Day 3899 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Jeremiah 6:10 NIV

Voicemail

For a moment I’d like you to imagine that you’ve been living a life stuck inside a certain situation in which you’re all but direly desperate to get out of, to leave behind, to move on from and likely even forget altogether once gone. Something like being in prison or stuck on some deserted island in the middle of some sea somewhere. And for however long you’ve been there you’ve been trying all you could think of in order to remedy this struggle that you’re facing, the pain that you’re feeling, the misery that meets you fresh every morning and never leaves your side even when you try but only fail to sleep at night.

And let’s say that you hear a plane flying overhead or are just certain you’ve just seen a ship on the distant horizon or were just told you could make one more phone call to see if you could get ahold of someone to maybe speak to the judge and get you a second chance to have your case heard.

And let’s say you make that call or start gathering wood for a signal fire or start running around like a madman doing all you can to wave down this plane that could well be your last chance to be found.

How foolish would it be to start the fire but then walk away back into the forest so that when the ship on the horizon, that did see your signal, couldn’t find you when they came to help? How stupid would it be to have the ability to get that plane’s attention only to end up asking for them to send some supplies so that you could stay on that island and die? How dumb would it be to let that phone just continue to ring and let what’s perhaps your very last gasp as freedom just leave a voicemail that you, as we all do, have no hurry if any intention whatever of ever actually checking?

Be pretty dumb wouldn’t it?

To let this chance to be saved or set free just pass you by because you’ve become of the mind that’s become able to find something, even if you don’t know what, that you would hate having to leave behind. Maybe you made friends with one of the guards or got a nice job in the laundry. Maybe you built you a pretty nice little lean-to and would hate to see it go to waste having started feeling somehow somewhat at home. Or perhaps you met a monkey and he’s a pretty cool dude and y’all have this shared affinity for the island’s banana supply and you’re pretty sure that, despite the language barrier, he really understands you on that deep level that you’ve longed to have with another living being for quite some time.

Indeed, imagine if you will that you’re of the mind that when your chance at salvation has finally come, be it from prison or a kind of solitary that no concrete and bars can compete with thanks to the endless miles of empty ocean on every side, and you just change your mind and refuse to try, refuse to listen, refuse to leave what you may have had plenty of inklings was in every way a dire situation.

And now, if you will, imagine yourself not being of that mind for once in your life.

Because as foolish and dumb and stupid as all of that sounds, this willful hiding or running or blatantly ignoring a call or cry for help that you yourself had sent out in a sort of desperation that seemed to say you couldn’t bear to go on this way, it’s oddly enough something that all of us have done and something that the vast majority still do.

What I mean is this:

All of us have had, for all our lives, this message that’s been sent us via every viable means that God above could make a way to happen and be thus realized. All of us have had a lifetime’s supply of unlimited access to, if nothing else (as Scripture remains illegal in some places), the time to hit our knees and say a prayer asking for God above to be there and to please hear how broken and lonely and terrified we are in what’s become a way of life in which we’re one day our very best friend and one day our own worst enemy.

We have all had the opportunity to both send out this desperate cry for help, something that I dare say most of us have done at least once if not a thousand times, and that alongside a courage to imagine that someone out there could hear and would listen and had the heart to help and a mind willing to either find a way to do so or make one if one wasn’t readily there already.

Every single one of us have actually had, as we discussed a little bit yesterday, a God reaching down trying to pull us up and out of whatever situation or way of life or continued misunderstanding or completely illogical fear we may have found, felt, failed, forsaken or elsewise taken for granted.

And yet all of us have let His help come ashore only to find us unwilling to leave. All of us have asked Him to come down only to help us through a rather miniscule struggle we’re facing in a lone moment but to leave us when the worst of it has passed. All of us have let His call go to voicemail as we left that Bible sitting on a shelf and our knees firmly locked holding us in the stubbornness of our self-perceived upright position that’s vastly unwilling to bend in prayer and our hearts both a million lies from home and entirely disinterested in doing anything about it.

But why?

For as we talk about all the time anymore in what is this general duty I feely to personally help us see and realize the trouble we’re in, if not causing, is what is this way of life being lived so far from right that we’ve not much hope of finding anything other than our being left. Indeed, I’m daily thinking of every way I possibly can to help us all better understand the trouble we’re in as is seen inside the many heart-shattering scenes so constantly shown in a world truly seeming to enjoy living so upside down as to deny God’s help, but only when we don’t need it.

Isn’t that something? That so long as life is going good, you know, no prisons or deserted island, we’re typically found not really worrying much about faith or hope or prayer or Scripture or Jesus or the cross or the grave or how badly we need to be saved from what is a life in which we have built a nice little home that we’ve then further filled with all kinds of treasure and triumph into which we daily steal so as to escape the life we have to either live or walk alongside others living in order to keep fires burning and the pantries filled.

And as our focus remains on how not bad we’ve managed to make this life we’ve tried so hard to carve out of this world and that for ourselves, so then does our realization of the direness of our situation begin to fade, to wane, to relax a bit and thereby allow us to do the same.

And indeed, looking around at how the vast majority are living anymore, most are entirely relaxed and not seemingly worried about all that much.

But friends, I don’t think we should be so willing to imagine that the situation we’re in is somehow less dire because we have a bunch of worldly stuff or exciting plans or social media followers or bank accounts with so many dollars that we have no fear of ever again being broke.

And that’s because we are broke.

We are prisoners. We are slaves. We are monsters. We are, try this one on, legion. Yes, for we too are many who live to do as the Lord has expressly asked us not to. And yet we do so with this smile plastered all over our faces as if to say that we’re so good with the life we live going the way we’ve chosen that we wouldn’t dream of leaving it behind or changing anything. All because we’ve somehow come to see that we have no problems, that we’re in no trouble, that we don’t need anything at all from anyone at all.

Rather we’re all convinced that we’re enough and our lives as we’re living them and all the plans we’ve made for them are too more than plenty to form for us a prize worth so prizing that we not only make it our main priority but we absolutely refuse to listen to anyone who dares to say that the kingdom we’ve built is made of sand on an island in the middle of nowhere, and that the monkeys we’ve made friends with are plotting to kill us in our sleep one night so that we stop eating up all their bananas.

Because we don’t want to see this life for what it has so clearly become. We don’t want to hear about how bad our current predicament really is. We have no interest or willingness to discuss or even contemplate that we may in fact be living what will one day amount to such a wasted life that we’re found eternally unwelcome to continue living.

Instead we just focus on the moment, the milestone, the many victories and achievements that we’ve settled for seeing as these grand outcomes of what’s then a life that we don’t want to come out from. Never mind the prison bars or the hurricanes or the armies of chattering little fur-balls we see starting to train in their plot against us. Because those things are only problems that we’re either used to dealing with or just continue to think we’ll never have to deal with because we haven’t had to yet.

Indeed, so much of our outlook on life as a whole is summed up within our common ability to remain almost entirely unworried and unwearied about pretty much everything. All because we’ve either dealt with it before and thus know how to do so apparently well enough to make it through should the same come again, or we haven’t dealt with it and rely on our ability to always imagine that that means we’ll probably never have to.

Kind of like our understanding of death. For if you’re as able to read this right now as I am to being able writing it, then we’re seemingly both alive and thus haven’t ever died and thus needn’t really concern ourselves with the idea as we’ve, so far, no evidence that tells us that we might should start thinking about what might happen should this event that hasn’t yet happened, and thus we imagine may never happen, actually happen.

Or the desert island thing. Or the prison idea. We’ve never been in or on either, probably. Some of us may have, but the vast majority here have never faced that outcome in life. And I would dare say that most of us have probably nothing to worry about in regard to them either. For most of us seem to do fairly well avoiding jail, and at least for me personally, I’ve only been to the ocean once in my life and so the odds of me ending up on some island somewhere is pretty slim.

I do love bananas though.

Anyway, my point is that we all live this way of life in which we come up with all of these ways to remain convinced that certain things will never happen and that even more thus don’t demand or deserve our attention. And we do this even when something comes along that leaves us feeling quite the victim. For we do live in what I believe we could all agree is a world pretty far from perfect. But the problem is that we’ve all managed to find all of these little ways to make it feel just cozy enough that we’ve all pretty much become of the mind that we wouldn’t mind staying put for at least a while more.

We’ve all in fact become of the mind that has us apparently convinced that we’re not ourselves adding to the noise, the chaos, the confusion and disillusion of what is a life of increasing drama and depravity.

Some of us having gone so very far in that direction that, again, we send up no signals, start no fires, make no calls, say no prayers, have no hopes, dream no dreams, just want things to mostly stay just as they are.

And many here are so adamant on keeping things just as they are that even the Word of God is considered so very offensive that it is literally outlawed in 52 countries and the very faith it inspires via the salvific truth it shares is currently enough to inspire some unto a butchering of believers in places such as Nigeria.

And why?

Because it’s God’s warning given unto a fallen man that was given so as to try and help said fallen man turn from what is a way that is so promised death and suffering that there exists an existence in which both are eternally endless. And His warning is hated because it defines every single one of us as those who’ve done the very things that deserve that outcome. And yet we’ve become of this widespread inability to understand how that’s possible considering all the success and pleasure and treasure we’ve found, felt, experienced.

It doesn’t make any sense.

And so we’ve collectively shut everything from our ears to our hearts so as to keep this foolishness out.

Yes, the Christian faith and the Word upon which it’s built is considered foolishness to those who are perishing simply because it dares to hint that we are.

We never even manage then to get to the parts that are all about how He made a Way out. For that’s the struggle in this way of life we’ve chosen to enjoy in which we’re only willing to endure so much for so long until we either get to the good stuff or we just give up and walk away assuming there’s nothing good coming.

Friends, there is good coming as salvation has in fact already came, left, and is coming again.

Problem is that we’re still building shelters to endure the weather and store our meager abundance of whatever it is that we’ve come to enjoy.

And though it be quite meager indeed, the issue is that we enjoy our lives here so very much that we despise anyone who dares remind us that one day we won’t have them. And even further then, we hate even more deeply any who dare contend that death isn’t just the end of life. For some here have made their peace with that inside all of these outlooks such a life being mostly just death and taxes. Indeed, we can make ourselves believe all sorts of foolish things so long as doing so means that we don’t have to face the music and realize we couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket.

Because we don’t want to worry about it. Don’t want to think about it. Definitely don’t want to admit that both the world isn’t in good shape, nor then going in a good direction, nor that we’ve ourselves contributed to the downfall of it all.

No, for after all, even a desert island is still an island so at least it’s got a beach! At least in prison you don’t have to go to work at some 9-5 and they give you free meals every day.

Indeed, it’s not so bad down here that we can’t spruce it up a bit, maybe hang a poster on the concrete wall or make a sand castle or two.

Never mind that the only hope we have remains mostly offensive to most, and thus probably to us seeing as how we’ve all lived for so long trying to please people that all we know to do and think and say is whatever everyone else does and says and thinks. Doesn’t matter that our death is getting closer as it clearly isn’t here yet. And come to think of it, nor is this Jesus that a few people keep on clamoring about. No clouds have parted, no trumpets to hear.

So why listen to any of it?

Why endure this offensive teaching that would inspire in us a desperate willingness to admit our failures, face our faults, find our fears and fight to refuse them the opportunity to keep us living like the only life we’ll ever have is that we so clearly have here?

Why?

Because it isn’t the only life we’ll ever have. This isn’t the only place we’ll ever know. In fact, what’s coming next will last exponentially longer thanks to eternity having no interest in time nor willingness or need to continue counting life by it. It’s just forever, and in case you never felt the need to think about it, forever is a really long time. Far too long to spend it suffering in what the worst of this world can only pretend to offer. And yet so too entirely too long to miss spending it wrapped in the substance of something so amazing that even the very best of this world will seem like hell itself.

Friends, if we only knew what we were missing by letting His message remain something we ignore or don’t have much interest in or time to read. If only we knew of all the things He was doing and willing to do in order to get both through to us and us on into Heaven so we could spend forever with Him and all the goodness He is. If only we knew how often we settle and how little we’re settling for. And that all because we’ve become too weak to be offended and try to figure out why.

No, rather down here offense is simply the end of the line. Once folks are offended they just walk away and never agree to ever again pay any attention to everything and anyone that may offend them. All because our feelings are now more important than our lives.

Indeed, we’ve become more willing to die than we are to admit we’ve not lived right.

And it’s because of that that we’ve stopped listening to God and all but asked Him to leave us alone on what is a prison we’ve built all by ourselves on what is an island in the middle of what will be proven nowhere we should have ever become so eager to stay.

Just don’t be surprised when He one days gives us everything we asked for. Nor if it turns out to be nothing we wanted alongside no remaining chance or hope of doing anything to change it.

Because forever is a really long time, but it’s as unchanging as the God who made it.

So be careful what you’re living to find within it. For avoiding the Word meant to help us find the only narrow path that’s proven able to miss the worst side of it is probably the worst way to find the best He’s offered.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold