Day 3894 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Zechariah 10:2 NIV

It’s no wander

Rather the wander is entirely normal thanks to the many abnormalities which have become our commonalities as are currently considered still somehow the best way to both lead and be led. And yet the vast majority of our humanity is getting nowhere so very fast that you would think that we’d collectively be able to combine our outcomes and see that we need to come out from where we’ve gone thanks to who we’ve followed along the way.

But no, instead we just convince ourselves that there be delight still in this way in which we’ve gone both toward what we’ve become and nowhere else once here.

And yet it’s my fear that our having so collectively fallen into our continually calling upon the very same voices and vices that will leave us only forever vying for a furthered finding of all we’ve found. And while what we’ve found may have had its profit and prize, having looked myself in the mirror and seen the blind eyes that have lived that life in which I let those around me be those to lead me into a person I never wanted to be, so too do I understand the horrors to be seen in our seeing the things that we’ve become and thus come to accept as normal or needed.

So too the sheer brutality of the torturously treacherous journey that it is to sit inside a life unravelling hoping that enduring the same will somehow lead us eventually back to that place in which we had peace.

Unfortunately I also know that along that way of dying to the way in which we’ve been led to live can sometimes feel as if it’ll take as many years to get back as we gave to get gone however far we ended up going in that way spent in a most deceitful breed of knowing what only came about to prove a clout we couldn’t trust near as much as we lovingly wanted to. And we’ve all wanted to because we’ve honestly believed that those around us who look like us wanted the very best for always the same.

But yet what I think we’re finally finding ourselves starting to find is this feeling that there’s something about the destinations at which we’ve arrived is just off. Indeed, I think we should all be able to agree, not that we will because of politics and opinions and whatnot, but I think we SHOULD all be able to agree that this version of life that we now see is not at all the better that we’ve been sold but is rather a bitter that we never wanted to know.

Issue is though that more often than not it’s what we’ve come to know that defines for us the kind of life we will know because of all we do know, well, it seems that doing new things is just about the last thing we ever want to do. Rather we’re walking amongst a many who are more than happy to just continue blindly following those who themselves are lost.

Simply because the suits they wear and the poetically rehearsed lies they sell sound and seem so very good that surely nothing bad could happen should we continue to trust them to lead on.

But friends, what good have we found in having done this life that way for as long as we have? What benefit has there been in our so often looking unto men to lead the way in which we should live? What gain have we gained along this plane of following the plain? What more can we find in line behind those who refuse to admit that they were blind, are blind, will be for however long we continue to agree that they’re those who do see what it is that we need in order for us to be who we want to stay?

Don’t we get it?

That all we can be is who we’ve become and that because we’ve become so willing to trust in those who, while having an appearance that lets them look like us, they neither know us nor then care for us? That so long as we look to continue to lean on those who have been allowed to lead that all we can see is whatever exists wherever they’re willing to help us go? That nobody on this earth, no matter platform or popularity, has any real connectivity with those who willfully place themselves in their care?

Don’t we understand that those we have chosen to follow may likely have no idea we’re even alive?

How then could they care? And even further, considering the overall lack of concern given toward the distance and dire difference between Heaven and hell and how, well, most here just live like they don’t care as to which upon they leave here to arrive, why then should we so trust them to lead if not live our lives? And indeed, this is the very thing that we seem increasingly able to see all around us anymore. It’s getting, if not gotten, to the point in which we don’t just live our lives following other people but we all but allow other people to live our lives for us.

It’s something done through such mediums as mainstream media making our minds up for us thanks to the particular bias brought to us by the different channels and their chosen leanings. It’s done through social media making us believe that the lies we see as are seen through photographic filters and editing of words to read just right and in just the nick of time as is anymore measured in a vastly shortened attention span. We do it every time that we decline to decline an invitation to some social investigation as to who’s wrong and right in regard to yet another petty if not utterly prideful fight.

We do it all the time.

We allow the world around us to not only lead us but in fact live for us as they’re who we turn to in order to have our thoughts thought for us, our meals made for us, our fears found for us, our doubts brought to us, our anger increased on our behalf and that almost always for their benefit.

Simply because it’s far easier to lead a people who are lost in anger and angst as the same are unable to think as clearly as we were created to.

And indeed, it’s within that initial clarity of thought that we both could have and thus should have caught all the lies we’ve instead lived to buy from those already rich and powerful thanks to the profit they’ve earned living as prophets we’ve learned to trust more than He who not only was willing to die for us but in fact did just that.

Yep, we live this life following those who themselves are not only blind but also vastly unwilling to lay down their lives for the protection and/or provision of those who’ve been placed into their trust.

Yet we continue to trust them anyway.

And thus this is the way that we’re not only already going but in fact the only way we’ll continue knowing for however long we continue to go along with all the lies told us by those who claim they see the way. Indeed, we don’t even ask where anymore. We just pay attention just long enough to hear enough that sounds good to us and we give them the keys to our cares and ask that they do with them as they see fit.

Don’t even throw a fit anymore when their negligence shows inside shows filled with scenes that shouldn’t be seen written in words that shouldn’t be heard pouring from hearts that shouldn’t be trusted thanks to all the ways in which we’ve rusted just like the idols we’ve learned to keep giving all our hope and happiness.

It’s truly amazing to me that we don’t see the empty that fills inside our lives as we empty them of all we had been given through our giving it to whomever it is that we’ve become convinced we’re supposed to follow and trust. We can see their lives getting richer and going better. We can witness the private jets and elaborate mansions. We can tally the followers and count the dollars that they must be making in their having been made into ideals that we all seek to mimic.

But somehow we don’t see that it’s a gimmick. We don’t see the lies that lie behind the ties that we trust. We don’t see the deception or discrepancy that is as deep as the sea within those to whom we continue to funnel in what’s then a life lived in utter failure. Failure to what? To live our own lives. To have our minds. To say our own words, think our own thoughts, buy our own stuff, decide by ourselves that we’re not going to buy anymore junk because we, thanks to thinking our own thoughts, finally come to understand that need and want are concerned with very different stuff.

Yet there’s quite few of those who manage to ever get to that place in which they’re so free that they can just be without having to feel as if they need to be something else or follow someone else or trust in this illusion of something more as is anymore painted in so many shades of green that the greed just keeps growing.

That’s the life we’ve all lived knowing.

It’s that way in which we’ll work away our days all but destroying ourselves just to please those who expect us to look like they do and have what they have and still want the more they still crave. It’s the way in which we’ve come to ask those around us to save us via their apparently knowing always so much more than us. It’s this trust as is placed in both things that rust simply because other people want them and too other people as well then because, well, if we are willing to want what they want, probably for no other reason than we know they want it, then we agree they must know something we don’t.

But there’s the question:

What all don’t we know as has not been learned within this way of life we’ve lived looking to those who are at best mere people and at worst ravenous wolves? What all haven’t our leaders told us knowing us as the gullible followers who will continue to happily sup upon the crumbs they’ve fed us as are still falling from the gilded tables to which none of us are ever invited to sit? What all can’t we be when all we care to become is but blind servants barely getting by on the meager diet of lies that those in suits and ties live to tell?

Indeed, what all can we never become when all we’ve been is a people unwilling to dig deeper within and find inside a willingness to live our own lives?

Perhaps it all boils down to that whole “comfort in vain” part of this prose. For it’s those two things that we’re all known for seeking more than anything else. Comfort and vanity. Complacency and popularity. Community and that as built behind the scenes that we all change in order to show us as the ones they want to know. We live a lie, each of us, and that simply because it’s comfortable to be lauded and applauded for living lives that look just right and sound always the same.

Thus we’ve become in every way sheep being led wherever another wishes for us to go. And we just go. Don’t ask no questions, don’t look elsewhere, don’t wonder why. No, we just wake up every single day and log back in to what is a system designed to keep us victims of what’s basically our own weakness. And it works so very well because it keeps us just comfortable enough that we never stop to consider doing anything any differently.

Because down here different is considered both ugly and thus dangerous.

So we stay in line. We do as we’re told. We want what those around us want and continue to hitch our hopes to wherever theirs continue to go. It’s truly a most heartbreaking loss of life, arguably more tragic than that which we’re all promised. Why? Because this one is chosen.

Yes, all of us choose in so many ways to lose our lives to believing the lies that those living the lives we’d really like to live are always willing to tell.

What does that leave us to tell? Indeed, what will we answer God when He asks, already knowing mind you, all about all we’ve done with all the time and opportunity and ability that He gave us whilst in this place? What story will He hear? Just a retelling of that told by another? Just some slightly varied spin upon the general tailspin we’ve all been in? Just another lost soul telling Him all about how we didn’t know that we were being lied to by those we trusted to not lead us astray again?

That our being fooled not once or twice but countless times throughout our lives was in fact our fault alone?

Hmm, seems like that last one actually had some truth to it.

But still that doesn’t explain why we do it. It doesn’t convey the fear of change we’ve accepted in what is a life in which we can admit that at least some things haven’t gone and aren’t going right. It’s doesn’t account for why we continue to worry about bank accounts and followers amounts and the world that runs on the like. No, it doesn’t explain why we continue losing this life that way.

All that can so explain is that we simply don’t care to change.

And indeed, I think most here do like living this way. Because it’s easy to get our thoughts from some three-letter news outlet. It’s easier to earn our fortunes by placating algorithms. It’s easy to find fame in doing the things that it’s clear most here want to see or hear. It’s easy to let someone else lead the way, and doing so even brings with it this hint of plausible deniability and perhaps even a lack of personal responsibility and thus even a chance to avoid all consequence.

After all, if another is leading then it’s their choices we’re following and thus any errors or mistakes that are made were only made because the way they led led us to making them. Yes, it’s their fault if we live our lives wrong because it was their lives that we lived ours to look like.

It’s their fault.

And thus it’s their job to face the consequences. It’s they who will pay for the mistakes that are made. It’s them who’ll have to give an answer to Him when He asks why it’s all gone so wrong.

But friends, it’s us too. Why? Because there is no such thing as a communal life. Now we may live our lives in a rather communal fashion. We may all find comfort and joy within the particular communities to which we belong. We might rather enjoy the company of our chosen community. But in the end it’s always only us who are living our lives. Nobody else can. Now they can influence them. They can impact them. They can instruct us as to how best to live them.

Still though, we are the ones who make our every choice in life and so we too are the only ones who will face the music for however we’ve chosen to live them.

Is it really a good idea then to live them looking to those who at best perhaps believe in Him? Or would it be a far better idea to live our lives as if they’re our lives and thus our responsibility? Granted, I know that’s not as much fun as letting someone else do all the hard work of deciding what we do, where we go, what we want and who we are. But friends, one day we’re all going to stand before Him and hear Him ask us what we did with our lives.

And there will not be another that we can turn to in order to have them speak for us.

Well, there is, but He’s most definitely not the One most here are following. Because He doesn’t wear a suit and tie. Doesn’t stand on stages. Don’t post funny photos or short videos that go viral. He doesn’t ask for our vote or make fun of those running against Him. He doesn’t crave what this world offers, in fact came to save us from our having lived to love what this world gives so freely away. Indeed, Jesus isn’t fun in the ways in which this world has taught us to seek life to be.

Rather He is holy, responsible, reasonable, righteous, upright, moral, caring, kind, compassionate, humble, honest, brutally truthful and yet graciously loving. Indeed, He is everything that no human can fully be. And so thus is He entirely too different for a people who desire no change to be interested in learning more about.

But friends, again, if we don’t change then all we’ll ever be are but these blind sheep that are being led wherever those we’ve allowed to lead allow us to go. And well, looking around at where we’ve already ended up, I don’t personally see any logical reasoning behind our continuing to look to whoever we have all this time.

No, rather I think it’s time to take a page from Jesus’ playbook and determine to do something new. In fact, I think it time to do something so old that this world of constant popularity and progression would never think of it as being something worth doing.

But seeing what He accomplished by taking up a cross as compared against what this world’s become at the hands of those who won’t, well, it’s easy to see which is the better direction toward a much better destination. Sure, there might be some leader here that’s willing to risk it all for those who follow them. But even then there’s still only one empty tomb.

I’m going with the sure thing because I want the same thing: New life and that lived forever. Not just the same life I’ve always known and that lived only however another human may see fit.

I’m not here to fit, other than through the eye of a needle that is. And neither are you. So just be careful as to who you follow, look to and learn from because most here aren’t trying to aim that small.

In fact, most here aren’t aiming at all.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold