Day 3923 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

1 Peter 2:11 NIV

Foreigners and Exiles

It’s amazing how out of place you can begin to feel in what is the only place you’ve ever been. That’s been something that’s floated around my head for months now. Something of a personal symptom of the growing dysfunction of a world so filled with such misplaced assumptions that the vast majority are still looking for God in the dirt upon which we stand, never seeming then to ever get closer to either what they’re looking for nor the realization that says we’re leaving the land in which they’re looking. A realization that I reckon is never reached for good reason.

And that’s because what’s more amazing is how out of place you can begin to feel in what is the only life you’ve ever lived.

We don’t want to feel that way. We don’t want to feel so out of place. We don’t want to feel like we don’t belong, like things have gone, like so too have we in the worst of all direction and degree as designed by what our hands have sought to find and our hearts then forced to hold, silver and gold fit for crucibles rather than crowns. No, we’ve all by now drown upon this idea that says that all that’s here is all that’s ours if we’ve only the strength to for it seek.

So we do. Daily we line up at our claims and sink our shovels and souls into this hope for gold that will give us what everyone around us will agree makes us mean something. Because we just want to mean something. We want to be something. We want to matter so much that none of us ever have to feel as if we have to fail, especially at our common hope of calling here home.

No, for truth is that we quite love it here. Each of us have made decent lives earning decent wages that allow us to afford to enjoy some decent excitements and pleasures, perhaps even buy some fairly impressive treasures. And the more we come to treasure of all that’s here inside this ground upon which we lean the more we come to find it mean any message saying still we’ll leave.

Why leave what you like? Why let go what you love? Why be asked to look beyond the life you know of the life you’ve made of the world you’re in for the one you’re not? Yes, why must we set our sights upon what’s not seen when all that we see is as it has always been, and that for everyone? For what is see is assured. We can touch it. We can taste it. We can wreck it and waste it and still manage to fix or replace it.

Why give up all that?

Well, because what is seen is temporary whereas all that isn’t, isn’t. And granted, there’s a rather dire disaster to be designed inside our living these lives as if they’re lost already as doing so will either inspire us or all but force us to forsake that which we’ve likely learned to love. And that’s something that this world just doesn’t do much of. And so it’s something that we’ll both likely struggle with mightily and also a task we’ll entertain all alone.

Leaving us to stumble and get lost along the way as we look to leave what is lost anyway.

Inviting then only a million questions as to why we do it, each with answers hard to find as we see still only a world not even asking the questions. Making this journey even more daunting because of our understanding which has always taught us to look to the world for the help we might happen to need.

But friends, how can we be helped by those who live as if they don’t need any themselves?

How can we grow in Christ inside a lost way of life being lived still by those who think that just because they’re still here means they might always be? How can we find our best hopes when our biggest ideal is a best life we’re promised to leave? How can we get ready to go when all we continue to know is just friendship with those pretending we won’t?

How can we care about the outcome of our souls when vastly tied to a world that knows only to deny they’re already in dire straits?

How can we get where we’re going when all the paths curve back on themselves?

How can we know who we are when all we are is a people pointed back at ourselves?

That’s how we’ve lived. It’s long been a life spent looking to the flesh, either ours or that of those around us, to help us at first figure out and then find what’s best for us. But friends, how can we know what’s best for us if we continue to believe that the very best has to be seen? I mean, 10 years ago I couldn’t see the life I’m living now and yet the life I’m living now is immeasurably better than that of a decade ago.

And it’s that knowing now what I didn’t know then that’s caused me to wonder what I don’t know about what’s still to come and where I’m still to go.

What don’t I know about what’s up ahead? What can’t I see? What haven’t I heard? What thoughts haven’t I thought? What words haven’t I said? Where will I be? Will it even be here?

One day it won’t.

And so why then live as if this is where I belong when I know that one day I won’t be here?

Why store up treasures in pleasures that I one day won’t feel? Why amass an abundance of possessions that I’ll leave behind to folks I can’t possibly know? Why give my life to worrying about what matters to a world that I can’t stay in forever? Why live to please a flesh that’s but mine for a moment? Why count my life in minutes when the clock’s going to stop? Why seek to equate my worth through what I wear or who likes how I look? Why spend so much time worrying about those around when most of them are fastened to the ground?

That’s not to say that we’re not to love those around us, because we most certainly are. It’s rather merely saying that to love one another is an undertaking aimed into the understanding that love brings life and yet here we’ve only one to lose.

Thus the very most loving thing to do is to speak the truth that sets captives free so that, once freed from every past captivity, they too can live their lives looking onto eternity.

And thus the most loving thing to do is to share the Gospel which bridges the gap between where we are and where He’s gone.

And the fact that He has left this place only testifies that so too will we.

But that to perhaps an entirely different eternity. And that because none deserve His promise already, but how much less will it be then offered unto those who leave this world kicking and screaming as if they can’t bear to be anywhere else?

Friends, why stay?

What’s here that we can’t live without? What’s here that’s actually made our lives worth living, more than they already were? See, that’s the thing that I think we tend to get all screwed up inside. It’s this idea that there are things inside this life that make our lives more alive. And sure, maybe they do. After all, things like excitement and pleasure do seem to matter quite a lot in those moments in which we feel them. But what about when they’ve faded?

I know that most here would point to the opportunity to enter into some matrimonial union as a gift that’s makes life better. I’m sure it does. Does it make life last forever?

It most certainly does not.

Is it important? Yeah. Is it special? Sure. Does being loved and giving the same make life feel better? Absolutely. But there’s just this reality in which everything here is promised to end. And granted, this is all pretty heavy for a Wednesday, but the fact is that even the days don’t matter as much as we think they might. And that’s because we’ve managed to get everything so out of balance between here and forever that we can’t tell the two apart anymore.

We have no enduring perspective of that which is permanent from the most which simply isn’t. And again, that’s not to say that some things here aren’t important because there are a great many that are. But friends, even the most important thing found or felt within this world is still destined to perish because we’re all still promised to leave.

How much then should anything here really matter?

And again, no, I’m not saying that everyone should get divorced or quit their jobs or abandon their kids and just around all alone waiting for Jesus to show up. No, we have those works to do that help us grow in loving those around us and upholding the lot that He’s given us to live. And yes, we’re to uphold that gift as best we can in whatever way we might.

But that doesn’t change the fact that we’re leaving everything that’s here, and that fact demands that we keep everything in perspective.

But have we?

Are we?

Will we?

How can we when nearly everything we do is done as if we’ll be still under the sun for years, decades more?

Friends, we might leave today.

Where will you go when you do?

What’s scary to me is that I believe in that better promise of eternity and yet, despite my trying as hard as I so often think I am to find it there waiting for me when I leave, I still have this inescapable fear of failing to do so. Why? Because so many days I only look up to find that I’m failing to focus on it as much as I know I should. Because there are still so many days in which I find myself focusing on things that don’t matter, won’t last, mean absolutely nothing.

How much then might I miss the turnoff onto that narrow path which is the only one that leads us home?

How easy is it to miss it when we live as if we’re home already?

Look, I’ll be the first to admit to that this life we live is full of worries and a great many of them demand our attention. But the inescapable fact is that they do not deserve our devotion. And as much as it might be hard and often make no sense, it’s on us to look unto He who can and will help us learn to discern the difference. And as much as we might live this life in a world that won’t dare do such a thing, this only serves to underscore the severity.

Because if we can look at the world and see the shape it’s in due to the many depraved depravities done within it, then so too can readily recognize that there must be a better place that is everything this world isn’t. For if we can look at a light and still understand that the darkness is there waiting for us to turn it off, then so too can we comprehend that the life we see is just a light we have that will be turned off.

What will we have when the lights we know have gone out?

And considering how, again, everything in this world is promised to perish, just how much of our focus or fealty should any of it have?

Especially that which we all already know to wage war against our soul?

Friends, we know the feelings that our flesh enjoys. We know the power of pleasure and have long lived to feel it more and more. All of us can wrap our minds around winning the glory of winning wars fought either on legitimate battlefields or in online auctions. We know the rush we feel when we find something that feels good, looks good, sounds good. We love those things that make us feel excited or important or otherwise worth something.

But what is anything here worth if it’s waging a war that we’ve all but learned to lose?

That’s the problem with this flesh and its love of pleasure. It’s that we all now know, all but instinctively, to just roll over and give up in order to give the flesh whatever it wants. That’s why we stay at jobs we hate. We loathe having to go to them every day, but we love the money we make in doing so simply for the stuff it helps us to buy. And so we go along, all but daily wishing to die because we so massively hate our lives, but we’ve learned to live looking forward to weekends and expensive trips that offer us a break that we can only afford because of the jobs we despise.

What is this vicious cycle we’ve accepted in our lives?

And why can’t we see that our every single suffering is a direct result of a fallen flesh still falling in love with only that which is neither alive nor thus able to give us life?

We are all literally living to die inside what’s become a way of life in which we live as if all that matters is all that’s going to be left behind.

Why do that to ourselves?

Simply because we cannot anymore seem to see that we are truly but foreigners and exiles in what’s thus a place we’re neither from nor should have much reason to want to stay.

Friends, again, what’s here that we should want to stay for? I mean, just being brutally blunt thanks to whatever this frame of mind I’ve happened to find this fine Wednesday morning, even our friends and loved ones are leaving too. And so yes, we should love them and help them and do whatever we can to ensure all of them understand that they too have been offered salvation.

We should ache for everyone we meet to come to know Jesus because, well, one day we’re all going to be found bowed down before Him awaiting the verdict of our life’s outcome.

And that’s because we’re all leaving this place. Problem is that our not knowing when has long been taken as this assumption that says we might not.

Friends, everyone has known plenty of folks who have left already.

What then makes us think we’re any different?

We’re not.

And that’s the point.

It’s that we’re all rapidly running out of time to get our lives straightened out. We’re all running out of time to ensure our priorities are properly placed. We’re all still, for not at least, in a place that seeks only to keep us so scattered amongst a billion idols that we all run the risk of getting dragged off course and sucked back into that way of life we’ve all lived as if leaving we aren’t.

And that’s because it’s a vastly enjoyable life. It’s a life filled with so much success and so much satisfaction and so much room to experience so much more of the both that we could truly never find our fill of the fun and frills with which we’re surrounded and daily invited. And we’ve all accepted those invitations so many times already that we’ve an all but standing desire to do so again.

Because it’s easy. It’s easy to keep living as we always have. It’s easy to keep living like most of those around us are. It’s easy to want what’s in this world, and that so much that our greatest hopes become never having to leave it.

But we will.

What will we have then?

With nothing we came and with nothing we’ll go.

All that will be left when we leave this world is just the soul. What then will He see when He sits in judgement of what all we’ve done to it?

That’s the part that we seem so ready to overlook if not utterly forget. It’s that everything we do here leaves a mark on the soul. That’s why such things as relationships and marriage are indeed so special and important. They offer us a chance to experience a deeper sense of love and commitment than anything else in this world can offer. Friendships inspire us to seek the good of those around us, to push them toward their being the very best they can be.

Friends, the best thing any of us can ever be is ready to leave because if we’re instead surprised by that day, then we’ll have no right to be surprised should we hear Him say that we’re not welcome.

For why would we be if the life we’d lived is one we didn’t want to leave?

I find that so much is wrapped up within His telling us that whoever loves their life will lose it whereas those who lay down their life will find it. And that’s because doing so helps us get ready to go as we come to see that we’ve nothing to lose whereas living to love a life we’ll have to leave only leaves us thinking we’ve entirely too much to lose.

But we’re going to lose it all anyway and so why worry about trying this hard to hold so tight to all that cannot come with us when we do?

Friends, again, it’s all a matter of perspective. Are there things in this world that matter? Yes. But is it right to expect our husbands, our wives to crawl inside the casket with us? No. And that, as weird as it might sound, that I think describes the difference.

It’s that even those things which undeniably matter so much that we can’t define their worth, even they will be left one day. Will we meet up again in Heaven? I think all of us like to think we will, and knowing the little of God that I believe I do, I don’t know why He’d allow us to experience such love and friendship only to cause us to never again see those with whom we’ve experienced such gifts. But the truth is we don’t know.

All that we do know is that every single one of us will leave this place someday. And that simple fact should inspire inside us all a willingness to daily ensure that we’re focused where we should be. Because, honestly, even those things which do matter and mean something will only mean and matter more when we’re living like we’re on borrowed time.

And that’s because knowing that we’re running out of time only inspires us to pour the best of ourselves into seeking the best of what matters most.

So let us stop giving any of us to anything that doesn’t mean anything. And honestly, we all know the difference. Those we’re married to mean more than the material junk we buy in some store. Those the Lord has given us to lead mean more than those many liars trying daily to lead us astray. The work He’s given us to do means more than working to please people.

The life He promises means more than this one we’re only promised to lose.

Again, let’s stop getting caught up worrying about what doesn’t matter. And let us rather live as if we really are strangers here.

Because if God wanted us to live as if the things of this world matter as much as we've all thought they might, why then would Christ have come only to leave and ask we follow?

We're but strangers passing through borrowing things on time borrowed too.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold