Day 3898 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Isaiah 65:2 NIV

A thousand years

Such is what’s said to be experienced within a single day of the Lord’s time. For unto Him a single day is as a thousand years and a thousand years all experienced within a single day. His timing is just different than ours as He exists outside of time, for being Himself the Creator of such it thus has no effect on Him as neither can the clay call to account the potter which threw it into its becoming whatever it is. No, time is nothing to Him who invented it and intended it to inspire inside of us, the rest of His creation, a heart of wisdom as is won within the numbering of our days.

Issue is that rather we’ve lived to number the ways in which we’ve done wrong.

Indeed, it’s in Romans we read of a people who “invent ways of doing evil”. In fact, that delineation is described in the details with which Paul goes on to further define those we discussed yesterday in regard to Romans 1:28. The rest of that chapter goes on to say that “they have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; they have no understanding, no fidelity, no love, no mercy. Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.”

And well, if there are any definers of mankind that he might have left out I for one can’t think of them at the moment. Rather that list seems to all but perfectly encompass the entirety of our current populace, all of us in one way if not several of the others as well. And well, this is quite the problem seeing as how that list contrasts quite glaringly with the fruit of the Spirit to which we’re all called to bear in another of Paul’s offerings, his letter to Galatia specifically.

A calling rang from He who created us to bear such good fruit as that defined in Galatians chapter 5 as “love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.” A most heartwarming, hopeful and utterly uplifting list if I ever there was one, all culminating in the realization that “against such things there is no law.” A realization that ought to make us wonder as to why we’ve instead such a law-leant society.

For indeed, why do we need such safe-guards against the now general criminality of humanity if not because humanity has opted for the bearing of criminalistic fruit as opposed to the hopefully opportunistic varieties listed in Galatians 5:22-23? It’s quite easy to see why we need as many laws as we do, is it not? For all laws exist because of a need to maintain order amongst those to whom a general order was given that was thus expressly expected to be upheld, but who instead chose to uphold their own ideas and ideals of what became instead a rather lawless outlook.

And this is itself discussed by Paul back here in Romans, chapter 5 this time. Starting in verse 20 of his fifth chapter of this letter to the church in Rome he points out that “the law was brought in so that the trespass might increase.” And indeed, when seen from our now vastly fallen perspective this seems quite the counter-productivity unto God’s calling us to be holy as is done by the bearing of such good fruit described in Galatians 5.

I mean, why would a God who is so against sin, because of both the wage it wins being so contrary to what He intended for His creation (as none would create life just for it all to die) and also because of the dishonor it brings Him to watch us deny Him in preference for that which then demands our demise, be the same then as He who brings forth a law which causes the same to increase?

Both sin and thus death?

And indeed, it does truly seem quite antithetical here from the surface where such a superficial people as we tend to mostly reside. Seems in fact as if God breathed forth the Law so that we would die. As if He wanted to kill His creation. As if He was so filled with regret for having created what created instead all of these novel ways of doing evil that He finally felt as though He were forced to admit He’d made a mistake.

Yeah, the presence of the Law, which only exists in the face of pre-existing lawlessness which all laws seek to cease, it does kind of seem like it’s perhaps a way of God admitting that He made a mistake in His making of a people who live so vastly mistaken as to, as the next several verses of this chapter of Isaiah goes on to describe, “continually provoke me to my very face, offering sacrifices in gardens and burning incense on altars of brick; who sit among the graves and spend their nights keeping secret vigil; who eat the flesh of pigs, and whose pots hold broth of impure meat; who say, ‘Keep away; don’t come near me, for I am too sacred for you!’ Such people are smoke in my nostrils, a fire that keeps burning all day.”

So indeed, it does seem kind of antithetical that God would create a people who He foreknew would seek ways to reject Him alongside their seeking of ways to continue in their alternatively chosen way of walking “in ways not good” in a life spent “pursuing their own imaginations.”

I mean, if He knew the lawlessness we would become, and what He’d have to do within all that was done by and in the Son, why do any of it at all?

Why create a people so prone to reinventing their fall when He could have rather saved Himself a lot of time and heartache watching our trouble and just kept His peace and promises both to and thus for Himself?

Sure seems like it would have been far easier and much less heartbreaking.

But you see, such it yet one more place in which we get wrong what is the Gospel of God’s grace. For as the letter to the Romans discusses, in the continuation of verse 20 started above and going then into verse 21, “but where sin increased, grace increased all the more, so that, just as sin reigned in death, so also grace might reign through righteousness to bring eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.”

And so we can see in this passage in Romans that, despite how what He’d created to live a life as is lived without the wage of death that all sin wins had rather chosen to seek mostly only the death that all sins demands, He allows us to exist so that we might come, through our failures and misunderstandings, unto a deepened understanding as to His supreme grace and faithfulness to it.

God did all of this, from creating a Law He knew we’d fail to uphold to sending His only begotten Son, who He knew wouldn’t fail to uphold the weight of all our many wrongs, all so that we could come to see just how wrong we’ve been, as is defined as sin, and in so doing begin in Him a new life spent choosing to at first heed His hands reaching down to help us get up from where we’ve been and what we’ve become as a result of our having fallen so very far, but then to begin living a life in which seeking to honor and glorify Him is the priority that swells unto the killing of all the others we’d had before.

But still, why do any of it for? I mean, we read here of a people to whom He’d been reaching out with the very same help, even generations before Jesus had to come down just to die in order to save us, a miracle already mentioned in what’s, in my opinion, one of the most amazing chapters in all of Scripture (Isaiah 53) that He thus already knew would already do more of the very things that He’d been long trying to help them stop doing.

And so we know then that He’s known all of even our sin well before we became of the very life in which we’ve lived to since do the things that He knew we’d do that would still be those which go vastly against what He’s called us to do and thus be.

And this all then seems quite monumentally unnecessary. For again, He could have so easily saved Himself so much time and trouble, and in fact legitimate torture, if He’d have just admitted defeat and expressed His mistake, say, back when He wiped out all but 8 people with the flood story. Indeed, He could have just hit the reset completely and not even saved them, you know, knowing what all their children and children’s children and children’s children’s children would go on to do.

But He didn’t. Instead He continued to bear with His creation even unto, as described here, still be found so lovingly reaching down trying to point us in a better way all the time from when Noah left the ark to when Isaiah pointed out our failures made since and even unto today in which it’s arguably inarguable that we’re worse off than ever before.

Yet still we’re here.

And indeed, there are still plenty of days in which I find that fact still plenty weird. And I say that because there are still plenty of days in which I do the plenty of things that I know, as discussed yesterday, I ought not to do. For still I sin. Still I slip. Still I say things I shouldn’t say, think things I shouldn't think, do things I shouldn’t do. And yet He surprises me every single morning with what’s obviously then but one more chance to try one more time.

A chance neither I nor anyone else deserves considering the thousands of them I’ve failed or taken for granted before.

And that blows my mind.

It’s that I know now of so many things that I’ve said, thought or done that I can fully agree I shouldn’t have, things thus defined as sin as known as a chosen veering away from the Way as is described/defined in a certain regard within the Law for which society has no regard. Indeed, I know that I’ve lived contrary to what His Word defines as the appropriate way to live a life.

And yet rather than having died instead I’m still alive. Still I have more time. Still I’m awakened unto new chances to do His kind of new things every single day. And yet still I take those daily gifts and often give them away to such things as fear, worry, anger, disappointment, laziness, etc. And yet despite all of this still He gives me new chances.

What are we to make of this?

For here we have a God who is making it clear that He’s pretty much fed up with His children refusing to even acknowledge His reaching down with heart in hand to a people with hands rather filled with every form of sin that they can think up. Yes, He defines us as those who “invent ways of doing evil” as is done in our “pursuing our own imaginations” as has us still walking “in ways not good” thanks to His having given us over to a “depraved mind” that inspires us all to continue to do “what ought to be done.”

And yet rather than His justly just wiping us off the map and thus rendering us unable to deny Him any further, instead He further continues His patience with us as is given us in the hopes that some of us would come to choose not to perish but rather to come unto repentance by which we can be saved by grace through faith, ours in Him thanks to His in us.

Yes, though it strange to think about, I do believe that God still has faith in us. That He still has hope for us. That He knows that here exist those who are His, who, judging by the still vastly common lack of such things as humility and modesty and other evidencings of morality, may well not be living like they are. Because though He sees as clearly as we do, if not more so, what all we’ve all sadly become, still He knows those who are His from the most who will never want to be.

And so it must then be those few who are His that He’s holding out His most loving patience for so that they can come to realize that they are His and, in this, turn from their ways and start getting ready to leave for home.

I think the struggle is that we see the vast and growing discrepancy between these two sides of life. For here we see far more of the darkness than we do the light, and that likely still in even our own lives thanks to these now newly opened eyes that He continues to use to help us see the remaining evidence of things that don’t belong in the heart or mind or life of a child of God. Still we see a great many who live as if God isn’t there, isn’t real, doesn’t care and thus frees them from doing so either.

Still we see a world crumbling, and only very few who are willing to admit they’ve had a hand in it and wish now to stop doing wrong and seek instead to be made right.

And it’s strange.

Because it makes it both incredibly hard to imagine the light, seeing all the darkness around us and still within us, but yet it also makes it somehow easier at the same time. Because seeing still the stubbornness of man who continue to stubbornly continue falling away from God seems something of a proof that He is there. Seeing mankind’s continued rebellion somehow acts as catalyst in some that inspires them unto repentance. Seeing the fall and walking amongst its fallout somehow makes even what Christ endured on the cross make sense.

Because it’s easy to see the mess we’ve made, and so it’s also easy to imagine that something equally massive would have had to be done in order to save us from it.

And well, the only thing bigger than our many days spent making mistakes and living against God is Christ who made none and did then nothing of the sort. Which is pretty much the entirety of the Gospel summed up. It’s that though sin entered the world through one man, who then opened the door unto the rest of man following in those sinful inclinations, so too does salvation now exist in one Man who died for sin once for all and rose again to the victory of everlasting life for all who join Him in their too dying to sin and living instead then to God.

And we read in Scripture that there is a great rejoicing by the angels in Heaven over one sinner who repents away from their death in sin toward the life given in the Son. More rejoicing in fact than over many righteous people who needn’t such a turning.

A greater rejoicing because there are no righteous people who needn’t such a turning.

Which is what the entirety of Scripture is still trying to help us all either start or keep learning.

It’s that simple message that’s conveyed in regard to how we are all sinners who have thus sinned and thus fallen short of the glory of God. But that because of that His grace has only increased all the more unto even still having some in store so as to still cover the mistakes we’re all still sure to make as we make our way toward He who made the way to come to us so as to lead for us the Way by which we’re now to follow if we ever hope to get anywhere worth going.

Because despite our longstanding stubbornness and the pride by which such abides defining for us this myth of a spotless, stainless, sinless life, the fact of the matter is that who we’ve been and where we’ve gone and what we’ve done isn’t at all anywhere nor anything nor anyone that any of us should want to be the outcome of our lives. Rather we should all wish to live, and considering what all sin has already caused in the way of such things as guilt and regret and sadness and sorrow, seems that we’d rather want to know something far better.

Even so much better as the promise of peace and hope and love and joy and the lot of them experienced within a life with Him that we can then live forever in our sharing of His victory over our death.

But still, for now the choice remains ours. Because still He reaches down unto a creation that is still vastly preoccupied with pursuing the imaginations that so clearly continue to invent ways of doing evil. Indeed, it’s easy to see that humanity as a whole is by no means closer to getting its act together. Rather it seems easier to see that society as a whole is getting exponentially worse all the time. And now we can all continue to ignore that, deny that, debate that all we like.

But seeing as how we’ve been stubbornly doing that for quite some time too, I just don’t see what benefit it could prove.

Because every day that we give away unto trying still to defend our way is a thousand years that we’ve spent fighting against the Way that came to save us from the same. For unto God one day is a thousand years and a thousand years wrapped up in a day. And thus too our every mistake must feel like a thousand failures, but a thousand failures then perhaps never found in our fighting toward a faith in He who made no mistakes.

God didn’t mess up when He created man, man just chose to mess up by forgetting God. And while we can continue doing just that, and live in a world that’s making it more clear all the time that such is what they have in mind, we can also turn and repent of our following of imaginations and finding in them plenty of novel ways to do wrong.

And while it may not be easy to walk away from all we’ve known and will continue to see many here still enjoying, knowing that He died just for us to have that chance makes it seem like one worth taking.

And that because we haven’t a thousand years but rather another day or two at most. Please don’t waste your forever wagering your life on having still plenty of time to do a little more wrong before you get right with God.

Because when our days and years here have come to an end, most will simply be left.

And this isn’t where any of us should want to stay, not considering all He’s done to reach down and pull us toward something better found with Him and felt forever.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold