Day 3925 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Matthew 6:22 NIV

How deep

‘Tis indeed a duty of each to determine for themselves in regard to that which sells what we then buy or deny. And though the denial is often the safer choice to choose, leaving us then with in the future less to lose, the issue seems to be that we’re a people who crave for what we see. And when the eye is used as merely a window to a world wasted on want, well, it’s only a matter of time before thine eye too is filled with things to so peruse in what then becomes a life lived amongst the rest of those blind being led by the same.

Each into a differing depth of darkness as determined by their own unique willingness to be both led and to never then leave.

Which is precisely the problem facing you and me and everyone both behind and in between. It’s this sunken reality in which we really do walk alongside a growing number of those growing blind. I suppose that, again, it was only a matter of time but that common cliché seems unable to say what’s really going on and thus what we’re all up against in such goings on as those going on in a world going cold. And that is time’s running out and thus too whatever chances we may have left with which to choose that which matters over that which merely flatters.

The eye that is.

And indeed, that is the window to the soul as such is into what every form of lust and life and love and strife are allowed to come cut like a knife that splits the slips of a self stumbling and fumbling and grumbling all the while. All because we’ve sent our guards on holiday and they’ve just rang once more telling us they’re not quite ready to go back home. Leaving us thus ready neither for that nearing leaving growing nearer.

A exit from this existence that we can’t seem to see coming thanks to our coming to become just another buffoon blinded by the blight and delight of a world scared to death to look toward that which is light simply because that which is is seen in the exact opposite direction from this one we’ve so clearly and commonly determined to go.

A direction we’ve chose because the light in us is now dark, and well, once in the dark it doesn’t really matter where we go, what we do, who we are or what we want. It’s all just the same to hands that can’t be seen as they continue to reach for more of what we want and fill then with only less of what little we need.

And indeed, this is most certainly a dilemma each of us have discovered a time or twenty in this life thus far. That difference defined between what we need and what we want and how, at least according to the standard operating procedures for here and now, more is always better in regard to both. We’ve all lived that life in which we’ve looked like the squirrels scurrying around like crazy this time of the year trying to store up enough nuts and such to last through the winter months when food is harder to find.

And we’ve become so blind trying to find whatever it is that we feel we might need to have in store for whatever the coming days may have in store that rather than being found as fluffy little squirrels just trying to survive, we’ve rather become just the nuts that are daily losing our minds trying to thrive upon things we never needed in the first place.

Like that fruit the first of us took from the one place that we would have all been far better without having ever gone.

Simply because once our eyes have been opened unto the difference between good and evil, we’re thus forever responsible for every single time we’ve chosen what’s wrong rather than opting for what’s right.

A mistake we’ve made a lot in this life!

So much so that now even our eyes exist as if they can’t tell the difference. Make no mistake, we can. We just do everything we can to convince everyone otherwise as we know quite perfectly well that such responsibility in life would find us only finding out that it takes three left turns before anything has even the chance of going right. And that fact stands only against us in what’s to be that promised court of eternity.

And that simply because we’ve never stopped at doing three things wrong.

We’ve been wrong all along!

So long in fact that, as the Bible said would happen, we’ve happened upon that time in this plot in which everything is upside down, turned around, us the same, and nothing allowed to change. Not because we don’t all kind of have at least some ideas as to what we could maybe change that might make our lives better. We just don’t want to be the ones to prove such growths because doing so would shatter the hopes of all those whose greatest joy is staying put.

And they get really mad when anyone says that they’re missing out.

Thus we find combined our own personal laziness, our eye’s ability to lust and a life lived alongside those so adverse to change that they’ve simply chosen to all but rust in place next to their gods of metal and mayhem. Leaving us then even more unwilling to even accidently act as if we see the issue in our living like that. All because to please people is only best done when we too live so dumb as to want the money and mediocrity that most are happy with.

Except that they’re never happy.

Bible talks about that too.

It’s really amazing the wisdom won within those words found within the Word breathed for just such a benefit as said wisdom which confounds that distinctly hollow version bought and sold within this world. Wisdom such as this verse found here in Matthew chapter 6, the whole passage in fact. For it’s one that begins here within what seems a decidedly hopeful tone aimed at the joyous journey of life lived within the light that allows a soul to see at least where they’re going and thus likely do a bit better job finding that place that it wants to be.

Simply because it’s again really hard to see anything in the dark, let alone find that which we can’t see anyway.

A reality that this passage goes on to warn against within the next verse which reads a word that speaks as to the obvious dangers of allowing darkness to not merely remain the surrounding through which we’re bound to here walk within what’s been a world vastly growing darker, what with its various displays of depravity and decay, but in fact so welcoming what the world around us has become to inspire us to become the same ourselves.

A shared fall thanks to our own refusal to accept any measure of responsibility in or for our lives.

A fact proven in just how little we regard all that’s allowed in through our eyes.

For again we’re told that such are the windows to our soul. Now you’d think that hearing that and having in fact realized it thanks to past experience with such things as guilt and regret would have us having met with a deeper degree of personal discipline and more robust guards stood in place. But no. No rather it seems anymore that we’re diving deeper into deeper darkness all but every day. I mean just turn on the TV and you’ll see things that simply shouldn’t exist inside the human mind, much less be found there of such worth that they’re then shared with the world.

Pretty sure we’ve more than enough slasher films and pornographic scenes as it sets.

Think we can let off with it.

But we won’t. Why? Because it’s garbage like that that we’ve all come to like. Can’t get enough. Always need to push the limits just a little further. Need to really amp up that shock value if we’re to sell tickets and fill seats and make the money that we need to make to cover the expenses incurred in our deciding to share our personal immorality on the big screen or radio or social feed.

Yes, to be rich and famous and thus powerful and important within this world you have to do what the world enjoys. You have to offer folks what they want to see and wish to hear. We’ve become a people of itching ears and lustful eyes, always looking for and listening to only that which drives the dopamine up and makes us feel alive again.

Like watching a dirty movie all by ourselves at night or gathering together as a family and watching some psychopath torture people in a level of violence and gore that we’d not seen before.

You know, all the stuff that makes us better people.

Indeed, who are we as a people? Who are you as a person? Who am I? I ask these questions all the time! Why? Because it doesn’t really seem like many others are and yet they’re the same kinds of things we’re all going to be asked one day by He who already knows the answers as are already being answered via the things we do as are done only because they’re what we’ve learned to do by our having each become what another verse of the Bible deems “children of wrath.”

Sounds like a really good thing to be known as.

Or at least so you’d think watching how we’ve come to live. For indeed, anymore we again let in so much junk, so much garbage, so much filth that it’s become fun. We find it fun to do wrong. We enjoy watching things that should turn our stomachs. We revel upon the level of sheer inhumanity seen and shown on every screen from that on our wall to the ever-growing version of that in our pocket called a phone.

I remember when a phone was something that just had buttons you’d press so that you could call Grandma or order a pizza.

These versions today are little computers that do everything we don’t want to anymore.

They literally even have screen time limits to help us control ourselves and parental blockers that try and do the same.

All because we’ve become a people who are so far gone in every wrong direction we could have possibly taken that it would take a literal miracle, a veritable act of God Himself to turn us around and make something better of this blindness we’ve become.

Thankfully just such a miracle did come and did in fact bring both sight to the blind and the ability to get up out of the dirt and dust and move on from where we’d been laying around in the filth of what this world’s become. He’s even referred to as the Light of Life. A Light that’s promised He’s coming back to separate once for all the few who’ve grown in Him and away from the world from the more who’ve not done either.

A difference made within a simple daily decision to be found in agreement with the Psalmist who said, “I will not look with approval on anything that is vile.”

The rest of Psalm 101:3 going on to finish by saying, “I hate what faithless people do; I will have no part in it.”

Basically proving the very problem we’re all facing in regard to this light/dark dilemma in that we’ve not only lived to have a part in that which faithless people do in what are their living of lives looking with approval on pretty much only that which is undeniably vile, but we’ve done so for so long that such a way of life now has a part in us.

Not only do we take part in what faithless people do, such faithlessness now has a part in us too. And friends, judging the fruit as we’re expressly called to do, that part’s only growing as the darkness around us does the same.

Meaning then that so too doth grow the darkness within.

All because we’ve become so concerned about looking good to those living wrong that we’ve simply settled for doing the same.

Each of us have allowed our eyes to look with approval, with craving, with want and worry given unto things so very worldly and wrong that we’ve ourselves become basically only that. Just worldly and wrong. We all know that life spent so afraid of stepping into the light for fear of our every action being shown for the death it deserves that we’ve rather learned to delight in the darkness alongside those who do the same every single day in lives their own spent trying to hide what they themselves know isn’t right.

Why keep up this fight of living a life we feel the need to hide?

Do we not yet understand the gravity of His promise that everything done in the darkness will one day be put on full display as we’re each ushered into the presence of He who gave both said promise and also that of giving unto all that which their deeds deserve?

And yet why do we do it? Because we know what He said our deeds deserve. And we know this because we all know the Name Jesus and what He endured on that cross. Now there are some, and many of them in fact, who live still as if He didn’t go through all that. But friends, that just defines the danger we’re in. We are surrounded by those who continue to live as if Christ doesn’t.

But friends, if Christ doesn’t then we have no hope.

If Jesus isn’t there then there is no salvation. And if there is no salvation then we’re all still on the hook for paying our own debts. And if we’re still to be the one to pay that which we owe for a life we all well know has not been lived right, then this life in this place is as close to peace as we’ll ever be.

And I for one cannot accept that.

I will not accept that.

I refuse to consider that this life in this world is as close to Heaven as I’ll ever be. I refuse to accept that for anyone. That’s why I get up often before the sun does to write these posts trying to find some way to translate His hope into words that hopefully someone out there will hear.

It’s because I want this world, as clearly dark and imperfect as it daily proves itself to be, to be as close to hell as any of us ever get.

But I know that to ensure that demands I do all I can to both get and then keep every measure of darkness out of my life.

And yeah, it’s hard because I’m still learning daily of all of it that I’ve allowed in. And no, that’s not fun because having let in this much only continues to show me just how wrong I’ve been all this time. And nobody wants to be wrong. Nobody wants to feel ashamed. None of us hope to go through our days feeling dirty and lost and worthless.

But friends, such are our ways!

And we’ve come to live in them because we’ve let the darkness in.

Why let it stay if all it will ever bring is just more of us living that kind of life in which we try to hide all but everything we do?

I’m tired of hiding. I’m sick of secrets. I’m just done with all this wrong doing I’ve done. Because while the fun of it may have lasted a moment, the moment’s over. It’s gone. It left years ago and only did so leaving a wealth of regret where the fun was once found.

A wealth of regret finally met because I’ve finally met the end of my rope and found it to be the very hem of Him who came to save me from what I’ve become.

Friends, we truly have to dumb to an exponential degree to continue refusing the mercy of He who came to set us free. For don’t we all have mistakes we wish to let go? Don’t we all have pasts we would really like to forget some parts of? Do not we each have a list of shames and regrets that we know we’d be far better off without living with?

That’s why He came. It was to bring us into the light that goes ahead and helps us see all that we’ve become and what it will eventually be. And friends, yeah, I get it. It’s not very enjoyable to have Christ come along and help us see all the death we’ve lived for, looked for, fell in love with. It sucks in every way possible and then new ones all the time.

But it’s the path that leads to life as it narrows our focus down to looking only unto He who is the Founder and Finisher of our faith to lead us further into His light so that we can crucify more of our sinful flesh upon that cross He calls us to carry.

And no, that’s not much fun either. But you know what, dying to the flesh now while we’ve a chance to get a say in doing so will be far better than doing it when we have no such chance and get no say ever again. Because for right now we all have the chance to choose to leave behind our wicked ways and take up some personal responsibility to ensure that nothing vile, wicked or wrong is ever again allowed into our eyes, our ears, our minds, our lives.

One day that chance will be gone and all we’ll have to say is that Christ is King.

And that as either warriors walking home or enemies pointed away.

Friends, the point is that proven in His Word which reads that “God is light; in him there is no darkness at all.” For if God is light and allows in Himself no darkness at all, why then would He want to spend eternity with those who are dark in any way?

Just doesn’t make any sense.

And so then let us help Him help us by resolving to rid our lives of anything dark that may have been allowed in them. And let us from then on fight every breath to ensure that nothing dark is ever again looked upon with the same approval we have in the past.

No, let us let the past pass away and take with it our every failure to prove ourselves faithful to He who’s proven Himself faith to us. We owe Him more than continuing to live these lives as if nothing matters.

Because He died to prove otherwise.

Surely we can at least try to start living as if He did.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold