Day 3924 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

1 John 2:16 NIV

From whence

Such is where to which everything that is shall return when whatever it is is done being whatever it was for which it was required to be within the place that it thus presently is but thus too shall one day not be anymore. This is the overall gravity of all that is perishing. It’s the promise of a sort of impermanence that is, for us, the power of the grave that indeed calls every single name and will in fact hear from every single one of us who toward it are indeed drawing near.

The only difference to be found once we get there is that designed inside how we’d spent our time in what is, by then, a life that will be over thanks to the death which marks so wonderfully the end thereof.

It is in every way a most perfect design, this crumbling lifetime in which time matters as we’ve only so much of it to use and thus only an inevitability of it running out altogether. And while this should inspire us to use it as wisely as a flock of fools might, no, rather we seem to have opted for this common option of denying the coming dance with what is our world’s demise, and thus that too of our worldly delights.

Never then seeming to see the irony to be found within such a failure.

Which I suppose isn’t ironic itself in that failure is found in an elsewise choosing to not overcome, understand, undertake, over-deliver, finally realize or ever comprehend. Meaning then that our failures are themselves inevitable in light of a life given unto delight so depraved that the grave stands now as what is, in our estimation, merely the grand cessation of our every enjoyment and intrigue as to a life’s purpose and betterment or arguable lack thereof.

An argument each of us will lose handily one day.

But you wouldn’t know it. Not by the way we live our lives for the moment. No rather we look around outside ourselves, and mostly within them too, and see only a people living as if they’ve nothing to lose except all they think they’ve gained. And that by themselves. And that thus for them alone. And thus life itself not something of a loan given with the express interest of it gaining interest as could be and thus should be paid within a more vastly attended parade of people pouring through Heaven’s gate.

No, we live as if we’re there already and thus walk amongst a many who exist as if Heaven doesn’t as, to them, well, Heaven must sound like hell considering the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and all of this pride in, of, for and from what is a life gone so vastly dumb that we’re each of us daily numb to the very promises which we’ve been given that we’re given so that we could begin living what is then a life that agrees finally that death holds no sting, can take no thing, just acts as a final bow then from what’s then a life that both came and went as it should have toward which it came from.

We have no such direction anymore, and thus no real directives either. For without direction all that can ever come is just a general sense of being lost, but that alongside our fear of looking so, and so we seem to have crumbled into this overall approach unto every single life in which we continue doing as we please whilst never once wishing to agree that for every choice comes a consequence as will in fact be met when one day we see what could have been with not a breath of every past opportunity left to even try.

Rather every life that’s ever been lived or is being lived now, they will all return to that from which and whence they came. And this is something we’ve all heard so many say so many times that we know the lines, maybe even rehearse the rhymes. Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust. Soul to the Spirit. Flesh unto judgement.

Yes, we’re each of us on a collision course with the accounting of our every single word, action, deed and denial. And yet, again, we look around and see only a people who live as if there are no such promises of such comeuppances but rather just a general responsibility, and yet that one that’s daily upheld all but personally, to enjoy ourselves and do so in the very basking of what most here claim to be best here.

Indeed, we spend our lives looking to the world to tell us how best to live them, leaving us thus learning from dead men how to die without the audacity to admit we are.

Once more proving that sending those who are but children unto Caesar for their learning about living can only find them returning as Romans living as such.

But we’re okay with it, all of us to varying degrees and for likely different reasons too. And that’s because each of us are in fact living our own lives thinking with our own minds wasting then our own time in what’s then a journey so personal that we haven’t the courage to admit these lives aren’t ours, the world around us either, and nor then that it makes absolutely no sense to continue living what is a daily evidence that we just simply refuse to get it.

Because we know what we’d get if we did.

And so we don’t. But the problem isn’t that we don’t actually get it because we’ve been given so many feelings and failures that have each helped us find that we have. No, no we all do in fact understand that our lives are on loan and that everything we do within them then has something of a say in regard to the way in which we’ve reacted to what’s then something of a trial basis.

And we know this because ain’t one of us ever managed to make it out alive.

Well actually there are upwards of four altogether who’ve managed to leave this world without tasting death. At least in its vastly perceived permanence. For there was One guy we know for sure did endure such a demise as His story is one is so vastly known that it thus forms for us the fact that we’ve now no reason to so continue living as we so often do, and that because He did taste death and yet with the plan to overcome it for the benefit of whomever might humble themselves to the sharing in of crosses taken up.

The other three were in fact just that, taken up.

Indeed, Enoch, Elijah and Melchizedek are all mentioned in Scripture as those who, having walked faithfully with God, were simply plucked up from within this place and ushered right into their share of His promise of that place that isn’t like this one.

Problem being that we’ve only far more in common with the One who carried a cross than those that God simply carried off. And that not because He’s like us because He’s in fact not at all. No, we’ve only a share in Christ because He chose to shed Heaven for a season in which He put on the sinful flesh that we all still tend to live toward and did so in order to carry that cross toward the place we’re all promised here so as to, from there, lead us to the promise we don’t deserve.

That of life after death.

No, thanks to those things mentioned here that are in every way so of the world that they are in fact, here, defined as those things from the world rather than from God, the varies lusts and such, pride and whatnots, they’ve all earned for us such a lasting wealth within their well-defined wage that we’ve, having walked so well within their ways, come to deserve the everlasting death of that place that many here find too horrible to imagine being there.

It is.

And filling too.

And that because we still so often choose to live as if all we have to lose is not even the life we live but rather only the ways in which we’ve come to live it.

And that because we love them.

We love the way of life we come to live. We love the daily meeting of pride and arrogance in the streets. We love the praise and applause of all the people we live to please. We love the looks of things for which we lust. We love to place our trust in things that rust. We love to feel as if we matter more than our mistakes prove we might. We love to think that we can somehow find a way to never lose this life we’ve again come to love living the way we do.

But we will.

And that soon.

How soon? None know. Well, He does but thus we can’t if never we seek to know Him.

See the problem then?

It’s that defined within the experiencing of time itself. For in Him, and Him alone, we can learn to number our days, and in this, to consider our ways so as to ensure that we’re walking a way that aligns with the Way that came to lead us toward life everlasting. But thus we can’t do that, and probably won’t as proven every day by almost everyone in one way or about several hundred others, unless and until we come to see, and most importantly agree, that our way ends in the death that His came to overcome.

A fact we can’t see, and thus won’t agree to thanks to our tendency toward agreeing with a world that still assumes seeing to be believing, so long as we remain so arrogant as to actually believe that we deserve to see something before we need the humility to belief.

A vastly counterintuitive undertaking if ever there was one.

But alas, that’s the facts. It’s that we’ve each become so prideful here inside what is a life filled with such pride and lust and greed and a daily reach toward any and every opportunity to gorge ourselves upon a blasphemous buffet fit for those who think themselves kings, which all of us have thought ourselves to be, that no more can we even endure the mere suggestion of humility.

Because we’ve lost all sense and sensitivity and have instead become those who’ve too been given over to minds depraved and lives deceived.

So much so that each of us are now all but our own evidence of the very authenticity of Scripture itself. For each of us have a pair of itching ears, a lying tongue, a deceitful heart and a soul that’s thus drifting further away from the One we’re told is the only Way.

No other Name.

We hate that idea and that because we’ve become quite convinced that ours can matter. That we are important. That we have such power to prove it found inside the mere fact that we’ve followers on social media and an ever-growing mass of material chaff growing inside our houses that we so arrogantly call homes. Yes, we love the idea that this place either is or has our homes. A frame of mind leaving us perpetually unable to find the humility to seek then for what isn’t here.

No, we’ve all lived for so long now looking for only all that is that all that matters anymore is only what is.

And we’ve then no idea, no concern, no worry whatever as to what it isn’t simply because we can’t see it. Never then stopping to understand why He remains hidden and Heaven for now the same.

Friends, we can’t see Him or His promises from where we are because He knows that would we could, we would only lust for them with the fallen version of love that we’ve lived to replace the real deal with. Yes, Christ knows that we as a fallen people can find a way to sully, soil or stain literally everything. We could find a way to turn Heaven into a prideful venture.

And in fact we walk amongst those who have who are in fact those well-warned wolves dressed in the clothing of sheep.

But so many line up every weekend to hear them speak because they just ooze this awe thanks to all they have and the power they show. Because those are the things that sell and fill seats. And that’s because we all want those things. We all want the things the powerful and prideful have. We want the power. We want the prestige. We want the platforms and followers and bank accounts filling so fast that we can’t buy enough to keep up.

Indeed, all of us are anymore so filled with greed that we’d readily turn Christ over to those who still want Him gone for probably even less than Judas got in doing so.

Yeah, we’d turn our loved ones in were there a reward in so doing. And I know this because we daily go against our very own souls in all of our continuing to do the very things that His Word says will bring about a death from which there is end and just as much chance of escape.

A promise found alongside His most contrarian offer of a place where exists nothing of this place.

A problem found in that, again, we’ve all come to love a lot of this place.

And so while His promise of a place of no more mourning or pain, struggle or strife does sound pretty nice, the issue is that seen in that if Heaven is everything this world isn’t, then we anymore see only all we’d stand to lose should we stand up and ready ourselves to leave.

And this just makes no sense to a people of senses singed unto assuming that such things as worldly wealth and public praise actually mean anything.

They don’t.

But for now we only remain surrounded by those who seem to see that they do. And since we can see the power and importance proven by pride and lust, well, so then is it for those same things that we too so often reach. Finding us then only amongst them who continue to reach deeper into the darkness for something there to give us more of all we’ve come to want, which is only everything we just don’t need.

Because friends, we can live without lust. We can live without pride. We can live without greed. We can live without dishonesty. We can live without immodesty. We can live without being wealthy. We can live without being this world’s version of healthy in which folks are starving themselves to death just so they look pretty unto a bunch of people who don’t know them and thus don’t care whether they live or die, or in fact these days cheering on obesity as if it’s something to be honored.

It isn’t.

None of this is.

There is nothing in this world that should be so celebrated as we’ve so clearly chosen to try. Indeed, we call them brave those who live as victims of their very own decisions and we act then as if doing wrong is somehow right. Yes, we have become the kind that put wrong for right and right for wrong, dark for light and light thus dark, good for evil and so many people believe then evil to be good.

All because we’ve become so much of this world that we know only to walk in its every way. We know only to agree with everything that this place and those within it tell us to. Why? Because we stand to gain so much to lose. But we only see the gain thanks to our ability to imagine a life lived without consequence. But make no mistake my friends, just because we refuse to see something doesn’t mean it’s not there to see.

Because consequence, like Christ, they both do exist. Issue then is that we just won’t see either until we come humbly to see the other.

A problem compounded in how neither humility nor Jesus exist in pride, in arrogance, in lust, in vanity, in greed, in gluttony, in deception or whatever other chosen depravity we’ve personally come to love living for.

No, rather humility and He who is the same embodied exist only beyond what we’ve come to love and live for. The issue is that we’re rapidly running out of time to even begin considering the difference between the fallen love we know and the kind that came to lift us up from falling for it anymore.

Friends, the point is that this world is clearly set in the way in which it delights to go. And it’s because of that ease in both understanding and thus undertaking that so many here will continue to opt for remaining both of this world and this filled with hope that they’ll too remain in this world. That’s the danger in it all. It’s that where our hope is, where such treasures are, there remain too our hearts and our every intent on being.

And so if we remain invested in or searching for anything here, then here is where we’ll likely long to stay.

That’s why He calls us to store our treasures in Heaven. It’s not only because neither moths nor thieves nor whatever other vermin there may be aren’t there to take them away, but also because placing our hopes thus will inspire in us a daily willingness to die to this life so that we can get closer in whatever way possible to the living of that life that He’s proven is only found in the grave.

Please don’t continue living for what His judgement will wash away. For while lust and pride and the profit they bring may feel nice and thus remain applauded down here, one day the applause will end and eternity will begin.

So focus on what you’ll find once it does.

Not everything that’s promised to be lost once it has.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold