Day 3915 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Psalm 119:115 NIV

To be left alone

As the world around us continues onward along its clearly chosen course of chaos-fueled action and anger-driven reaction I find that I feel this need to be left alone. To go my own way. To leave it all behind. To all but pack a bag and run off into the woods in which I, like the woman in Revelation 12, just spend years being left to live under the sovereign protection of a God who offers what nothing and no one here either can give nor ever prove able to take away.

Indeed, I just want to live in peace, in whatever measure of such a hope we can manage to find these days.

Issue is that, as Paul pointed out to the people of Corinth, to fully escape the twisted corruption of a further falling creation we’d have to leave the world altogether. “I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people—not at all meaning the people of this world who are immoral, or the greedy and swindlers, or idolaters. In that case you would have to leave this world.”

And that’s because such is what everyone here is or has been or will be before long. And so rather than point out the obvious precariousness of our present predicament, Paul instead focuses on warning us of those who, let’s be honest, we shouldn’t have to be so warned about. And that’s because, as he goes on verse 11 to say, “anyone who claims to be a brother or sister but is sexually immoral or greedy, an idolater or slanderer, a drunkard or swindler” is indeed someone we must stay away from as those in the body are likely to be given more influence over us.

And that’s simply because we’re, as the church, supposed to be those made well aware of our tendency to fall having had eyes opened to seeing our sins and hearts there shattered due to the depth of such that we’ve been forced to see. And yet unfortunately what we see in many cases these days is that the church itself looks as much like the world as the world looks like, well, the world. It’s growing impressively hard to tell the two apart.

Kind of leaving one to at least start to wonder how we got here and why we should stay.

Alas, staying here we apparently are for at least another day and that, as we talk about all the time, among a mankind that loves such staying put as much if not more than life itself. Most here love to live life unchanged as we love for life to be unchallenged as we all prefer that path of least resistance because we know of our vast inability to weather the influence of most, but again, especially those that we thought to be brothers and sisters who were there to walk alongside us offering unto us that assurance of a shared seeking for mutual edification.

But I think it’s pretty clear that edification is pretty much at an all-time low.

What is edification? It’s the improvement of someone’s mind in what are typically terms aimed at the growth of and thus in morality. It’s the seeking of a continuation of one another unto not merely the substance of but indeed the very source of the endless betterment for which we were made, simply because better is actually that which we were made back before we became friends with the fall and those fallen because of it.

And of those friendships we’ve all had a great share. Issue then is that there’s nothing proven great in our shared falling both away from God and then apart because of it. An issue to further prove calamitous when upon that day our own deeds are weighed and we’re likely found measuring just about the same as those to whom we looked and upon whom we leaned in what was allowed to remain a way of life in which we put our trust in man rather than in Him who came to save the same from what the same had became.

For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

Problem is that we’ve all been taught to stay there by a world entirely happy to stay there.

Not to say that anyone around us really seems all that happy anymore as rather it seems that we’re found most days walking within this deepening fog of anger and fear felt by those around us apparently so deeply that they even wear it on their faces and speak it in the language of car horns, comment section arguments and the trusty one-finger salute.

Indeed, it’s really not hard to see where most folks stand anymore. Nor then that what most folks stand for is only causing them to keep from standing at all. Seems something of that Parable of the Wise and Foolish Builders is here brought to mind. And well, that’s because within this time we see so many people building on the sand that every single time some random wind blows of anything from want and win to worry and woe all the many seem to know is only to crumble and grumble and even blow their own house down.

Yeah, we’re amongst a people living as pigs not waiting for the big bad wolf to come around.

We’ll start the fires ourselves just to watch something burn so we can feel something of warmth again in what’s long been a life gone so cold that even lukewarmth would be an improvement.

Except that even then we’d be found unappealing unto Him who’s promised to spit from His mouth those neither hot nor cold, and that simply because something can be done with either one of those.

What’s He to do with those so unsure as to where they are, what they want, who they wish to be that they simply live their lives giving their days to never changing their ways nor likely even wondering whether or not they should.

And does this not honestly sound like all but all of society?

We’ve grown so prone to such stagnancy that we risk being mocked or ridiculed, hated or “cancelled” should we actually resolve to do something, to say something, to have the audacity to actually show something of some sign of life amongst those who are so used to living in the death that every sin is that they kind of seem to wish that death would just hurry up so they didn’t have to be so bothered by having to live life anymore.

Mostly because it seems most tend to agree that personal responsibility as evidenced perhaps best, or at least most clearly, in such things as self-control really kind of sucks. And this is such an easy fact to deduce thanks to the entirety of the world again having devolved into what’s basically just an endless chorus of the most cantankerous confusion ever known to man.

Now that’s not to say that those who fell before us didn’t do so in what were likely considered rather remarkable ways. It’s just saying that these days we’ve got cell phones that allow us to show off just how broken we are for all the world to see. Back then there were centuries in which folks didn’t even have newspapers and so they only knew of the foolishness found close enough to see it or hear it themselves.

Today we can just grab our window to the world out of our pocket and scroll through an endless sea of amazing evidence of just how better we’ve clearly not gotten.

And personally, I’m so tired of seeing it that I spend the vast majority of my every single day all but completely alone in one way or another. I wake up often before the sun so as to find the time in some measure of peace and quiet to write these posts with as little interference as possible. I have a lawn-mowing business in which I again work alone and just tune the world out as best I can. I work out alone so as to focus as best I can on trying to get healthier and stronger.

I do so much alone and yet I find that even that has made it even worse when I am all but forced to do things like go to the grocery store or finagle things around for some appointment someone has.

Indeed, it would seem that even my trying to find peace often seems only to backfire when the dogs next door start barking before the break of dawn or I see someone at the store who seems so sad or angry that I just find myself again wondering why.

Because it seems that the closer we grow to God and the hope and joy and peace He gives us in Christ, the more we come to realize just how few around us seem to have any of it. And then the struggle becomes this sense of urgency to just run up to somebody and tell them that there’s a better way in which they wouldn’t have to feel so bad so often.

But now there’s restraining orders and pepper spray to worry about.

Indeed, it’s all just a great big conundrum in which you feel like nothing you do is able to help anything or anyone.

And yet we have to try. And yet, when we do, we’re more often than not only reminded of how truly futile it really is. And the frustration that we’re bound to find found within all of this is what will cause most of us to lean into that desire to just give up and walk away. To be left alone. To let others go on living their lives however they see fit as we simply ask that they simply let us do the same.

But friends, there is no such thing as live and let live. There is not such things as escaping so fully to the woods that nobody hears from us for three and a half years. There is no peace coming in this place! And as much I so fully agree that it truly shouldn’t be this way, that it is this way is simply the reality in which we’re found.

And the fact seems obvious that there’s really not much any of us can do about it other than, again, doing our best to follow Him as best we can and share the Good News of His all-surpassing glory whenever and however we can with whomever we may find who seems even at all inclined to maybe hear us out.

Which is a number that seems to dwindle by the day thanks to this common way in which folks here seem content to stay in which they’ll only hear what they want another to say.

Itching ears and whatnot.

Indeed, it would seem that all of life is just to the point of pretty much falling apart while the vast majority of people either laugh it off or seek someone else to blame. And personally, I’m tired of living that way as there’s both nothing funny about most of what’s happening and, in all honesty, there’s not a single one of us who can honestly say we don’t share at least some of the blame. No, each of us have had some hand in helping the world down so low.

Do we just let it stay as it is knowing that such is what most here want? Do we fight to fix every problem we see only to probably find more thanks to most folks wanting to remain oblivious to the problems we’re facing? Do we run away and worry only about making sure our lives are going okay? Do we maybe pick two or three that we live to love just enough to not really ever talk to them about Jesus either?

What do we do when we mostly become only interested in being left alone?

Well, I wish I had some kind of simple answer to give you. I wish I knew what the answer was myself. For again, most days I just want to be left alone. And that’s because I don’t want to see the world falling apart anymore. I don’t want to hear about another senseless tragedy unfolding somewhere. I don’t want to hear about some football game or nascar race. I don’t need to talk about the weather as I check the forecast every morning. I definitely don’t care to hear anymore more of politics ever again to be honest.

But the fact is that we’re going to hear of these things. We’re going to be invited into conversations about all of these things. We are surrounded by people who are so consumed by and with these things and so many others that are entirely like them that we’re then staring down the barrel of a life that will remain quite miserable.

And yet I think that may be something of the answer.

It’s misery. It’s that this life is, contrary to all these best-life seekers we’re still surrounded by, probably going to be mostly miserable. Most things won’t go our way. We won’t always get what we want. In fact, we’ll likely not get much of what we’d rather have or find or feel. And why is that? Because we live in a place we just don’t belong carrying with us a hope that is altogether foreign and strange to just about everyone we walk beside.

We are being remade, by the day, into deeper reflections of the light in what remains a largely darkening world.

Yeah, there’s going to be some friction in that!

But see friends, He told us that ahead of time. He told us explicitly that in this world we’d have trouble, feel pain, face persecution and, since we’re being daily made to be more like Him, probably just feel mostly heartbroken all the time as we walk alongside what remains a mankind that we want so desperately to save but face daily the reality that reminds us that most here simply won’t have any part of it. And yeah, it sucks! And yeah, it makes us want to be alone!

And no, that’s just not possible.

Because, again, if we were to get away from everyone who did anything that could in any way influence or impact our faith in even a potentially negative way, we’d have to leave the world. But, seeing as how I’m still here writing this and you’re still here to be able to read it, well, it seems then like God’s said He wants us to be here still.

Why?

Because maybe He’s not given up as much as we’d so often like to. Maybe He hasn’t given up as much as most of the world has chosen to. Maybe He hasn’t given up on using us to make a difference that only we can make. Maybe He doesn’t need us to think we need it all to be always okay but to rather understand that the deeper the darkness around us only allows us to shine even brighter without our even being any better.

That’s definitely not saying that we shouldn’t ache to continue growing in Christ and seeking the countless ways in which He intends to improve both us and thus our lives.

It’s simply saying that as the world around us grows darker, we don’t even have to be much of anything in His Kingdom to walk as evidence of His Kingdom. For even the smallest and shakiest of lights can still shine amazingly bright in a pitch black surround.

And well, it seems that such is where we’re found!

And well, that seems to say that it’s supposed to be this way in which we become more miserable by the day as we have to watch most here continuing to fall if not all but run away from He who is the Way to the Life that all of us are invited to live unendingly.

And that we have that promise seems to say that we’ve still something to share in what remains a world filled with those who need to hear it.

And thus we find that it’s not about us and what we want for ourselves alone but rather our coming to know what God’s will is and to want only that will to grow in us. And yet this is where things get tricky. Because, just like the writer of this Psalm, we’re going to find more often than not that we’re so surrounded by those who could potentially be the kind of bad company that seeks to corrupt our growth in and toward being those of good character that we indeed feel this need to make sure such influences are not allowed to have such an impact.

We’re probably going to at times just wish the world would leave us alone so that we can truly pour everything we have into working out our faith with the fear and trembling it so fully deserves.

But we’re also going to learn, as we grow in Christ and He in us, that those who we don’t understand and who probably don’t like us much in return are the very ones we may have been tasked with reaching out to. After all, the call is to love our enemies, right? Bless those who curse us? Do unto others sort of thing? Go into all the world and tell whomever we can about the Good News that came near and is near to coming again?

That’s the point my friends!

It’s all found within the focus. Sure, we’ll probably want the world to leave us alone, to go right ahead and do all the evil they seem so daily intent to while we just stay in our lane and work on our own faith. And that’s good, to a degree. For we do need to daily prioritize those things that help us to grow in Christ, things like reading the Word and spending time in prayer.

But friends, what we’ll find is that such things are our armor with which we’re to take up this good fight of the faith in which we live out the rest of our days not resting until we do as much as we possibly can of whatever He has us here still to do.

It won’t be easy. It might be painful. It will be miserable sometimes, and that so much so that we’ll just want to be left alone.

But you see, we don’t need the world to leave us alone. We need to become of the kind of resolve in our faith that we can break away from it whenever we need to. Mentally. Spiritually. Emotionally. We need to be of the ability to build walls that keep out the things that we cannot allow to influence nor impact us anymore. But we also have to allow for doors that swing outward still so that we can still share the reason for the hope we house inside.

That’s the line. We are here to help but also to fight. A time for war and a time for peace. And while the hard part may be that those times are so close to one another that they all but overlap, the fact is that the challenges we face will only help us grow in our faith.

And that’s the point. To grow in faith. The problem is that both God never said that doing so would be easy and that we’ve managed to expect it to be easy anyway.

But maybe that’s the first line we can draw, the first wall we can build. That which says that we’re willing to endure what is hard whilst appreciating the fight it brings for helping us learn to tell the difference between that which we’ll allow in and the more we simply won’t tolerate.

And make no mistake, it’s a precarious line to walk, this one in which we remain in the world but seek to be increasingly not of the world. But again, the focus is on our faith and our doing both what’s best for it and doing with it the best we can.

Thankfully He will help us navigate these struggles and the feelings we feel because of them. We just have to stop thinking it will be easy to both keep the world out and yet let out into the world the hope we have within.

It won’t be easy. But thankfully, He will make sure we’re not left alone to figure it out by ourselves.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold