Day 3893 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Jeremiah 50:6 NIV

Directionless

Such defines the general noisiness of what is a world now willfully and in fact joyfully enveloped in chaos as it chases after what remain a million misplaced priorities all pursued for their apparent ability to make folks happy. And yet what seems either ironic or simply antithetical to our collective search for such things as happiness and joy and peace and rest is that we find none of the above in the faces of those scattered to the distant places in which they’ve gone in search of them.

No, we see nothing in man that man so claims to desire.

Rather what we see is a daily deepening to the fires we set in our stumbling toward any semblance of some kind of something that could become for us any measure of the hope to which we’ve given ourselves of it at best only theoretically having. And we do this so continually because we’re seriously so far gone that we think we’ve arrived. Indeed, we’ve each so wonderfully left behind everything better that we could have already remained that we now remain forever lost in the hunt for something close to what we already had.

Because I think we understand that life wasn’t made to become what we’ve made of it. I think we realize with our own eyes that what we see isn’t what should be. I believe we can feel inside our hearts that this place is coming apart and I contend that our very own souls do in fact know that it’s long been our hands that have held the hammers and driven the nails posting the warrants for those who remain willing to risk it all in order to simply stave the fall.

But yet we’ve all become so accustomed to the stumbling that we know nothing of what life would be without it. Rather we’ve become of the mind that’s given birth unto the lies that tell us to make our missteps seem something of a dance in which we are so lost in the interpretive aspects that we’ve given up on the interpreting of anything other than whatever we’ve come to delight to do. Indeed, we are each dancing with what are a million different partners and yet we sometimes wonder as to why we’re not really getting anywhere.

And why our moves aren’t getting better.

Because you’d think that having chosen to practice our proven compliance with what is a world upon which we’ve yoked our reliance would have by now proven to find us quite impressive in terms of will and win thanks to want and wish. After all, such is the purpose of all practice, to get good at whatever you’ve chosen to so focus. But yet that’s just the problem that’s now in fact led to what are all of these other issues that we seem culturally oblivious toward.

It’s that we’ve chosen to focus on a way of life lived without focus.

We’ve chosen to embrace a race to any place that has anything that even seems kind of interesting. We’ve opted to option for the opportunity to experience as much of this world’s offerings as we can possibly get our hands on. And while this has led us to the having of a lot of little pieces of a great variety of things, so too has it inspired us to place more importance on quantity as opposed to quality. And indeed, as I often confess, of this I am most guilty personally.

In fact this hit me yet again just recently.

For I looked up and realized that within my life, again, I’ve, again, allowed so much to come in that I’ve not really much appreciation for any of it. It’s something like that lie of multitasking in which we try so hard to convince ourselves that we’re of the ability and aptitude to handle multiple things all at once. We can’t. And much the same nor can we truly appreciate all that deeply anything when we’ve so many other things also vying for the same time and attention.

Rather what happens is that all of them are given what is but a portion of our potential and yet even that portion is often found shifting as our many priorities continue to ebb and flow in a life that continues to go the same way that it’s been going for all of time. And indeed, this very approach to living life is almost exactly like those many generations who’ve come before us and themselves traveled these same highways and backroads that we’re all still lost upon seeking what amounts to basically the same things.

Granted, thanks to such things as technology and other progressions our pursuits and prizes have themselves update over time, but still the general idea remains the same.

And the idea is that the more we have and the more we know and the more places we visit to find this ever-growing extra mean exactly that. Extra. More. A sort of perfected plenty that offers us always the same. Just plenty. A cup we’ve carried into which we’ve asked the world around us to pour until overflowing all that we’ve now spent a great deal of a lifetime knowing would be able to make us feel the same.

Full.

And yet, again, looking around and feeling within, no, it doesn’t really seem as if any of us know of such a thing. Not because our lives aren’t full as we’ve more than seen to always remedy any sign of their empty that we could see or even assume. And not because we’ve not in fact tried all we sought to find and had as much of everything we’ve hoped to hold as hands could carry. We have. We’ve in fact seen and heard and experienced things that past generations would have never been able to imagine.

Still we’re unhappy.

Still we’re upset. Still we’re angry. Still we scrounge around for more from this ground obviously still stuck to this assumption that such gumption will give us that something upon which we can one day feast and feel then as though we’ve finally accomplished the feat of filling our lives so filled with what all we’ve come to like that we’re able to smile and laugh and feel alive again.

But what then of this in between? See, that’s something that I never understood about our idea of retirement. For here we work for years saving up to enjoy what everything from time to chance may well prove we never get to. We give away our best abilities to planning ahead for what always remains hopefully a time in which we can enjoy what all of our labors were for. We give away years to planning for others that we simply may never have.

Yet we do it and never look back, never stop to ask, never look at ourselves in the mirror and wonder why. Rather we just continue to wake up and get in line living this life the way the majority say we should simply because we seem to trust in them more deeply than we do in Him we daringly asks that we rest sometimes. Indeed, we almost seem to hate the very suggestion. After all, time is wasting.

And wouldn’t you know it but for once we’re right!

Because time is wasting, and yet it’s not being wasted in the way in which we’ve come to consider it. For time isn’t wasted in our waiting or wondering. No, time is wasted far more in our worry and wanting. And that’s because any time that we give away to such things as worry, want, wander or whatever other worldly way in which we’ve all come to waste away, that’s time that we could have spent in such places as contentment and contemplation and curiosity and perhaps even planning a more peaceful contingency.

You know, in the event that we leave before we’ve elsewise planned?

But no, rather most of our plans remain placed upon finding in this place everything from peace to our very purpose. And it’s this general pursuit that’s caused us to become so directionless. For when life becomes allowed to be about something new all but daily, well then we can never know the fullness of anything. Rather we can only ever experience things in part. And while this may be good enough for many things in life, truth is that it should have never been seen as good enough for life.

Because life isn’t something that was ever intended to become so fragmented as it has. Instead life was created to be lived in focus and faith and a fealty so firm and unyielding that we would all but laugh at any and all who might suggest that we do something else or desire something more. Indeed, I believe that life should be so simple and settled that we’re able to know without question what matters most and thus spend our years, however many we have, giving all of our time and effort unto growing what are quite few ideals.

Instead we’ve settled for this alternative approach in which we wander throughout the world seeking always for something more. And why? Well, seems obvious doesn’t it? It’s because what we have isn’t seen as enough. And yet this is the oddity that I can’t manage to make much sense of anymore, and that despite having myself lived that way for as long as I can remember. Indeed, up until just recently I too have been apparently all but consumed by this idea of life in which more is better.

And it’s not until just recently that I’ve finally began to discover that less is more and too better. Because while more can be better, our having less allows us to uphold more better. Because there’s less of it to uphold altogether. It’s kind of like that old adage in which slow is smooth and smooth is fast. Less is more because more is better. And that simply because the less we have, whether in priority or plan, we can then offer unto those things fewer more of the personal ability that we have to offer.

But the more we spread ourselves out the thinner we become. And thus the more things in life we try to juggle or find or experience, well, the less of them we can. Because again we’ve each simply an outermost ability in terms of everything. We can only focus so much. We can only carry so much. We can only go so far. We can only try for so long before we just wear out and are then required to rest.

And still this place hates the guy who simply asked us to do just that.

It’s called the Sabbath, and if you’ll read through Scripture, the Old Testament especially, what you’ll find is that it’s oddly enough one of the things that God talks about most. I mean He is adamant that we remember the Sabbath. Indeed, this God who created everything and everyone and did all of that work focuses really heavily on His asking us to rest from our works. Even going so far as to point out that salvation itself has nothing to do with our work but rather His grace.

Showing us yet again that it isn’t what we do that matters most but rather that what matters most should direct what all we come to do.

But it doesn’t. At least not in this way of life in which we’ve chosen to wander all of these ways looking for always more things to make our lives feel more alive. It really is a quite embarrassing undertaking, this general filling of our lives with things that haven’t life, and too our working so hard to get them and worrying so much when we fail. It’s almost as if we’ve become convinced that life might consist of an abundance of possessions.

And purposes. And passions. And paths, plans, priorities, prizes, profits, prophets, priests, places to be, things to do, people to please and some with which only to argue.

After all, those all seem things that are anymore quite apparent and thus easy to find within our chosen way of life. And while we all seem so able to pretend that we like living like this, I think if we were honest we’d rather admit that we grow quite tired of always trying to find or feel something more. I think we’ve admit that we’re kind of over it, this general greed of things we can see. I think we’d agree that having more and wanting more even still only really keeps us enslaved to a life of desire as opposed to finally enjoying one in which we’re just content.

Indeed, I think we’d all agree that contentment makes far more sense than this general consensus that finds us still roaming all over the place seeking for something here to make our lives feel whole.

Or at least that’s my admission. I’m tired of this way of living in which we’re always spending our time to make money that we spend on things that can’t give us more time. I’m tired of sifting through the ash heaps of those who’ve already held the things that I still convince myself to want, ashes because those who’ve already had them already found out they weren’t what they’ve been made out to be. Indeed, I’m simply sick of wandering through life looking for life when I know full well that I’m living a life in which I could be wondering instead as to the bigger and better things ahead.

But alas, still I find myself most days settling short of His glory as I continue a still feeble effort to graft into my story a deeper sense of meaning as I’ve spent my life believing to be always waiting inside things that have no real depth at all. Indeed, I too continue to option for the scattered life lived scattering myself in as many directions as my desires deem needed.

Yet I think He’s finally managed to wear me down just enough that I’ve started to wonder as to why I should continue to wander.

Because what’s the point in a life pointed in so many directions that we can never really follow many of them at all? What’s the purpose to be proven in our so continually doing what’s already brought us so much that’s only left us still searching for more? How much longer can we hold out that the more we have will manage to make our lives feel the same? How much longer can we ignore the reality that having less allows us to want less which allows us to rest in what’s then a life in which we can actually enjoy what we have?

Will having more or finding the same really make our lives mean more themselves? Or will it rather only leave them scattered and spread flatter with every passing interest?

What’s amazing to me now is that I can’t for the life of me remember all the things I’ve given importance in this life of mine. I can’t remember all the things I’ve thought to matter. Can’t even remember all the places I’ve gone to find them. How did they matter then? If something doesn’t matter now then it didn’t matter then back when I was convinced it did. How many of those same illusions are present in my present priorities?

That’s what I worry about more than anything these days. It’s not what I don’t have but rather what I do that doesn’t bring anything to my life. It’s not the mistakes I’ve made in seeking for the many things that I’ve since lost or given away but instead what I still chase that will meet in the me the same willingness to let go to waste. It isn’t the plans I’ve made nor those I’ve experienced in their gloried fullness but rather those I’m perhaps making still that even once full will themselves not fulfill me.

Indeed, I worry that I’m still so prone to wandering that I’m losing even more opportunity to spend that same time wondering about the deeper things in regard to what I know to matter. Yes, I want depth now, not just desire. I want to plumb the deepest reaches of few things as opposed to merely living to only scratch the surface of many. I want to settle upon a singular focus, a lone direction, a simple existence in which I can then give more of my limited fullness to those few things that mean most instead of giving many things only a part of my limits.

Friends, my point is that we’ve been sold this approach to life in which we think it best to have more and seek then only the same even once we get it. And it’s all of this endless searching and striving that’s in fact driving our souls into oblivion. We’re losing our ability to focus, to engage, to appreciate, to experience. All because we’ve now such short attention spans that nothing is able to matter for more than minute or two. Life shouldn’t be like that. Instead we should have but few priorities and such seldom willingness to even consider more that we never really do.

Because that which is already full of meaning and worth, purpose and promise, well, it just doesn’t need more. And thus if we can only reach that place in life in which we’ve found our meaning and worth, our purpose and He who has promised us all He has, then so too may we too come to want less of what more this world will always have to offer.

We might even learn to be happy again.

But we’ll not find such prize in this direction we’re going at present. Because, well, happiness doesn’t ask us to find it in many places. Rather it asks that we allow it to remain in few and that we return to them as often as possible.

But that’s something that we just can’t do when we’re so busy going in all these other directions seeking still what we know well may prove only distractions.

Don’t let this world and its woeful ways keep you distracted from life. Rather allow the way of life God’s called us to live in Christ to distract you from this world and its lack of direction. For there is only rest when we have direction.

Especially when our direction is spent following He who is the narrow Way home.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold