyone loves.

And well, it’s simply all but impossible to convince someone to flee from what they love.

For what sense does that make? I mean, surely we know what we like, do we not? We at least sure seem to. In fact this idea is all but proven every day in every way in which the world around us anymore all but resorts to violence in order to safeguard their every assumption as to their love of something. We’re even to the point of literally warring over words with like guns and knives and stuff.

All because we’ve become a people so very set inside our selfishness that we simply can’t see any necessity inside the allowing in mind any contrarian idea. No, we like what we like and will do so until we learn to love it at which point we’ll happily become violent if that’s what it takes for us to never near any chance of our seeing how wrong we’ve been.

We just can’t fathom that idea and so rather we begin to entertain the possibility of needing to maybe even kill away those who dare ask us to reconsider what we’re doing, why we’re doing it and in fact who we’ve become in light of having become so willing to do whatever it is for however long we have. But what we’re starting to find is that this whole frame of mind that’s nicely summed up within the figure of speech that deems someone to be “set in their ways” has an ability to also set things sideways.

Because it’s becoming clear that folks would rather either go to their graves insisting their ways could never be wrong, or even hasten someone else’s trip unto their own to achieve the same goal, than to even toss around the idea that maybe there is a better way. That maybe there could be a more productive path. That perhaps there is the possibility of something more hopeful and thus meaningful.

Alas, it’s hard to encourage someone toward hope when they all but publicly declare that they’ve all but found everything they ever hoped to find and/or feel. For once someone has arrived at their goal, well, it’s pretty difficult to inspire them to see it for the hope that it isn’t.

After all, a lot of time and effort and excitement has been given to these many things we’ve gotten in this way of life we’re living. Are we supposed to just chalk all that up as the opening move down what then grows to prove a path unending? Are we supposed to truly reach whatever it is that we’ve been wanting only to find that there’s always more to need? Indeed, are we to so set aside the wants we’ve won in exchange for what’s basically a most humbling of devolving back into our all but being again children who want less thanks to the more we realize our needs met?

Why do that? For where’s there glory in that?

No, glory comes to those who both write and fulfill their own story. That’s the story of life we’ve been told since we started living our own. It’s that this world is our oyster and that we need to awake every day that we’re here seeking to further crack it open and see what all still resides inside of what are things that basically everyone else has already wanted if not found.

Yes, we are to basically just agree to follow in the footsteps of the world around us seeking to see what all of us keep assuming is a life so amazing that once we get it figured out and found, well, we’ll just not need anything else and may even come upon a day in which we’ve found so very much that we don’t even have anything else to want.

That is the goal of this world. To have so much that you don’t even understand the word want. To so fill your house and heart with the art of a world now gone artificial in its search for everything from intelligence to meaning. To shove so much stuff into our souls that maybe they won’t feel so cold, tired and alone. Yes, if we could just experience enough of this world’s plenty, and that on a pretty routine scheduling, then we’d be happy. Then we’d know joy. Then we’d have peace.

Yes indeed, peace can wait until we’ve found that day in which our way has finally gotten us to what this world says all life should be.

And we can trust them, can’t we?

I mean we look around daily and see so much influence and excess that it’s easy to understand that everyone else has it all figured out far better than we do. After all, they all have more than we do. Or even if they don’t, still they have what we don’t. We can see this quite easily in this way of life spent endlessly comparing everything from who we are to what others have to why we need what they have in order to become more like who they are in what would still be the very same world that’s still set on the very same path aimed into the very same flame.

But at least we’d have more fun along the way!

And indeed, that’s why this world is all but to the point of killing anyone who dares come along and ask us any questions that might even accidentally cause us to pause and perhaps reconsider what we’re doing while we’re at it. For after all, we’ve all thought for quite some time that we’ve been living a life, right? And we’ve good reason to so surmise. For indeed, we are alive and in our lives we seem to find at least some things we do like and seeing as how that’s apparently at least one of the biggest goals in life then we must be doing at least close to alright.

Yet, just as we saw yesterday in a verse from Revelation, so we see again today the very same message. Run for your lives! And yeah, that does seem like a really weird request/suggestion/idea/commandment, for after all I mean, we're living our lives. Aren't we? And if we are, as it so seems we are, then how is it that we’re to run for them? For to run for something means toward something. And yet nobody runs toward something they already have as, well, what’s the use in the effort of that?

Why run for something you already have?

Almost like He's saying that where we are & what we have isn't maybe the life we've made it out to be?

Indeed, and while this is a truth entire simple to see, we just don’t really seem to see it. At least not on a wide-scale basis. Instead what we see is all but an entire humanity all but sold on this idea that this is home and that, as such, it doesn’t really matter what happens here as we can just find a way to make the best of it while we continue to hunt down the best of it. Yes, come what may this world does remain what is an oyster to many if not most.

And those same most are mainly all but adamant that they’ve not already found the proverbial pearl inside nor then tossed it before the swine that still love to dine on watching us die.

No, because we’re all still alive and thus living our lives and mostly doing just fine as we mostly continue to feel that most days go well enough to mean enough that’s close enough to what means enough to measure up to what the entirety of life is meant to be.

As if life is meant to mean nothing more than the many things with which we fill it and our fighting then perpetually against those who come only to kill it with what are words spoken against our going the same ways we’ve been going so as to continue getting what we’ve gotten which is nothing of lost but rather so very good at finding what we’ve decided life is supposed to mean that we see no sense in stopping our mining operation.

After all, when you hit the proverbial paydirt, you don’t just walk away.

No, rather you show back up every single morning to keep on mining in hopes of finding more of this wealth that then is seen as worth risking your health, your hope, your happiness. Yes, we will wager everything upon our want for worldly wealth. Even our very lives, or at least apparently those of any who may ask us to ask ourselves just how much it will prove worth when we’re not here to spend it anymore.

Guess that’s a good way to describe why we did to Christ what we still love to deny we’ve done.

It was simply because He asks us to reconsider what we’re doing in light of His knowing where this road would lead. That and we really don’t appreciate all this sin talk about how we all deserve to endure what He did. And we don’t really like that He did it because, well, if true there would undeniably be some glory in it. And well, we could have made a good profit off of that kind of glory in this place that doesn’t really see something like that very often.

Indeed, we’re a world impressed by rarity, and yet we see no worth in the promise of eternity despite how He has promised that it shall but scant few who do find that home waiting for them at the end of what are by then lives lived as if home isn’t here but that rather here is merely as close to hell as we care to go. And it will so few who do manage to squeeze through that needle because, well, there’s simply too much here to leave behind.

We’ve all still plenty down here that we’re trying to find. All of us have come upon this entire way of life in which we have so much but can get so much more that we haven’t any time left in the day to stop and reconsider what we’re looking for. We don’t stop and ask ourselves what we’re running toward. Won’t stop and question what we’re running from. No, we just keep running, and that along with the world as, well, that’s the easiest direction to go.

Far less friction and much more fun.

And well, as a people who so prefer ease and tranquility, yeah, it’s easy to see why we tend to just go along with whatever the world is doing and even find ourselves mostly learning to keep on agreeing with whatever they might then ask us to. Helps us skip the hardship of what is a rapidly growing persecution that is in fact starting to actually cost people their lives.

But what if those who’ve lost their lives for following Christ are the only ones who’ve found their lives?

What if those who’ve been running so hard away from the world are the ones who managed to finish their race before the rest of us could? What if that’s the point of life? Yes, what if the meaning of life is that found in finding a faith that’s been planted in us that we’re so adamant to know more about, to know more of that we find ourselves willing to sacrifice whatever it takes to find it or feel it more deeply?

Problem is that such a devotion is anymore so fleeting that we’re all but willing to give it only to that which is fleeting itself.

And that simply because it’s just easier to find whatever is already than to hold out our hope for whatever already isn’t. And it’s easier because that’s what the rest of the world is doing. We are surrounded by those running the very same direction they’ve always known into the very same world that they’ve always known doing the very same things they’ve always known to do in order to keep up with everyone else who’s doing only the very same things.

But friends, I think we have enough evidence of what this world’s going to continue finding. I think we’ve seen enough of the outcome that’s waiting in the direction this world is running. In fact I dare say it’s safe to assume that this world will only find a deeper darkness as it daily plunges to what are all but veritable new depths of depravity and despair.

Is that what we want in our lives? Is that the kind of life we want to live? Do we want what we see to be the grand outcome of our very existence? Indeed, is this it? Have we arrived at the very best we can hopefully be and the outermost limit of all we can hope to have? Is this world our oyster, or it is maybe our enemy? And indeed, I understand the potential danger in a question like that thanks to our minds having devolved into an inability to think rationally.

But at some point we’re all going to have to ask ourselves if what we are and where we are is what and where we want to stay or, if not, whether we’re willing to break away from what we’ve then determined to be not at all the life we thought it would be and instead finally flee from what is then the life we don’t want to keep.

I’m not saying that it’s our time to meet fire with fire or wage war against those starting to pick us off one by one. No, I’m merely saying that since we are in a world that is resorting to showing its ugliness we have more than enough evidence as to why we shouldn’t want to stay here. And we should have so much hope in Christ and His promise of that home in Heaven that we don’t even worry anymore about what all it might cost us to find it.

But then again it’s hard for us to have that kind of confidence when we still see plenty in this world that seems still quite good enough along the way. But friends, just how much good is there in this world? Sure, that’s a really solemn question to ask, but look, it’s questions like that that will help us begin to determine just how intent we are on staying.

And that’s a truly hard thing for us to consider too as, well, the options seem quite polarizing. On one hand you’ve got the choice to live the life you’ve always known and probably learned to love in the same place that you’ve always known and at least used to be able to love more easily than we can these days. And on the other you’ve got what basically amounts to an idea that we’ve never seen, never known, cannot find and will likely fail.

Seems like a no brainer!

And indeed, the version of logic we’ve settled for tells us to stay where we are and do our best to ride out the storm. That we’ll make it through this newest round of heartbreak and hardship and find again a better and brighter day on the other side of it. That we’ve got plenty of life here left to live and thus plenty of time in which to hope we’ll find those better and brighter days.

Why risk all we know for all we can’t?

Why run from what seems to be a life? Why leave behind what’s become our home? Why give up on trying to find what we could probably find plenty more ways to try and imagine we might not fail to find it next time? Why give up all we’ve tried so hard to find, feel, be, become? More than that, why actually flee from it all and run away as if our lives depend on it?

How could our lives depend on it when, again, we seem to be living our lives?

Well, because maybe we’re not. Maybe all this that we’ve been doing isn’t actually amounting to all that much. Maybe all the things that we’ve been doing in a life spent following the world are actually only at best detracting from life, distracting from life, subtracting from life if not in fact all but destroying, dismantling, disassembling and maybe even damning our lives.

Maybe what we’ve come to know of life has nothing to do with life after all.

And maybe this world is doing all it can to give us every reason we need to indeed come out from among them and be separate so that we no longer live that way of life we’ve all known spent sharing in the sins that this world is all but grinning about.

Friends, God’s not going to just dole out mere slaps on the wrist. He’s rather going to literally throw people out of His presence. He will cast the sinful into the lake of fire where there will be an endless weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Yeah, sounds like something worth running away from!

So what then are we waiting for? More proof that this world is fallen? More tragedy to happen? More hatred than we already see? More heartbreak than we already feel? More of the stuff we’ve wanted to find but yet know that we’ll leave? What are we waiting for?

Friends, the darker this world grows the closer the day of Judgement gets. And if you somehow can’t tell, it’s not only clouding up but it’s starting to rain. And while He’s thankfully promised to not destroy via flood again, I don’t think we can really afford to ignore anything that might be trying to open our eyes to see what’s coming. No, He is doing all He can to help us see that this not only not the place we should be but is in fact the way of life we should flee.

Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness but rather expose them. And make no mistake my friends, He is exposing them. Do we not see them? And if we do then why aren’t we fleeing from them? Again, what are we waiting for? Sure, we seem to have life here figured out and that’s left us thinking that things will always return to the status quo we know.

But the truth is that normal isn’t coming back. Jesus is.

Question is will He find faith when He does or just a bunch of people still unsure as to whether they really needed to do what He’s been asking us to for thousands of years now.

No, I’m pretty sure He meant it when He asked us to come out from it. Guess then whether or not we do it all but fully on us.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold