Day 3892 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Hosea 9:17 NIV

The Course

Both of life and that of time due to a mind that finds it fine to wander through all the above searching for both something to love and a hope that the same will love us in return. And yet the issue has become that our chasing after love has landed us rather in lust for rust that’s caused a trust to bust as we’ve come burst a curse as was cautioned against well before both our time and thus our mind seeking to still find all of these ways in which we continue to walk in what is a life with so little direction that all we can seem to find is disaster.

And that because when we choose the course, well, all that can come is this general disarray that we all all but delight in today.

And I think we’ve managed to enjoy it as much as we have because we’re all quite widely convinced that the world isn’t all that bad. Or that at least we’re not all that bad. At least not all of us. At least not all that some of us do. At least not most of what we do. And that at least not all the time.

Seeing the shrinking yet?

Indeed, such is what’s promised to come whenever we become all but societally numb to the calling of the cross asking us to count up our life’s loss and humbly chalk them up as just a once confused part of what we grow to know is to be a way of life lost one way or another on one day or the other. When is this other day? Well, it’s hard to say as we’ve not been made privy to that information. Rather what we are allowed to know is that from this life we will all go and asked that that information remain enough to cause in us a willingness to walk away from what’s falling away.

Issue is that we’re still vastly joined to that which is falling away, and that so much so that we often find if not feel this collective struggle to come apart from a world we still debate might not be doing the same.

And it’s indeed quite amazing just how many continue to take that stance!

Granted, perhaps a growing part of me has become something of a cynic, sort of this personal pessimistic sour patch of prickly perspectives providing only something that’s quite far from comfortable and accepting. And maybe that’s just because of some kind of jaded vantage point from which I just happen to only see the frequent parts of life down here that aren’t quite adding up to much that I can with any truth or legitimacy deem to be anything near improving.

But then again, maybe each of us are still wading through some degree of our own personal delusionary understanding as to everything from where we’re standing to how the heat ain’t that hot quite yet.

You do know though that that which is hot tends to get hotter until something is done to remove all the fuel from the fire, right?

Again, looking around us, no, that in fact doesn’t seem like a fact we really understand anymore. Because, well, it seems like most days all we can see is a world standing in a puddle of turpentine holding a can of gasoline in one hand and a box of matches in the other wondering why things seem to be getting so strange all of the sudden.

For surely it isn’t the flammable liquid in which we’re standing that’s able to catch fire at 95 degrees, which just so happens to be 3.7 degrees cooler than our own body’s temperature, nor the gasoline which likely wouldn’t add to the as of yet mostly unrealized ability for our hands to strike the matches that are still safely stored inside their more than safe and secure box made of nothing but cardboard and a bit of hope.

Yet that indeed seems to be much of what life here has become. It’s a quite unique blend of temperatures rising, both climatologically and personally thanks to all our arguing, alongside hearts of gasoline as are anymore poured onto the open flame that is our each seeking for fun or fame all the while the cardboard has gotten wet from the tears we cry in response to the tragedies we see that somehow never seem to add up into meaning quite enough to inspire our coming back together in order to conspire for once against the fires we’ve already started in the past.

All because we don’t want to think about them anymore, and that because we all but basically don’t think we need to as they’re both behind us and thus not worth worrying about. They’ll handle themselves. Eventually they’ll run out of fuel so long as we stop feeling the need to reconsider what we did to cause them and what we could have, probably should have done differently to avoid them in the first place.

But since they’re not the first place we set on fire in our lives, nor likely to be the last, well, why worry about any of it at all? I mean, if we’ve already messed up as much as we’ve delighted to deny we have, and, having learned so well how to deny our past decisions and the damnation they each deserve, we’ve then plenty of negligence upon which we can lean to keep life looking pretty green.

Never mind that it’s the shade of envy and greed.

No, we don’t see those things as being an issue, and so they’re not.

Much like all the others problems we’ve proven so vastly able to ignore. A collective trait so well earned because we’ve learned from this world how to do wrong and merely talk others into believing it was either the right thing to do or something we simply didn’t have a choice but to choose. Indeed, we’ve become masters at talking ourselves out of disasters. Doesn’t mean we don’t see them, feel them, cause them or choose them.

Just that we’re really good at denying them.

And that because we’ve agreed unto this general approach toward life in which we live underneath this assumption that if something we try doesn’t work out quite right, well, just walk away. There are plenty of other directions to take. Plenty of other things to try. More than enough things still to want, and too, just as many to choose to not really worry about.

Indeed, life here has become something of a carousel in which we each bob up and down in what’s mostly a circle never really concerned as to the fact that the circular nature in which we’ve chosen to exist isn’t really getting us anywhere at all. A fact we feel we needn’t worry about because the horse we’re on is still all shiny, the lights are shining, those around us are smiling and the music is so darn whimsical that we can’t help but just feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

Never mind that we’re all going to die and that at what’s probably our own hand.

No, we just don’t see it that way because we’ve walked away from those ways in which we did those things that caused those worries that we were at once in such a hurry to leave behind that we just all but managed to forget them almost immediately. And indeed, there is no failure or flaw that we can’t ignore if we try just hard enough to make it look like we’re not having to try at all.

Which is oddly enough just what it seems like most of the folks around here are trying to do. We live to make life look easy so as to go along with this theory that we’ve got it all so figured out and finalized that we needn’t anything from anyone other than maybe another round of applause as deserved in our being the daring soul that chose to go where millions already have, but yet still a direction we deem novel simply because our mirror shows a much different picture than that of everyone else.

Yes, we’ve all come to live seeking to love the one looking back at us in our own reflections. And we chased for so long this inner perspective that we’ve become all but perfectly if not permanently unable to see any flaws or shortfalls. Rather we’re each, even if only unto ourselves, these walking images of a life’s fullest of potential already realized.

And this idea has left us each walking what are then 7+ billion directions seeking what are then 7+ billion destinations.

And yet none of them seem to have God as the sole purpose or pursuit.

Now that’s not to say that He’s not involved in some way. Not to say that He isn’t somewhere on our personal list of priorities. Not that He’s not important to some degree. It’s just that we’ve somehow each managed to define our own degree of what remains a general indifference to, well, pretty much anything that we can become convinced doesn’t matter all that much.

And sure, I’m not saying that all of us would say that God doesn’t matter as there seem to be a fair number who do believe in Him being there and are thus trying to do better to uphold that hope. But yet still we each manage to find far more struggle in that regard than we do with really just about anything else. And I contend that that’s because we can’t see Him. Because our inability to see something defines for us a general reasonability as to our inability to find it.

And when compared then against all we can see and thus could find, well, it’s widely considered quite reasonable to opt for the logically more provable.

After all, who would blame us for chasing after the sure thing as is assured thanks to our collective ability to see it?

Well, God would!

And well, God will!

And in truth, He should!!

Why?

Because we’ve all already walked so many other directions in this life seeking so many other destinations and delights that we should know quite well by now that most of that in which we found success or pleasure or hope or whatever only proved to only house such a house of horrors that we shouldn’t be so willing to trust our mirrors. Much less those of these others that we still live to look to so that we can look like.

Indeed, why are we still so enthralled by those around us who are only interesting because they manage to drop the same ball in just a slightly different manner?

The ball here being life and the manner being the way in which we live it.

Indeed, why are we so amazed at all the ways in which this world wakes to walk after only what’s in this world? What is there in this world that we’ve not yet found? What prize haven’t we won? What pleasure haven’t we felt? What joy have we missed? Other than that held inside the peace so clearly missing in this place?

Is it that we don’t want peace or what?

And again, that’s not to say that we’ve not each found a way to make our way seem as if it brings us peace. In all honesty we have. And I know that because I’ve been doing that very thing for literally as long as I’ve been alive. It’s just what we know to do. For we each all but instinctively understand this necessity to our workings that require us to become masters at debate and denial. Why? Because we know we do stupid stuff. We know we say things we shouldn’t. We know that we do things that could, at least in theory, hurt those around us.

Yet we live still as if nothing we say or do has such an ability. Rather we live as if all that we choose has found for us no way to lose all that we’ve come to understand of everything from life to love and how we’re supposed to feel the second always about the first. Yes, we live this life as if we’re supposed to love this life. And yet we never stop to reconsider what it is that we know of either life or love nor what we love in this life.

Rather we all just keep going our own directions following only our own interests at what is more often than not the expense of our having such little regard for God that we shouldn’t be surprised when He warns that He won’t have any problem denying us either.

Instead we’ve come to see Him as both our sleeping bag in which we rest in peace knowing that He will always make sure everything goes just right and yet so too our punching bag when His version of going right doesn’t go our way.

And thus it once again boils down to this general estimation that all of life is to be a destination that we alone pick both for ourselves and all by ourselves and that with only then the kinds of help that will aid us in arriving safely and stately at our chosen rewards.

Yes, we walk amidst a world in which you’re not considered living unless and until you’re living only to bask inside this selfish kind of freedom that allows you to be the only one who decides what you do and all that you just won’t delight to even try. And well, wouldn’t you know it, but we’ve all managed to choose to avoid that one narrow way that asks that we die to what we’ve chosen to live for, not because we can deny that what we’ve chosen to live for has proven vastly underwhelming if not blatantly foolish, but simply because we’ve still plans for this life.

We have other ideas we want to try. There are other directions we haven’t gone, other directives we haven’t followed, other perspectives we’ve yet to ignore.

Indeed, there is still more than plenty here that we haven’t learned to either delight in, destroy or simply disregard.

And since those are three of our favorite things, well it seems reasonable to see what all of this world fits into which of them.

All while God keeps getting moved in between them thanks to our shifting priorities that have to keep changing in order to keep up with our directions that keep doing the same. Again, as I so often ask anymore, look around. It’s like some kind of crazed maze of mischief and malcontent around here anymore. Everyone here is going a million different directions. It’s like life itself has devolved into some sort of tangle that we neither realize we’re tying so tightly nor then have any idea as to how to even begin trying to unravel.

Rather we all just keep running around like bodies in search of a head and yet continue to refuse He who is all of what we’re looking for simply because He’s still found on that one path that asks that we stop chasing after all these delightful disasters and douse the fires and stop itching to start more of them.

Friends, we’ve in every possible way become those who are but wanderers among the nations seeking to find something that will fill the holes we’ve dug in search of something in life to love us enough to fix us enough that we can finally stop running away from the fact that we’ve broken so much in our trying to break away from the simplicity of God’s asking us to just stop doing stupid stuff so that we don’t have to die.

What’s so bad about that?

Why are we so confused still as to the outcomes promised? Why still running around like crazy people seeking for something to further distract us from the destination we’re promised? Why are we still looking both to and thus in this world for something that can hopefully rival what He has promised? Is it just because we see only His version of hell while we remain convinced we’re just about to our version of Heaven? Or is it not that we’re so in love with our version of hell that we don’t care about His promised Heaven?

Whatever the case or cause, friends we really do need to stop while we’re behind because, well, living as but wanderers is just about the worst possible way to ever get anywhere!

After all, if every new day only ever finds us going off in some new direction seeking some new desire, what then can we ever find but ourselves to one more day in which what mattered yesterday again means nothing now? Do we really enjoy always having to invent some new ideal, craft some new idol, buy some new piece of wood or metal that we can only hope to make us happy or help us feel whole until we finally manage to hold it only to again realize it wasn’t able to?

Friends, I don’t know about you but I’m personally tired of wandering through this world trying to find what my 37 years have proven isn’t here. I’m tired of trying to come up with some new treasure to try for, a new hope to reach for, some novel novel to try and write of a life’s delights as placed in a place that I’m closer to leaving today than I was yesterday. Why live like that in this constant running around trying to hurry up and find something cool or special or valuable or important before we just leave it all behind?

Why not start to live this life looking toward where we’re going, and that alongside a realization that continuing to deny He who holds the keys to the place we should hope to go but also those to the place we shouldn’t want to end up is probably not the best way to avoid ending up where we don’t want to be?

Look, my point is that we’ve all got an entire eternity to think about. What is in this world that’s worth so much that we’re willing to risk denying God any more than we already have? Do we not understand that that’s exactly what we do every single time we awake to choose to prioritize something in this world over Him?

Folks, we’ve rejected Him long enough for more than enough that hasn’t proven to offer any of what He’s promised. Why then keep looking for what logic says isn’t here?

Especially if continuing to do so will only continue to be taken as only a further rejection by He who we’ll one day most certainly not want to reject us?

Just keep in mind His perfect fairness. I mean, He’s literally told us that if we reject Him that He will return the favor. But friends, we don’t want to fall short of His favor.

And so it’s probably time to stop falling short of His glory in what is a life in which we seek the same inside everything that isn’t Him. Indeed, enough of all this running around looking for hope. How about we pull ourselves together and humbly turn back toward home?

Because, well, that’s really the only hope we have anyway.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold