Day 3927 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Matthew 18:9 NIV

Eyes to see

Since we’ve all claimed we have them, so now then we’ll never use them to find a single excuse as to why we peruse the fallen things that we do, coming to emulate or lust for a great and growing many. No, for just as He who is mercy tells us plainly, if we hadn’t eyes then we’d have neither blame for our having become so lost as you cannot hold accountable those who haven’t the ability to account. But that we all have accounted for the many choices we’ve chosen and the paths they’ve paved, so too then are we now bound to answer for the things we’ve thus seen fit to do.

For having eyes to see leaves us no excuse to use.

Rather we’re all now, having again lived a life as if we’ve known always what we were doing as largely based upon whatever we wanted to, we are all now on track to answer for what we’ve done when found before He who sent the Son to come into this world as the greatest of all lights so as to pierce open our eyes to the very seeing of the profusion of sin we’d long lived letting in. Jesus came to set free those living in sinful captivity by helping them see the captivity that sin creates.

And now that we all know of His Name and the story of how He came and as much how He left, we all know now that there is no claiming we didn’t know. Because God knows better. He’s the very One who at first gave us breath then breathed His Word then sent He who is the Word to walk amongst us to call us back to the basics of a life lived simply and that only when settled upon the Rock that remains forever higher than we.

A lofty placement purchased by His endurement of this basement in which our debasement grows only deeper into the same darkness He came to overcome some 2,000+ years ago.

A choice He made because He knew it would ignite in us either a humility that sought to choose His kind of something new to do too or rather a more profound failure to prove faithful as found inside a continued fall both in love with this ground and thus into, onto, unto the same.

Yes, Jesus came to set sinners free from a life of shame and misery. Problem is that we’ve all come to see so much life in sin that we apparently see no life there to live without it. That’s why so many fight so hard this common war of words waged in swords of stones and thrones that we legitimately seem to think we truly do sit upon and have thus the ability to wield well. And we’ve seen this life that way for so long that we now know of no life to live any other way.

It has truly become our way (the highway) over His Way (the narrow).

A mere matter of width thus allowed to determine for us everything from where we go to what we want to who we thus become whenever we get both wherever and whatever we’ve likely yet come to crave.

That’s the danger in all of this allowing of our own eyes to lead the way. For in truth, yeah, we should be able to so rely upon them as we so often try to anyway. After all, the sense of sight is arguably the most reliable of the many we have. Sure, we can gather and glean a great many things through hearing and touch and taste, but none of those feelings or sensations can provide for us even a fraction of the information that our sense of seeing can.

But the problem is that our sense of seeing only works as well as it should when it’s not otherwise obscured, blocked, blinded or elsewise betrayed in some way.

And that is now the problem for each of us in that our vision has become betrayed in what are in fact most likely a great number of ways.

Each of them ironically having something to do with what’s long been a way of life in which we’ve all lived to choose for ourselves the very blocks over which we stumble. And this is done via such undertakings as our lusting for things we don’t need or looking with approval on things that aren’t good or following the ways of the world that do the both in greater measure almost every day. Indeed, it will come to be seen, and that by all, that this life lived of and for the fall has only found for us a million ways to get lost.

Challenge is thus not found in finding the One Way that would actually find something worth finding but rather overcoming our own life’s binding to that which is blinding as has been done both willfully and yet somehow woefully as well.

A choice made because the real truth says that we have no idea what we’re doing despite all the information we have been able to glean from everything from all of our senses to the very plethora of mistakes we’ve all already made despite having them.

A life lived all but then undermining the very tools that He created us to have so as to uphold this task of living a life that honors the Light in which we were made and of which still had to come and die in order to lead us back from what we’d become anyway.

A fall already testified, and that by we ourselves, within every single choice we’ve chosen, be it in word or action, that ended up being a mistake with what was likely plenty of reasons to reconsider along the way.

Reasons we obviously didn’t see, and that by either choice or sheer ignorance.

Either way, it’s not good.

For the outcome of this life will one day be weighed based upon actions done within and thus choices made that led us to doing them, saying them, thinking them. Because everything we do is done with a reason in mind. The issue is that often times our reasons have been so flimsy as to have been built upon again such things as lust or desire. And we still allow such emotions and ideas to lead the way because we’ve grown rather fond of all they’ve helped us find.

Because it feels good. And that which feels good often looks good to those who are seeking their share of the same sort of pleasures. And thus to a world vastly lost in the search for such profit, well, we take on the apparent appearance of what must seem almost prophets thanks to our ability to find everything that everyone always wants too.

And indeed, life here has become nothing more than this daily failure to even live our own lives anymore. Rather we awake to all but instinctively log back into the very machine that we’ve had a hand in creating via our giving up all this information in regard to that for which we lust to those who know how to use it to instill into us a continued yearning for things that, because they’re not yet burning, we thus see no downside to so passionately craving.

No, because we don’t yet see the promised outcome of everything here passing away, we too see not any reason to imagine it might.

For seeing remains believing to those blinded unto the true purpose of both.

Indeed, we’ve all all but fully lost any shred of the ability we’ve always had to see and believe. Because we’ve long lived these kinds of lives in which the two are so tangled and entwined that we anymore can’t separate them and now all but don’t really want to. Because we’re used to it this way. We can make sense of this. We can wrap our minds around the allure and appeal of those things we know we like the looks of. It’s easy. If it looks good we want it, if it doesn’t, well, we don’t.

Simple.

And not only is it simple, but it’s also common because of that. And that which is common is also that which we easily assume to be right. And whatever we can so easily assume is most likely right is the same as we’ll easily come to see holds no danger in our so doing ourselves. And so we live all but doing only whatever everyone else does in our own lives because we see them not only not facing much in the way of consequence but also rather enjoying themselves.

And well, why not enjoy ourselves as well?

For that’s apparently the grand outcome of all life’s expectations and operations. We have truly come to live as if the best thing we can do in this world is have fun and feel good, both of which are often only determined by what we see and not even how they really make us feel.

No, we’re anymore so far gone that we override our internal warning system, the one that runs on things like shame and guilt, in order to continue enjoying what we’ve come to believe we should.

Much like how we seem to have eyes well-capable of seeing but somehow never manage to notice the many holes in our plan.

A plan that’s already on fire, but somehow not producing smoke enough for us to wonder let alone worry.

No, indeed we’re all living lives quite amazingly unworried about, well, anything really. All because we’ve become masters as denying disasters all so that we can go on creating them alongside diversions, distractions and other iterations of darkness that we honestly seem to actually assume will prove for us an alibi should we need one.

A promise we should all see in the cross but somehow never really manage to live as if we understand.

The promise is that sin earns the wage of death. The obliviousness then obviously chosen thanks to our natural aversion to such a demise in life. After all, it makes every sense in the world for that which is living to want to go on living as death seems rather fatal. And so yeah, it makes sense that we’d seek for some way to sidestep or elsewise claim ignorance in regard to what Christ did and what all it means.

Especially when what it means is that we’ve no excuse to live this way of life continuing to choose what He so clearly came to prove demands the very death of which we’re all terribly afraid.

If only we could see another way.

There is one, He made most sure of that.

Just seems that we’ve continued to make sure that we can’t see it.

Because it’s not quite so much fun. Doesn’t seem as if it would feel quite as good. Doesn’t offer us the same sort of pleasure and treasure we’ve long tried to see and feel inside our lives. It actually asks that we store up such hopes in a place we likewise can’t see. A request thus asking that we forego what many here are already going for. A choice then made to literally walk away from what the vast majority see nothing wrong in wanting.

A life then lived as if this world has nothing we need.

A life then freed from the common captivities of lust, of greed, of gluttony when the both combine.

A life we all know full well having lived it so long.

Yes, all of us have clearly found numerous ways to combine our lust for the things we see with the greed we’ve found in wanting so much. But friends, that’s the problem. It’s that proven in the warning against our common seeking to gain the world at the obvious expense of our souls. For while this world may house a great many things that look nice to the eye, sound nice to the ear, feel nice to the touch and thus seem nice unto lust, the fact is that there is nothing here we can’t live without.

Issue is that’s the part of His message that all of us have claimed we’re unable to see.

Because we still just see the grave due to our continued unbelief in that which we can’t see.

Thus we’re all like Thomas. Even if we want to believe in such a hopeful promise, there’s still just that part of us that’s so reliant upon our sense of sight that we just can’t bring ourselves to fully trust until we see it for ourselves. And so, this presents a rather obvious dilemma in that none of us were there when Jesus dragged that cross up that hill. None of us were there to witness for ourselves the misery He endured. None of us have been to the empty tomb and seen it actually empty, nor even saw Him placed inside in order to precede said miracle.

And so then none of us have seen the risen Son of God.

But we seem to have seen plenty of reasons to continue living in sin. We seem to be able to see plenty of excuses we think will make a difference should He actually be there. We seem able to recognize the way of life lived as if He isn’t. We should be able to see that very way of life looking back at us in our very own reflection.

And yet we don’t. Rather we each just go on living life doing whatever we like as if that’s, again, the very best thing we could ever hope for in life. Just enjoyment. Pleasure. Power. Profit whatever measure. Yes, we have come upon a kind of life in which we can do whatever we like and always manage to find some way to see it as the right thing to do. Indeed, we live as if we have the right to do anything.

And maybe we do.

But maybe that doesn’t actually make it the right thing to do.

Kind of like maiming ourselves as we’re called to do here. It makes no sense and thus remains something that none of us would do. Because well, not only would it probably hurt to pluck out eyes or lob off limbs, but it also seems like it would be something of yet another going against the very God who made us as He wanted us to be. I mean, surely He wouldn’t be happy to see us so betray and destroy the very body He created.

And yet He apparently takes sin so seriously that He’d rather us endure pain, misery, the literal mistreatment of what He calls these Temples of the Holy Spirit than to continue doing as we shouldn’t.

But friends, if God’s so serious as to the severity of sin that He calls us unto even gouging out our eyes should they dare cause us to continue living within it, even died in Christ so as to overcome the very death that all sin is, why then don’t we see it different?

Why are we still friends with it? Why are we still friends with those who invite us back into it? Why do we still look for ways to continue enjoying it knowing full well the guilt and shame that always find us in the fallout?

Aren’t such feelings enough proof that something we’re doing isn’t quite right to do?

Can’t we see that feeling those things is meant to help us stop doing them?

Doesn’t that prove then that we don’t always have to literally see something to know it exists?

For all of us have felt ashamed of things we apparently saw as things that were either right to do or that we had the right to try. Do we then need our eyes if they’re the things that caused us to see the reasons to try what regret went on to say we shouldn’t have?

Should we maybe then consider not trusting in our eyes quite so much considering their well-proven tendency to get lost looking at the surface of things and never considering what they can’t see hiding just below it?

That’s the problem with our vision. It’s that it can only see what’s seen inside a single moment. We can’t see the future. We can’t see what’s coming. We can’t see where any given road will lead. And so there is always this required measure of trust. But that’s where we find the question of faith:

What do we trust?

Do we trust ourselves, as we always have? Do we trust those around us who show off such things as wealth and power as reasons we should? Do we trust the things that look good to the eye? Do we listen to only those things that soothe itching ears? Do we trust in the sheer quantity of people living a certain way to be evidence that living that way is okay? Do we trust the sweet taste of poison as is poured in lies aimed at getting inside and doing their damage only later on?

What do we trust?

Sadly, seeing as how sight is again arguably our most reliable sense, we often trust only what we see. That’s how we’ve come upon this cockamamie idea that has so many thinking that seeing is believing. We want proof. We want evidence. We want the truth to literally come up and smack us upside the head before we’ll hear what it has to say.

Why?

Because we live this way of life that has us always looking for the loopholes. We look for ways to do what we want without having to meet more of the guilt we’ve all already felt having done so in the past.

But friends, our having felt guilt proves the very reality of sin. And seeing as how we can all see then some evidence of sin in our pasts, in our present perhaps, is this not enough to instill inside of us a greater degree of caution when it comes to who and what we follow, who and what we trust?

For the fact is that anything of which we’re ashamed or over which have ever felt guilty, dirty, foolish or as if failures, all such feelings prove that we know the difference between that which is right and that which is not. But that our eyes have been so often what’s led us to our doing of those things of which we are now ashamed, friends, this just helps us see that it’s not us we need to trust.

We’ll always manage to find a reason to do wrong or some nonsense excuse we think will wipe it away.

It won’t because there is no reason to do wrong and nothing but the blood of Jesus can wipe away all the times we have.

Friends, the point is that we’re to let nothing lead us into sin, even if said guidance is offered us by a part of us. For God tells us that light has no such part with darkness, and that if anything then lures us into the darkness that Jesus died to overcome, we must thus do whatever it takes to get it out of our way of walking in His.

For it will prove better to reach Heaven blinded, maimed, miserable and maybe even missing limbs if we chose to lose them rather than to continue allowing them to cause us to sin than to show up there with a complete body that’s only completely wicked due to all the sin it never found reason to get rid of.

Find the reason to rid your life of your sinfulness, and that no matter the cost.

Because Jesus can heal us of whatever harm we endure. But if we continue to choose that which dishonors Him, well, He has no reason to heal that.

And we shouldn’t see so many still living as if they see some reason to imagine He might. For the cross proves that He’s willing to destroy the body in order to save the soul.

Why then do our eyes still seem only able to see that backwards?

#LeaveNoSoulUntold