Day 3886 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Ezekiel 16:15 NIV

What’s left?

In recent years I’ve found this thought being constantly thought about within what’s been so often a mind that so often feels not mine. It’s this wondering as to both where and why I lost so much of this life, a worry that’s won alongside a feeling that while I’ve still some left to live, as evidenced by the fact that living I am, a realization that I’m so bad at this living vocation that I’ve not really any reason to imagine that I’ll not lose what little I’ve left.

And that to whatever took the rest.

But what prevents my rest is my soul’s suggest that I’m the one who chose what I lost based on where I determined to go. That it was me who gave away all I clearly didn’t keep. That I’m the one who delighted in the lies that I’ve lived and thus too the lack of life that I’ve lived. For in truth that’s all that every lie really is. It’s but the lack of honesty that is needed to live a life honestly. And since our most perfect example of how to live a life is also referred to as the Truth, well then it would stand to reason that to live a life without the truth is to not live life at all.

Yet looking both back and around I seem to see all sorts of evidence of a life having been lived and one I’m living still today.

I guess the confusion comes in the reality that what I’m living for now neither looks nor feels all that much like anything I know I’ve lived for before. And it’s this shifting, this sorting, this changing and its lack of boring that seems to have bored a hole right through the middle of me. For daily I look up to see something new that I’d not really noticed before. Some new worry I never knew I didn’t have that I have for some reason now. Some novel priority that seems to have taken the place of one that I had previously thought was good enough to be in that space.

Some space in which there clearly was something that now only shows me that something’s missing.

And the confusion is that I either sometimes have no idea what it is nor where it went or, if we’re being honest, if it’s even worth worrying about trying so hard to find it. Because the truth of the matter is that I’m the kind of person who tries my absolute best to uphold the things that matter most in life. And while those things that matter most are generally considered to be matters best determined by the beholder of such beliefs, I also understand that there are certain aspects in life that are undeniably important.

And it’s those that I try my best to hold onto as best I can.

Problem is that they’re sometimes the very ones that I also look up and realize I’ve had to all but either set aside or simply sell off in order to have taken hold of the rope that’s led me along the wall that is this way of life lived within this world that’s increasingly blind all while still claiming it can see and thus show you and me the way we too should go in order for our too to hold what are these most lavish of hopes as held and housed in houses and their holding our treasures behind locked doors and likely even fireproof cabinets.

Yes, we’ve become a people who store for ourselves both treasure and trash inside kingdoms that look nothing of the ash they’ll soon become. And we walk daily alongside a many on this same side of that eternal divide as was designed to separate that which has worth from that which only gives wealth. And indeed, the older I get the more I come to realize that worth and wealth are such vastly different pursuits that to pursue the one all but demands you utterly deny the other.

And this is a problem because, thanks to our looking to the world to lead us into how to live best, we’ve, as we talked about just yesterday, become ourselves the very same prostitutes who are each renowned the world over for our willingness to roll over and do whatever may be asked of us for the fees charged for favors given. All of which we’ve given in search of favors earned.

Simply because that’s how things work within this world in which to scratch each other’s backs has long been the standard assumption as to the best way to ensure both personal protection and public appreciation. Indeed, this world absolutely loves any and all who know how to fall in line and live life blind to the betters we can all always be.

And they utterly despise any and all who determine to live that way of life that finds a heart looking up one day and seeing only every possible reason to finally reach for that restart.

What restart?

The one afforded us by the One who took our cross for us.

For if you’ll read through Scripture what you’ll find is a great many times in which the word ‘redemption’ is mentioned. And redemption is this mission to take back what was lost, stolen, sold or simply forsaken. It’s the process of recapturing that which was missing thanks to it having fallen victim to what’s been, and sadly still remains, this way of life and state of mind in which we’re all quite willing to give away whatever it takes for us to have whatever we want.

And since the entirety of the world works that way in which everything here is either some sort of trade or sale or other form of mutually agreed upon transaction in which both parties leave at least relatively happy, so then have we each become the very purveyors of what have become nothing more than your basic one-stop shops of anything and everything that anyone could want.

We’re all kind of like walmart in that we offer something for everyone and usually at remarkably affordable prices when considered against our competitors.

Problem is that our many competitors have become wise to our game and are themselves anymore lowering the prices they charge for their wares which has led to what seems like a way of life in which every life is all but lost inside this bidding war, but not the kind that you might normally think of as this one finds us bidding only ourselves ever lower in search of the opportunity to be the ones who win the fealty, friendship and/or favor of those to whom we’ve gone in search of the something more that we want both in and of and mostly just from this world we’re in.

Yes, we’re all racing to rock bottom in our desperate hunt to have all we hope to hold before we leave what is a life we’ve come to love simply because it’s really easy to both love stuff and find someone who’s more than happy to help us get it.

So long as we’ve something to give them in return.

And indeed, this is the whole foundation of what eventually leads to a whole lot of things needing to be redeemed. To sort of put this idea of redemption into common perspective, it’s like when someone needs some money to pay their rent and takes something widely agreed upon as having some sort of value to a local pawn shop and either sells it off or enters into an agreement to let the shop hold onto it while the person uses the money the shop gives them to take care of their problems until a said time arrives in which the person either loses the item they pawned or they manage to raise the funds to get it back.

Redemption is the getting back of what we’ve basically pawned off.

Problem is that what we’ve pawned off was never ours to so freely give away. And what makes this issue even worse is that much of what we’ve lost in life wasn’t even pawned off but rather just given away as it was once seen as a thing, thought, theory or hope that to us wasn’t worth the work of trying to get back. And what all of this combines into being deemed worth the promised damnation that’s guaranteed unto all is that we’ve not only given away so much of what we didn’t then find worth all that much, but we kind of made sport of it.

Life here has become what’s basically a race to see who can both earn as much of this world’s wares and ways as humanly possible, and that by pretty much only giving away as much of what makes us, well, us as we possibly can.

But what I’m terrified we’re all going to realize is that we’re rapidly approaching the day upon which our lives are to be weighed and we’ll each then, once there, receive the just due for all we’ve done as determined by what we did with what was, get this, never ours but rather simply entrusted to us in order to offer unto us an opportunity to prove ourselves trustworthy with a little in order to allow us to prove by ourselves and on our own whether or not we’d be worthy of being trusted with more.

And if you know the Bible, especially the New Testament, that probably sounds kind of familiar.

And that’s because Jesus gave us a whole parable about it.

It’s this story of this man who was leaving town and gave to a few of his workers some of his wealth in order to both make some more while he was away and that by also testing these workers to see how they would handle this opportunity. They each got different amounts and then were allowed to go and do with it as they saw fit. Two of the three invested it into whatever programs or plans they thought would do well, and well, well they did do. By the time the man returned they each returned to him double what they’d been given.

The third?

Well, he chose to keep his hidden as he knew the rich man was shrewd and hard and thus difficult to please and easy to disappoint.

He gave away this opportunity to prove himself trustworthy as rather than doing as the others did and finding some decent way in which to invest the trust that he was entrusted with, he instead chose to do nothing and simply not risk losing what he had been given.

We’re not even that smart!

No, rather we neither invest what God’s entrusted unto us into ventures or venues that might prove some sort of return upon His investment in us nor even simply hide what He’s given us inside and fight then to at least keep safe what all He’s placed into our charge and care. Indeed, anymore we just most often don’t care at all. Rather we’re all more than happy to risk or waste or lose or misplace whatever it takes to get whatever we want.

We don’t even worry about how God may feel about finding us having done nothing with this life He’s given us to do something with.

A fact proven in that the something we’ve chosen to do with it is basically everything He’s always asked us to never even consider.

And why?

Because our living as a prostitute sharing our favors with whomever may offer anything we might prove able to come to crave or elsewise desire is probably the least reasonable way to put out the fire that is His wrath as is promised in what’s said to be an unending eternity of the same.

Yes, upon that day when we’re all weighed it is said that many will be thrown into a lake of fire where there will be, forever, a great weeping and gnashing of teeth.

All because we lived this life to not only not invest nor even merely hide what He entrusted to us, but rather to freely give it away simply to be found further within the way in which this world lives and loves what is neither loving nor alive.

For there is no love in lust, much the same as a prostitute doesn’t likely waste much time looking for love in their occupation.

Which makes me wonder what we’re looking for.

Because the fact is that it’s really easy to see what most are finding. It’s easy to see what most are wanting. It’s in fact emblazoned upon every billboard, magazine ad and tv commercial the things that most in this place want in their lives. And too, that many of these things have become so important, so valuable, so evident of a person’s wealth (and thus their apparent worth) that the same most are all but willing to do whatever it takes to get them.

Only to eventually have them and only then play the victim as they turn out to be far less impressive than they’d been sold off as being.

All while then never seeing as how we’ve been basically doing the very same thing: Selling ourselves as these amazing examples of how best to live a life despite how we earn our living walking the streets at night looking for someone to pay us the wage we’ve come to crave, and welcoming a more and more depraved willingness to do basically anything to get it.

But that’s perhaps my greatest question on the day:

Both what all have we done to get what all we’ve come to have, and even more than that, what’s left?

Indeed, what’s left of what we once had before we agreed to just give most of it away? What’s left of who we used to be back when we used to see something so amazing as hope as something worth more than just junk that gathers dust in our homes? What’s left of the willingness to fight for and toward a better life? What’s left of life on this side of all we’ve done to it and allowed done to it?

What more do we still have that we can still afford to risk losing?

And what have we lost that’s left us so willing to lose whatever little we’ve left for whatever else we’ll likely come to want?

Friends, oddly enough this post, for once, isn’t even about our wanting all this worldly stuff. No, this is about what we’ve proven we’re more than willing to do to get it. Because while having worldly things is an issue, it’s our doing worldly things that will prove the far bigger problem. Why? Because God’s biggest disagreement with our now common way of life isn’t found in our having things but rather in things having us. And well, while we clearly probably can’t see it that way, that is in fact what’s happened to life.

For each of us are so desperate to have the things we’ve come to want within this life that we’ve become quite affixed to this state of mind that finds us perpetually unworried about what we may have to do to get them. In fact, we’ll do just about anything to get the thing we’ve come to want, simply because the thing we want is considered of more worth than what we do in order to get it.

And thus our possessions have become of greater importance than our actions. But friends, this is the problem because on that day our possessions won’t have a single word to say.

No, all that will say anything is our actions, and well, they’ll say everything.

But what then do our actions have to say? Is it not that we’re far more concerned with material wealth than we are safeguarding our worth? Is it not that we’re willing to play the role of ill-repute in order to get whatever it is that we’ve come to want? Is it not that we’ve lived a rather large period in our lives looking to find only what this world has, and only seeming to find ourselves eager to do whatever in order to get it?

Is it not that we’ve come to see our beauty and fame, as given us in that we were created in God’s image and thus meant to be known as His children, but that we’ve sold them off and given away our appreciation thereof in order to go after whatever can trade them for?

Friends, we’ve all given so much of ourselves away that I’m pretty sure it’s quite safe to say that we probably need to stop and ask what’s left.

Why?

Because there might not be as much as we think!

In fact, speaking personally, I contend that everyone alive either already has or someday will look up and see that there’s next to nothing left of the person they used to be. Rather all we’ve all either seen or will see soon is just a person that we’ve agreed to let be used by the world in order to have what the world offers us in return.

And then when we stop and see what all we gotten in return compared to all we’ve given away, well, we’ll have found the sort of heart-shattering humbling that it takes for us to finally turn back to Jesus and ask Him to help redeem us from all we’ve sold ourselves to in search for the very things that we’ve probably come to have only to realize that they’re worth nothing compared to what He gave us to begin with.

Friends, my point is that this world will take from us as much as we’re willing to give up. And while we’ve more than proven ourselves equally willing to give up as much as this world may want from us, the truth is that we’ve only so much to lose before we’ve simply no life left to live. And that as both measured in time, because it’s running out, and also of mind because, well, we can only miss so many opportunities to prove ourselves trustworthy before we’re just not deemed worth any more of them.

And it’s not that God will turn us away, at least not yet, but rather that He deserves something other than watching our continuing to turn away from Him for more of what He knows cannot offer us what He has in store. And sure, this world does have a lot of pretty impressive things that most here find worthy of defining wealth.

But friends, there is nothing here that can define our worth.

Other than that which either steals it or just convinces us to never see it.

Please stop giving this world what was never yours to lose. Rather learn to love God alone and you’ll never lose anything again.

And He might even help us find some of we’ve lost.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold