Day 3888 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Jeremiah 2:21 NIV

We left

And while what we left and when we left it are both quite specific for all of us, so too are they each to prove perfectly unique to us all as well. And that’s because, speaking generally, we all left the hope of life eternally for whatever it is that this life’s become when at first those first of us determined to do what God had simply asked them not to. But while this original sin may have begun the corruption of all men, since then each man, woman, child in all of creation has created their own unique spin unto said sin and thus spun into a novel failure to prove faithful to our Father that is in fact all our own.

And it’s gotten so bad that we’re all now but owned by our sin in what’s now long been a way of life spent going left and leaving behind any semblance of even the bitter betters we’ve already been.

Indeed, life down here just continues going from bad to worse thanks to our in fact all but enjoying this existence in which we practice to deceive and that so much that we all but expect to be deceived. It’s just how things are anymore. There’s so much deception, dishonesty, immodesty and pride within our normal way of life that such things which should be normal, such as honesty and morality and simple common decency are all seen as rather obtuse and largely offensive even.

And this reality that we now daily awake to find ourselves still all but stuck within has led me to, you guessed it, a question.

And that question is how did we get here?

Because I think we can all agree that whatever this is isn’t truly as good as it gets. Now that’s not to say that it’s all bad as there is still an amazing amount of beauty to behold, of hope to reach for, of healing to come. But then again, beauty is anymore something so entirely subjective that we’re subjected to the strange things that some contend are beautiful, hope is something we have to keep reaching for because so much of all that’s close is nowhere near what anyone would consider anything for which we’d ever hoped to have, hold, find or be, and indeed, even the healing we all now still need is something of a debate as waged everywhere from the halls of congress to the streets of Compton.

We’ve all such staunch opinions as to both what all went wrong, what more is going wrong still and how best to solve all these problems and failures we’re facing that we’ve ended up only causing more problems that only continue to find more failures. And that’s because what we’re literally witnessing is that promise unfolding of a house divided basically only inevitably doing the same.

And this can be seen on something as big as a global scale in which we see daily evidence of wars and invasions either leading to or being caused by such atrocities as human trafficking or drug crises to a national level in which we witness these daily arguments between right and left as to who is wrong or right right down to being anymore seen as close to home as even our homes are now places in which we all have so little to do with even those we’re related to that we sort of just keep to ourselves and our heads in our cells.

And by that I mean both phones and prisons.

Because that’s largely what most of life has sadly become. It’s all just boiled down to what are 7-8 billion people who want next to nothing to do with one another simply because we can neither see eye-to-eye nor have any interest in even continuing to try. And why? Because when we do all we do is fight. We argue. We debate and protest and pretend that our personal pretense is the only possible evidence of how to fix all of this.

But friends, how can we ever possibly fix any of all that’s gone so horribly wrong if we’ll never stop to even admit how bad things are?

And indeed, this sadly seems to be something that we all both do by the day but somehow never really do at all. For each of us have no trouble and find no difficulty in noticing all the falls and failures we’re witnessing within the lives of those around us. That’s easy. That’s what we do nightly on every news channel on tv. But the thing that will continue to prevent us from actually fixing this is that we delight to deny our own hands having had a part in helping the world down as low as we’ve come.

Because we just don’t see how we, as small and insignificant as we likely (hopefully) know ourselves to be could have helped to cause all the chaos and crumbling that we’re seeing, hearing, feeling, finding. Surely we didn’t cause any of this collapse, I mean, we’re all what are basically nobody’s right? We’re not all the politicians in charge of trying to fix the problems, even though they seem to only cause more of them thanks to all the political division that continues sweeping our nation both under the rug and thus from anything even remotely better.

No, we’re just ordinary people who are living our ordinary lives doing all the ordinary things that we’ve come to do so ordinarily that we ordinarily never really have much reason to notice them nor thus give them a second thought.

But friends, maybe that’s the problem.

Maybe it’s something as simple as how we’ve all but stopped thinking. We’ve given up on such antiquated practices as thinking before we speak, thinking about the possible consequences of our present choices, thinking about the costs we’ve already incurred from choices already made having become only mistakes that we hate to think we once lived to make. And while all of this chosen ignoring of our own personal shortcomings seems quite insignificant when compared to cities and nations and the world as a whole, what we seem to have forgotten is that a million people choosing to each stop thinking only leads to the exact same number of people choosing to then basically stop trying.

For that is the basis of every effort we either undertake or refuse to entertain. It all begins with rational thought. Do we need to do this? What will happen if we do? If we agree to do this thing now what might that mean we might have to do next or may never want to do again? What will this cost me? What will this say about me? What might my words mean to someone else? How might this help? How can I help?

How can we help?

How can those who need the help offer the help if they’ll not at first admit they need the help that they could then better understand so as to offer further unto another? How can those who claim they aren’t sick speak to what kind of doctor those who likewise don’t think they’re ill thus don’t think they need either? How can the ones who wound just to win some kind of petty argument then be the same as those who pretend they’re always wounded over arguments that mean more to them?

How can we better anything when all we seem willing to do is argue and protest and pretend that we’re best at what is living a life that’s gone so far left that nothing seems right?

And indeed, how did we get here? And furthermore, how can we even begin to contemplate that massive dilemma if we’ll not at first admit that we helped cause it? And how can we ever come to agree that we helped cause at least some of this chaos if not for welcoming at least some semblance of humility? And yet how can we welcome humility when such is anymore all but seen as hostility?

For you do know that that is what’s happening, do you not?

Our world has so turned inward on itself that everyone else blames everyone else for the problems we have. It’s never our fault. It’s never our choices that got us here. It isn’t our desires that started the fires that are now literally burning cities to the ground or choosing to lay naked on a bridge as a form of protest against something.

Heard about that one the other day, and honestly, are we serious with this?

Sadly it seems we are because, well, it’s all seriously happening. Cities are legitimately burning. People are honestly hurting. Our world is now so filled with so much division and disdain that we’re now a people all but to the point of hating one another so deeply that we’re just resorting to killing each other in order to maybe save ourselves from the words that hurt more than our bullets might.

And worst of all is that we still aim our weapons of war up toward the sky and blame the Light for shining upon our sins and showing then the darkness within.

Indeed, this world all but collectively hates God simply because He calls us to both do and thus be good. How dare He ask such a thing? As if we’re not both good and thus doing the same already? No, that’s insanity! Just look at how good we’re doing! Look at how wonderfully our lives are going! Take a gander all the glitter and grandeur that we’re enjoying within our enjoyment of everything worldly as it makes us feel wealthy and thus offers to define us as both worthy and thus worth something!

Friends, what here is worth anything when pretty much everything here is falling apart?

And seriously, since when does what we have matter more than what we do? Do we not have to do things in order to get the things that we have? Are not then our actions necessary precursors to our possessions? Do not then our possessions and our pride as placed within them only begin when we begin to do the work that it takes to win what we’ve come to want?

What do we want and why are we still not finding what so many used to claim to desire found?

Were all those beauty pageant contestants just joking about world peace? World leaders doing the same? Have we ourselves given up on such a hope and are truly okay with only continuing to blame this failing game upon everyone else that isn’t us and thus isn’t right? Are we truly as right all the time as our minds have come to believe? Do we really never make a mistake or mess anything up? Does our every word bring either hope or healing? Do our actions speak a story of seeking God’s glory?

Do our lives have any semblance of any recollection of Him at all?

Or are we rather all just here furthering the fall?

Indeed how did we get here to what’s become a world so torn apart that everyone and their uncle knows of a different place in which to start making things better?

Actually, how far gone are we to see that there are some who don’t think it can get any better?

Friends, how much worse can it get?

And sure, this is something we talk about all the time and I list off some of our many failures and flaws just as often. But that’s for good reason. And that reason is that if we’re ever to get anywhere other than where we are we have to at first realize where we are and admit that it ain’t where we either should be nor thus should stay. We have to come unto this realization as to the condemnation that we’re literally witnessing start to unfold if we’re ever to find any way of at least slowing it down long enough for a few more to get in the only lifeboat we’ve got.

His Name is Jesus and I will not stop writing about His Word and work until He tells me to stop or calls me home, at which point I will still be seeking His glory, just not through words written and shared via social media.

But indeed, even that has become something that’s turned so violently from the initial intentions for which they claim is was created. For such things as facebook and instagram were began as these platforms upon which to stay in contact with friends and family and enjoy then the further sharing of life with those we love. These days it’s instead become something of a battlefield with wars waged in comment sections and pointed pictures.

We are why we can’t have nice things!

Because, well, the evidence is pretty much perfectly overwhelming that says that we basically only destroy everything we touch.

And why is that?

Why do we continue doing so much damage in and to this life in and sadly of this world? Is it not because the world’s become our god and we each then live as we’re kings ourselves? Is it not because we continue to deny that we ourselves have done anything wrong? Is it not because we know only to blame all the flames we face and feel upon those whose feelings we simply don’t care about in the manner in which we’re called?

Do we really not understand the simplicity of loving one another in Spirit and in truth?

And indeed, how can we when so many see the truth as only offensive?

How did we get here?

And moreover, why do we seem so intent to stay most days? Because it’s clearly not that we actually seem to like it this way. Rather we see and hear all the time all the confusion and disappointment in regard to what’s become of life. People everywhere are hurting in ways that shouldn’t be possible. And we’re all hurting people in ways that shouldn’t be so popular.

But no, by all means let’s just keep fighting amongst ourselves as to which politician is right and why we shouldn’t live our lives seeking and serving Christ instead.

After all, He’s the One who came just to leave dead and asks us to follow Him in the same kind of laying down of a life. And well, why do that when we can keep hold of what we’ve mostly come to hate living with, dealing with, talking with and walking with? Yes, let’s keep hold of this way of life we can all admit and agree is quite far from right as we equally deny the other way of life that calls us to love one another, to walk humbly with our God, to lay down our lives and hope in the promise that He’s a place ready for us when these lives are over.

Oh, the humanity!

How dare He ask us to hope in something better? How dare He remind of us the brighter beginnings we’ve all chosen to run away from? How dare He call us back to that way of life that He built to last in what remains a love that has never left but only stayed behind and watched us leave as we left to reach what is this life that we’ve chosen to live in love with all that isn’t Him instead?

Friends, what is this life?

For we anymore daily prove that we’re more willing to hurt another than we are to welcome the harm we see inside of humility unto ourselves. Daily we prove that we’re more willing to hate those around us than the darkness that’s grown within us. Daily we prove that we’re perfectly fine with taking a life and quite unwilling to give one. Indeed, daily we prove that we’re all but perfectly unwilling to give our lives unto anything and thus accomplish nothing with our lives.

All because we can never know why we’re alive until we find that for which we’d die.

No, these days the only thing we’d die for is to be proven right, and that simply because our pride is pretty much all that keeps us going. But that’s just it, where are going? And well, how can we ever honestly expect that it could ever possibly be better when we never agree to come anywhere near coming to admit that it was us who played a part in it coming to this?

And what has it all come to?

A life and death situation.

Why?

Because God doesn’t deserve to continue watching us live only to die, nor witnessing our resorting to all but literally killing those we simply don’t want to live with anymore until we do.

Friends, my point is that we’ve fallen so far from what we were made to be and thus could have stayed that we cannot stay this way. Something has to change. It really is as simple as that. But the thing is is that change is still, for now at least, a choice. And well, as such, change will thus likely remain something we see very little of in the world around us. Why? Because the world around us, though on fire and filled with hatred, continues to live as if nothing is really wrong enough to warrant such a humble agreement that we might need to change it.

Rather most in this place continue to give away their days unto this insistence that their lives are perfected and thus they themselves need to do absolutely nothing different.

But folks, if all of us choose to do nothing different then nor can any of us find anything better.

And well, that’s a problem because, looking around, I don’t really see that we’ve much choice but to make some changes. And that simply because I don’t know how much more He’s willing to put up with. Sure, He’s been patient with us for centuries now. But can we really afford to take His patience for granted when His righteousness has proven willing to destroy cities and flood planets?

Feel free to risk it if you want, and judging by the things considered common around here anymore, you’ll probably have plenty of company. Just remember that so too did they have plenty of friends and fun, those who were eating and drinking up until the day that Noah entered the Ark.

Life got pretty dark pretty quick after that though.

And well, if we can’t see the darkness of the world around us, chances are we might not notice the rain start to fall either.

But then again, He promised that it wouldn’t be with water this next time. No, He’s kind of going the other way as instead He’s promised fire. But honestly, be it fire or flood, it really shouldn’t matter. Rather we should all want better and we should see both around us and within us more than enough evidence that tells us that we’ve plenty of work to do if we’re ever to get back to that way of life lived as if we’re from the best of all stock with thus the greatest of all purpose.

For we’re all children of God. But now all that’s left is for us to be separated as those who either live like it or simply refuse to.

And yeah, when you put it like that, seems that we all have plenty left to do if we’re ever to be welcomed back to what we’ve all left behind along the way.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold