Day 3901 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Jeremiah 11:11 NIV

Unanswered

Seems anymore that I think about God’s fairness all the time, and yet what I seem to find is that in it exists a worry that I truly cannot seem to escape. For while I’m doing my best to do all I can to try and understand the depths of His mercy, patience and forgiveness, I can’t seem to escape from my understanding of why all of the above exist. And that is that while they’ve all become almost something of religious clichés, the truth is that they’re not these pretty words we’ve made them out to be.

Rather they’re all words of war.

And that’s because, let’s take mercy for example, it’s something defined as “charity, clemency, grace, leniency as based upon a disposition to show kindness or compassion” in fact a compassion that “forbears punishing even when justice demands it.” Or how about patience. Patience is considered “the capacity to accept or tolerate delay, problems, or suffering without becoming annoyed, anxious or angry.” Forgiveness is literally the willingness to overlook what can only exist as an offence that demands the forgiveness be offered when it’s so obviously not due.

All of these things, and the many more just like them such as grace and even the entirety of the sanctification process in which all of them are all combined into an ongoing benevolence given unto those who both need the growth but need it because they’d previously opted for the path upon which they clearly didn’t find/experience it, they’re all of such tolerance that, when compared against our human capacity for such, simply shouldn’t exist.

Indeed, I find that I’m becoming in certain ways, at least in regard to certain things, less tolerant by the day. And well, this both seems to actually find me for once in agreement with Scripture but too at increasing odds with not only all of humanity but also all of myself. For the fact will forever remain, at least whilst we remain here, that here is what’s helped us become these buffoons who’ve lived to do as God explicitly called us not to and thus, as walking reflections of the darkness we see deepening daily around us, this finds us increasingly aware of both how much we don’t deserve His kindness toward us and yet, correspondingly, how much more we need it.

For the greater the offence, or number thereof, the greater the mercy and grace needed to cover them.

And while I’m quite further along in this journey both toward and seemingly in Christ (as is evidenced in the many changes I’ve experienced within my life) and thus too His work accomplished upon my cross, so too does this leave me increasingly aware of just how far gone both I and the world around me have truly gone, been, in many ways even remain. And it’s this fact that both scares me to death and yet makes me so angry sometimes that I all but throw my hands up and all but choose to give up and simply ask Him to stop being so good.

Because, while we often think of such disasters and destructions as that mentioned here to come in the form of the fire and brimstone that erased such places as Sodom and Gomorrah, what if they also come in such things as shame and regret too raining down into these hearts that so often lie shattered at the mere remembrance of something we said 15 years ago?

What if this “disaster they cannot escape” is both the collapse we can see around us as is now being anymore evidenced in such things as all of this widespread political dissidence and every manner of social and societal unrest that it inspires, but also that which we feel inside every single time that we either catch ourselves taking part in the wars or rumors of wars or remembering the divisions and depravities that we ourselves once delighted in ourselves?

See, I think we so often tend to have this mental image of God’s wrath as being poured out in some visible manner such as worldwide floods or unquenchable fire. And that’s for good reason as the Scripture contains plenty of accounts in which those things are ways in which God both reminds us of His presence and, well, how often we’ve existed upon the worst possible side of it. But you see, that, to me, is part of what makes the entirety of Scripture filled with both the saving grace we love to think about but also the terrifying justice that we so often don’t.

And we don’t like to think about that part because, well, it doesn’t take us too awful long to once again realize that we’ve literally no hope of making it out of this alive in light of all we’ve done having chosen a life lived so vastly in the dark that our actions, if not words themselves, have often lived to tell this story all about how we all but violently hated God’s glory so very much that we ourselves gave away years to living as if He wasn’t there!

And it sucks to remember those times because, regardless of their expanse or expression, they’re all evidence of a darkened passion that itself planted seeds of such things as doubt and denial that have in fact grown into seasons of drought and famine, but not always the kind in which we were just exceedingly and increasingly hungry and thirsty for something to literally eat or drink. No, so too have they resulted in a lack of the bread of life and living water that is our Savior come down from the Father.

I’m all the time reminded of this message that seems to just find me at the most random of timing. It’s that of Amos 8:11 in which we read that “’the days are coming,’ declares the Sovereign LORD, ‘when I will send a famine through the land—not a famine of food or a thirst for water, but a famine of hearing the words of the LORD.’”

Or these days seen literally as in evidencing, say, Hosea 4:6 which reads that “my people are destroyed from lack of knowledge. ‘Because you have rejected knowledge, I also reject you as my priests; because you have ignored the law of your God, I also will ignore your children.’”

And indeed, it’s this equal rejection that seems to be something seen all the time anymore. And that not only us of God, but His of who we’ve clearly collectively chosen to both become and mostly remain as is so evident anymore that all you need to do is turn on the tv, listen to the radio or just simply open your door. Indeed, one of the surest signs as to the authenticity of Scripture’s entirety is to just go outside! We’ve become a people who love burning cities to the ground and throwing trash all around and treating one another like mortal enemies just because we all collectively hate sitting in traffic but can’t do anything about it and so we resort to flipping each other off and yelling at the old lady that’s driving too slow.

Is this the life that we should know?

Are the sights we see and sounds we hear truly as things ought to be down here? Does all the anger and jealousy and staunch incivility truly define who we are, or just instead only who we’ve chosen to become? For I hold to the Word which reads that we were all made in the image of God, meaning then that so too do we, although obviously in smaller measure, have also that same capacity for such things as He is such as love and grace and patience and mercy.

And yet we see such things so sparingly that I think it’s too safe to say that we’re losing our very identity as was at first given us in the fact that He knew us before He formed us and gave us then a purpose in accord with His overall plan for all of humanity.

Indeed, I believe that we are all children of God who were created and thus are here to do the good works that He also created beforehand for us to walk in.

But sadly I also see clearly all the ways in which our walk is not good and remember quite well all those days in which my walk was arguably even worse in some ways.

And what then are we to make of all this?

To be honest there are many days in which all I can seem to make are only more mistakes. Perhaps that’s because I’m still learning, but mostly only that I’m apparently a really slow learner. Maybe it’s because I still allot entirely too much time and attention to this world and its always inspiring us to play the victim. It could simply be that you and me have so forgotten how and why we were made that we honestly have no possible way of recollecting the better we could have been had we simply stayed who we once were.

Whatever the case may be, the truth is that it’s plain to see that we’re walking amongst the destruction that we clearly then haven’t escaped.

And that clearly quite well before anything in the way of such decimations as the overthrowing of nations and the flooding of creation.

No, we’re each walking examples of God’s wrath, but that on the inside as found and felt in such things as guilt and regret. And indeed, though we try as hard as we might, the fact is that such things are indeed inescapable. We cannot outrun them. We cannot refuse them. There is, at least for me, many days in which I myself feel as if I cannot seem to lose them. And that’s even in light of my daily trying to learn more of the Light who is the Life who is the Son who is the only hope any of us have.

And I think that’s because this path we’ve chosen has been so broken that it’s become even able to prove that hope itself is something we’re entirely able to lose unto the hopelessness in which we so often exist.

But are we? Are we really able to lose our hope, or does it just get pushed to the side sometimes? That’s one of the biggest questions in faith itself, this wondering as to the potential for our losing our salvation. I personally contend that we can’t lose the gift He’s given us, but I also believe that we can also be so desperate to think we have it that we simply become convinced we’ve accepted it without ever stopping to judge the fruit that would tell us for sure.

Indeed, I think we can be so certain of our salvation that we never stop to realize that we’re living what are basically the same lives as those we lived before we became convinced that He set us free from living them.

And so maybe that’s the destruction from which we cannot escape.

Maybe it’s this endless ability for our to see so unclearly that we, like the Pharisees, become convinced we can see, leaving us then like them who Christ himself challenged to the tune of pointing out that had they never claimed to know so much then nor would they have been guilty of so much. Indeed, “if you were blind, you would not be guilty of sin; but now that you claim you can see, your guilt remains.”

And thus, well, so too does ours. If nothing else at least the awareness of it. For again, I contend that such is our own personal share of the overall disaster decreed for all of humanity. It’s the realization of our own personal convictions and how, sadly, many of them throughout our own personal history have been concerned with, well, our own personal glory or gain or pleasure or treasure or whatever else we’ve all become enticed to have or see or be.

Yes, I believe that such is the destruction from which we ourselves have proven incapable of escaping.

And make no mistake, it is a kind of misery that, again, we just aren’t escaping no matter how hard we try. And I know this because I have tried. I have, like you, tried all I could think to do in order to lose the weight of shame that’s called my name so many times that I eventually just gave up and kept listening. I, like you, have often found myself remembering so many of the horrible mistakes I’ve made that I too just went on to conclude that I myself was a mistake, a loser, a freak who couldn’t do any better, would never be anything more.

Not because I actually believe those things but simply because we all do so many things that are all but basically our refusing to listen to God that we, even if only eventually, come upon this realized gravity unto His fairness and justice that becomes for us an ability to understand why He’d not want to listen to us. I mean, after all, if all we continue to say via both word and action is that we don’t need Him, don’t want Him around, then eventually He will accept the request and leave us alone.

And while that’s something easily enough said when times are easy and life is smooth, and thus commonly enough to witness within what is a world in which we’ve made life so easy on ourselves that we seem to not even remember anything of personal responsibility, it gets a lot harder when said responsibility itself becomes unavoidable and the cost of our failures are also then seen for the very real consequences they bring.

Indeed, we’ve become a people of such ease and selfishness that we’ve also become unable to see either the damnation such things lead to if aren’t altogether promised nor the damage they’re already doing in the feelings of shame and sorrow that we’re entirely good at ignoring.

But you can’t ignore them forever!

And that’s something that I seem to have realized in response to such messages as this in Jeremiah. Granted, in context He’s talking about the literal fall of Jerusalem at the hands of Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonian army. But we must also remember that all of Scripture is breathed for the benefit of all who read it, and thus there is always a lesson to learn even in the promises and warnings given unto those who lived in what are vastly different times and places than we do today.

For God doesn’t change, and so nor then does His call for all to pursue righteousness and holiness out of a continuously shaken and always trembling fear of His divine wrath and in appreciation of His most merciful willingness to withhold it a while longer as we all try and yet struggle to experience the process of our being sanctified by the Living Water and the Bread of Life which are indeed largely being ignored by most.

No, as much as God doesn’t change, it’s sad to say that neither has humanity really.

Rather we’re all still falling, both in love with sin and thus further from Him. And sure, there are some who are fighting daily against that, but friends, let’s not kid ourselves by saying it’s always easy or that we’re always getting it right. We’re not! All of us struggle. All of us stumble. All of us have those days in which we look in the mirror and see only Nebuchadnezzar once again staring back in that well-known threat of upending our lives with yet another mistake or two that we just can’t seem to find some way of talking ourselves out of making.

We suck at this, and well, that sucks!

And perhaps that’s something of our share of this destruction decreed here.

Maybe it’s felt in those times in which we find that we feel so broken and ashamed that we don’t even feel worthy of talking to God as we can only imagine He’s all but run out of willingness to listen. Maybe it’s met in those days in which we’ve messed up so much that we just accept that such is who we are and thus what we’re destined to remain. Maybe it’s punishment in the form of being unable to escape the memories of our many past failures.

Whatever the case, it’s safe to say that all of us have experienced some measure of what’s meant to either break us or help us see how broken we’ve already become.

And no, nothing about that will ever be fun, and well, that’s why so many will continue to think this faith to be so foolish. For, in comparison to the ways in which the world around us walks, who would choose to endure the teaching that calls us constantly to accounting for our mistakes and missteps as is done best via our own versions of that cross carried to that hill upon which both we die, yes, but so too does He win?

Indeed, this world is filled with those who still live as if they won’t (die) and that He didn’t (win). And sadly, yeah, sometimes our words and actions seem to send the message that we’re still among them! And well, there’s nothing but inescapable misery coming just as soon as we wake up and realize where we’ve gone and who we’ve again become.

But friends, while such things as mercy and patience and forgiveness aren’t the easy words that we’ve tried so hard to make them seem, all so that we could accept them far more easily, the truth is that we don’t need them to be. And that’s because we don’t need this road to be easy. We don’t need salvation to be free. We need it to be brutal so that it can free us! Yes, we need His path to be exceedingly narrow and increasingly so in order for it to squeeze out of us every last drop of every dimness, darkness or doubt that we’ve allowed to grow inside.

Yes, it reminds me of a shirt I saw one time that said we needn’t ask for easier lives but rather to be tougher men. And that is indeed what God has both called us to be and will most certainly help us become. Just understand that such a resilience is never grown in moments of ease or safety. Rather our growth in faith’s resolve is only found inside the fire and those many feelings of shame and despair.

So let us not continue a way of life in which we try to never hear the horrors we’ve brought upon ourselves. Rather let’s endure all that God sends our way so as to refine us and build us into the army He created us to be.

Even if that means facing down the army that brings daily the destruction of who we’ve been. For it’s not about who we’ve been but rather who we can now become in Him.

And well, looking back you’ll see plenty that you cannot remain if you’re to become who God made you to be. And while it might be hard to listen to the difference designed inside the disaster, we’ll all one day beg Him to listen to us when we call upon Him to lead us through those gates.

And if we want Him to hear us then, then we’d better listen to Him now.

Even when His message is one of our destruction.

No, especially when such is His message because, well, that’s often what we need more than anything.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold