Day 3881 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Isaiah 64:7 NIV

The Fog

These past several mornings I’ve awakened unto a haze that’s began the days in a way that I’ve always admired, adored in fact. For there’s a strange serenity to the scene shown of the mist as it drifts so slowly that it feels as if the clouds themselves have come down to blur the ordinary sights we see into something of a mystery. It’s a truly beautiful thing, this dewed peace falling in place and limiting our gaze. Almost seems as if it comes only to slow us down and inspire us to look closer thanks to the inability to see as far as we pretend we can normally.

Indeed, fog isn’t the normal sight we expect to see as most days seem instead rather clear.

But I can’t help but feel that we might need the fear of our being so forced to look more near. For what I fear is that we’ve found only ways to so continually continue along these ways we’ve chosen and within the words in which we walk them that we normally know to be waiting for us every morning is that something’s missing. Because much like the fog which obstructs our normal view so too does this normality of which we’re used perhaps do much the same as the dew that’s came these past few days.

I do indeed worry often as to what all has been allowed to become what we call normal. Because normal is such an easy thing to embrace, to identify, to perhaps even magnify into this majestic surround in which we seek daily for something of peace as likely then preferred in such stagnations as status quos and beach vacations. And I think we grow to so enjoy those little breaks away from our trying to keep going because we know deep down where we both already are and how prone we are to stay.

And I think that if we were to be honest we’d have to say we don’t really like it this way.

Why? Because while a fog can cause light to scatter and tree lines to shatter into a blurry shadow when seen outside a bedroom window, it can also wreak havoc on morning traffic and even cause accidents thanks to it being so hard to see through.

Problem is that we’re all so used to the fog we’ve made in this way of life we’ve forced that I dare say we don’t seem to see that we can’t see through it. Rather we awake every morning and plunge right back into it as if it’s meant to be there, as if life is meant to be unclear, as if fear of folly and failure should never be felt despite our lack of clear sight. No, we all seem to drift through our days all but oblivious to even our own ways and it’s left us to the work of what is the very blurring of our own betters.

Indeed, we exist anymore so lost inside this weather that we can’t seem to see just how abnormal it is and thus we’ve become.

Because, well, what’s normal about this way of life we’ve chosen? What makes any sense as to how we walk the streets so solemn and scarred? How is it that we’ve become so uncared toward what should scare? Why have we allowed ourselves to feel no fear of our continuing to fail? How is it that we so often don’t seem to see those many ways in which we are? Just how far have we still to go in this direction that we both seem to know and yet have apparently no idea as to where it goes and what awaits us there?

No, there’s this air around here that seems to be filling both heart and mind with this way of life in which we find that what we feel is of more worth than what we know and that what we know is only as little as we need to thanks to the fog we’re in always offering to obscure the more we could. Yes, the fog of human iniquity is very much the friend to each of us personally as it offers us daily this sense of denial upon which we can lean to claim we didn’t know what we should have known simply because we couldn’t see it.

Simply because here in our normal seeing is still believing and since we’re seeing what seems good enough for us then we’ve so agreed that it is good.

But friends, what’s good about this way of life we’ve chosen? What’s good about the sort of people we’ve come to become? How is it good for us to strive so hard to stay so alive in this life that we live as if ours alone and not on loan? What good can come from our remaining so spiritually numb as to just fall daily in line behind the blind being always led by the same? Where is there to come a better day when our every way is spent so lost in the fog that we actually claim we can see?

What do we see?

I’ll not speak for you but personally I see what seems to be a daily failure to find, force or even feel any measure of growth or hope or even happiness. I see upon the faces of those near enough to me in the fog this palpable angst that has them so angry that they’ve determined to simply ignore their neighbor so as to avoid what they imagine would lead to a confrontation. I see a people so upset and unsure that they simply don’t interact with one another anymore.

I see a world that’s been in a slow fade for quite some time only seeming to find ways to hasten the fade into the fog of human failure and that even to care.

No, seems anymore that one of the things we do more often than not is choose to just not care as to what we’re doing, where we’re going, what that means and how there may truly be no coming back.

And mostly I just see that we like it like that.

Not that any of us really do as, well, there’s not all that much in which to delight or of which to enjoy here inside a world given unto the common decay of human doubt and debate. I think we’d all rather clearly prefer something a bit more peaceful, a little more loving, just a simple little something that feels more settled and sure.

And sure, the fog is known for settling upon the ground and, well, so too are we and so I suppose we find in that a reason for our fealty to this obscuring of life itself as the shelf of self meets us every morning with dew poured in the form of the things we plan to do and the more we’ve no interest in doing at all. But friends, what I fear is that one day we will not only see but in fact physically feel the weight of this mistake to always choose to settle for seeing so short of what is that ever-distancing line of the betterment of our lives.

For while we may continue to prove impressively able to find ways to stay convinced that we enjoy being so lost, one day that cost of such will be paid and I just don’t think we’ll be quite so able to say that we never knew.

Not considering all He went through to make sure we would.

No, from red-lettered pages to tear-stained faces, I know we all know that something about life as we’ve come to know it and sadly choose to live it just isn’t what it ought to be. I think we all know that we are known for what we do and what we say and the more of both that we often don’t. I think we all understand that our every choice does have a consequence that has to be settled at some point. I think we all know that we have a voice in what is a life that is a speaker that is saying something to those who have ears to hear us.

I just think that we don’t have much left in us that’s able to care all that much.

Because we’ve welcomed this breed of life in which we walk inside this betrayal of everything from our purpose to the promise it was meant to help us toward. We’ve settled for staying stuck on this side of what is still a pillar of cloud trying to lead us by day and a cloud of fire trying the same every night. We’ve embraced this unwillingness to welcome the risk of what is for the hope of what is not yet.

All because we’ve become okay with what we see, and that even though we often can’t make any sense of it.

Indeed, it seems that we would rather seek out ways to enjoy the ways in which we fall and fail than to seek out the hem of He who came to help us see that it doesn’t have to stay that way. I truly believe that there are those who would just as soon watch the world burn itself to the ground than get up and fight to keep even themselves alive. In fact, I dare say that so many are anymore so unimpressed with life that they simply wouldn’t care if it would just go ahead and end so they’d not have to deal with having to feel what it’s been allowed to become.

Simply because, well, what has life become?

Is this what it was meant to be? Is what we see what we want to know of life? Is the way of life we live the kind of life we’re truly good with? Are we honestly happy and filled with hope as we watch the world around us fade further into the fog of fury and foolishness? Are we content to continue to contend that we’re not quite often doing the same ourselves? Is our very best effort to always here forth be given to the way we’ve been living?

Is what we see in any way anything that seems to be alive at all?

The Bible says that Jesus is the Life as He is the One who came to this world to die to our way of trying to live it and overcame the grave that defines where our way is headed. He has redeemed our existence from the abject failure to appreciate it having been given. He has in fact forgiven all those days we spent on the blind side of the fog line seeking to find the few meager hopes we actually hoped would be enough to measure up to the more He has always freely offered just beyond that line.

And yet we walk both in and alongside what is a world so spiritually blind that it’s more evident by the day that so many are doing so little to move His way. In fact, most are barely moving at all. So many have settled for doing so little that I think it’s fair to ask if anyone around us is actually alive. Why? Because it sure doesn’t seem like we see much living going on anymore. It’s all just patterns and repetitions. It’s pre-made plans and pre-frozen dinners. It’s week long vacations we look forward to from months working 9-5 jobs we hate.

It’s all just this constant give and take in which we wake only to try and find what we’ll come to lose.

Is that what life is meant to be? And as it isn’t, well then why can’t we seem to see that our continuing to do things the ways in which we’ve settled for never changing them can only ever continue to bring us deeper into the kind of fog that is far less beauty and far more danger?

For there is a fog that allows for cool kiss to the morning sun rising calmly over a windless field. And there’s a kind that blocks our ability to see out the windshield and thus sets us up for a better than normal chance of a head-on collision on the way to work. One brings peace. The other only potential disaster.

And yet they look the same.

But friends, that’s what defines the problem we’ve found. It’s that our vast willingness to just give up on trying to keep striving in life has left us all but disinterested in deciphering between the delight and danger. We don’t care anymore. I mean I literally see people walking down the sidewalk with their eyes glued to their phone in what is a blind trust that the traffic around them won’t interrupt their strolling while scrolling.

We are so completely oblivious to what’s happened to us that we can’t have any idea what will happen to us because of it!

It’s as if we’ve become convinced that since we can’t see God then He can’t see us and thus we live as if we’re free to do as we please thanks to this fog inside our heads and hearts that meets us at each day’s start and affords us another set of 24 to just wander to and fro looking for whatever it is that we apparently seem to see as being worth all we pass along the way. And what’s worse is that, again, we honestly seem to like it this way.

We seem to absolutely adore this way of life we’ve come to live in which we die here inside these tiny little hideouts of selfish hope and vain glory. We seem to cherish every choice we make to ignore every voice that seems to say something we don’t want to hear. We seem to legitimately appreciate the fog that blinds us to the better we could be simply because we think it to be the same as that which prevents God from being able to see just how meaningless and motionless we’ve come to live.

Indeed, we seem to appreciate the mystery of this fog we’re in of a life we live as if we’re only here to find what is then itself only lost in the fog.

All because we seem to assume that should we find something then we’ll have thus found something and maybe the doing so will have helped us find a bit of ourselves too.

Because I think we know we’re so lost that we couldn’t find our way up on a ladder.

I don’t know, it’s just getting harder and harder to watch the world drift further and further into this fog that seems to have everyone so lost that they seem to think they’ve honestly found the best way to spend this one life we’ve got to live. But friends, what is to ever be proven best of whatever already is? How can what we know prove unrivaled by all we don’t?

How is it that where we are has so become where so many hope to stay?

Call me ungrateful. Call me a fool. Call me whatever you want, but I just don’t understand how we’re supposed to stand here inside this way of life and what it’s done to this world we’re in and say to Him that we did our best. I don’t see all that much anymore that’s even in the same area code as simple decency. You turned on the radio or TV lately? No, we’re so far over the edge that we should be absolutely horrified by what’s become of life.

And yet most aren’t. Most don’t care. Many even like it! And that’s just hard to wrap my mind around because I don’t see how all this doubt and debate and division and drinking and doing drugs and staying dumb is supposed to define the pinnacle of life! And yet that’s all that so many seem interested in continuing to find in life.

Just more of the fog.

Friends, I understand the many ways in which world makes life on this world’s side of right seem wonderful. So many here are absolutely enthralled by the walls that are closing in around them simply because the fog of folly and failure keeps us from seeing them getting closer. But the simple fact of the matter is that we’re all on a one-way road headed for a head-on collision with God. And the way I understand it is that we can either get there following His lead and welcoming then the walking away from what the vast majority will continue to enjoy or we can continue to enjoy what this world so clearly does and get there both by surprise and thus completely unprepared.

Either way, every knee will bow.

Question is will it be before the God we did all we could to get to know or just some stranger which we never felt any reason to?

Fact is that we’re all free to stay as lost in the many fogs of life as we might find worth the more they all make us miss. God allows it to go like this. He gives us each the very freewill that will allow us to find the ways in which we want to live this life. But friends, living a life blind to God being there probably isn’t the best way for us to be ready to meet Him when we reach Him.

And our getting there unprepared probably isn’t the best way to win the reward that is eternal life.

After all, if all we ever choose to do with this one is live it for what keeps us apart from Him, well then why would He give us another one, a longer one in which to be in the presence of the One we so clearly never wanted to know?

No, He’s too fair for that.

Rather He allows us all to determine our own desires so as to let us find whatever it is that we want both in and from this life. Question then is whether what we’ve found is truly what we want or, if it isn’t, then why we don’t break from the fog and start trying to find something different.

Just know He will always be there to help us find something better. But to get there we just have to admit that both that better is there but that the fog we’ve settled for in the life we’ve lived has left us so lost that can’t seem to see how to get there.

Either way He is fair and will indeed give us what our hearts desire.

So then, what does your heart desire?

Freedom or just fog?

#LeaveNoSoulUntold