Day 3962 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

John 8:43 NIV

Obscurity?

Certainly.

For this is truly the only way in which one might explain the general lack of an ability which has befallen a people at first created with the ability that has since become of such a widespread inability that even the mere suggestion as to such being the case is deemed grounds enough to levy charges upon whomever might be of the audacity to hint that we might be as unable as our inability has us otherwise convinced we aren’t. And yes, this is a true confusion as it seems one so counterintuitive that there may well be no real means by which to assuage it as it seeks no such pleasure.

No, rather this overall common confusion as has fallen upon we the deluded, diluted, it’s one that’s found us both as such but of such a stance as to the otherwise that there’s left nothing now but a loss of life.

Because the two paths upon which one might be led, lived, left are of such equal opposition that there is no such blending as this blurring growing in hearts and minds all around. Instead these ways in which a life might be lived are so contrary to one another that sisters aren’t seen as sisters, brothers hate their brothers, mothers and fathers are both against their children and likely against each other. A fact promised to unfold within the Scripture which holds that at some point one’s own enemies would be their very families.

A promise which seems strange as, well, amongst all of those here among whom we walk and with whom we talk, those all but programmed to love us are those who’ve come to know us and have done so for what’s the basic entirety of our lives.

And thus it makes no sense to so suggest that those who gave us birth or played with us in the dirt or taught us how to live would somehow become those who might begin to suggest that perhaps we shouldn’t anymore.

For indeed, those alive should be of enough gratitude for having been given such a gift that they delight for the life of those around them to go on living too.

But no. No, we’ve rather become so cold here inside hearts so hard that we seem unable to find that card that we might play in this game of life in which we’re of just enough love, humility, appreciation even that we even hope others do well and maybe even mind not seeing our “enemies” succeed. Why? Because the success could be ours. We could win whatever everyone else wants. We could be the ones who achieve the achievements which bring about the loudest of applause.

We could be the ones the world turns to whenever they find themselves in need of help, of hope, of a thread still hanging from that rope that is that rose that reached down and chose the thorns so as to show that the only way home is that aimed into the storm of what is a wrath that we have all earned for having never lived like that.

Like what?

Humble. Loving. Generous. Merciful. Kind. The kind who would not only give the shirt off their backs to whomever might need such a gift but rather plunge daily into the torrent of society seeking someone to whom they might give that and more. A more sought to be so given rather than ever received because they somehow seem to have found themselves finally able to agree with at least something the Bible says. Such as how it is more blessed to give than to receive or how we’re to love others as ourselves or to even go so far as to seek such good for those around us that we delight to live as the last knowing that to such is the Kingdom come.

A sight shown and thus able to be seen in the Christ who laid down His life in what is the greatest giving ever given unto those He clearly then loved even more than Himself (considering what He, in His innocence, submitted unto enduring upon even the behalf of those who insisted He endure it), which remains itself a scene painted in such mercy perfected that He both choose to be treated as last of all, worst of all, all so that the worst of us might have the hope of being made right somehow.

But how?

Indeed, how can anything be made right when nothing is perceived as being wrong? How can one heal those who know of no such need for healing? What evils might be forgiven when no evil is seen? And, well, how can we see anything what with all the planks in that place where we’re supposed to look on those around us with the sort of love that would have us to lay down our lives too for the good of whatever person, whatever group might benefit in the way of life if not the eternal measure of such thanks to our having so done?

Sad truth is we can’t.

And why is that?

Because He himself said He came not to abolish the Law but rather to fulfill it. And, well, one of the symptoms of a society having succumbed to the well-promised failure to uphold such a moral institution is that the same would eventually be known as those who’ve eyes to see but do not, ears to hear that do not, minds to think that will not, hearts that technically are alive but in a life in which the bearers thereof think that nearness to God is something best accomplished with words rather than deeds.

And that simply because words are exponentially easier as, well, they’re really just breath.

Actions on the other hand demand effort, and, well, when said effort entails the laying down of a life at the simultaneous taking up of a cross, that’s where things get just dicey enough to inspire in us more than enough doubt that knows more than enough reason to think the whole deal just ridiculous.

For who in their right mind would willingly lay down a life in exchange for a cross that does what crosses do?

No, real question is who are we to think of ourselves in our right mind when we’ve eyes that don’t see, ears that won’t hear, hearts that technically beat but that to the tune of our delighting to beat those around us rather than ourselves into submission unto the very Son of Heaven who came merely speaking the truth which was actively setting captives free from every sort of captivity from the very blindness and deafness we all know far better than we realize to the very re-giving of life unto those who seem to have lost it within their struggled attempt to live it.

Indeed, Jesus came to meet us where we were with whatever burdens or failures we’d found so as to lift us up off this ground back unto the Father from whom we’d all fallen.

And we hated Him for it.

Simply because He did so within the suggestion that we, like the woman they then were all really itching to stone, go and instead sin no more.

A request that seems to suggest that we had been sinning, thus doing wrong in the eyes of the Father, the very Father we’ve each sought to uphold in our own unique way as is always more than likely made up of a varied collection of what remain mere human rules, traditions that others have always thought themselves righteous enough, powerful enough, wise enough, right enough to have so written into what remains the very fabric of the very veil that He came to tear as if to show that there’s more to life than we know as this one lived by rules that have nothing to do with anything at all.

For they’re all so implicated in the harsh treatment of the flesh that we think He will grant us access to Himself for all eternity simply because we found our own ways to live life miserably.

As if that’s ever been the point!

It hasn’t. Because He doesn’t need us to prove to Him that we’re something that we can never be. Rather, He simply needs us to come unto the humility that would help us see that what we’ve become is nothing of what He created us to be as this would too help us see the need for the radical turning that is repentance as is aimed away from the way we’ve been aimed back instead unto a growing hope in that coming day upon which we’re judged but for which we’ve done our every best to ready as is done only in seeking the Son who came to justify the fallen by falling even further only to be then raised ever higher.

Back to where His ways always were:

Higher than ours.

And, truth be told, that’s why they hated Him enough to insist upon Him the cross (in a pride that honestly thought it had a say in the matter), which was a cross that He instead had chosen Himself in a life that, as Scripture recounts, He was delighted to lay down for those to whom the message of reconciliation would break through and there break free their hearts, minds, ears, eyes, lives from the sinful captivity they’d always known but never known.

The very same reason so many still hate Him just as much still today.

It’s because we’ve all been conditioned to see ourselves as victims of the most unfair experience to ever be considered a life. We’ve been convinced that the only wrongs done in our lives are only those done unto us and never any then of our own. No, we are certain that we do nothing wrong. Ever. And so this leaves Jesus then in quite the uphill battle to get where we’ve gone to build ourselves thrones and crowns and kingdoms and such.

We call it life.

They called it Golgotha.

But either way, the message remains the same.

And that is that one of us is wrong. Either it’s those who all jointly contend that they’ve never done anything wrong despite their every life having not gone perfectly right in what is a world that’s getting worse in every way possible inside every passing day. Or, it’s the One who simply pointed out that neither the world nor our lives which have been lived in what is a way that has all but insisted upon it the destruction we’ve all witnessed within it isn’t what any of us should have been so able to witness.

Problem is that we still like to assume not only safety in numbers but success too.

And so, when it’s all of us against one of Him, easy to see which one we think will lose.

Just so happens to be the very same as said all that weird stuff about sin and such. The One who dared suggest that not only could the blind receive their sight but that all of us might consider lining up for such a miracle considering the ways in which we’d lived. Same too the deaf. Same too the dead. Indeed, the One we think will lose this battle of perspectives is the One so adamant on this idea of our having chosen a dead and dying way of life that He chose to beat us to the grave so as to prove us either wrong or somehow justified when we get there.

Wrong because we all are as such in what we’ve always been having been both born in sin and found all these unique excuses to just stay there.

Justified if, and only if, we ever come to see and then agree that we have lived in sin and thus there earned the wage that all sin wins, a wage which is death that, looking back at the cross with hopefully a more humbly open mind, maybe does make more sense than our plausible life in sin may have been able to consider.

You know, considering all the blindness and deafness and stuff.

Which sadly remains all the stuff that all of us absolutely refuse to imagine might be more than just weaknesses or inabilities found in the lives of others.

For again, surely they’re not to be found in our lives. No. No, we know we can see as we see all sorts of things. We know we can hear as we listen to a bunch of stuff. We know we’re alive because we’re living a life that has all the trademarks of one being lived, things like memories and emotions and plans and such. Yes, we know that all of what Jesus offered to fix is nothing that we’ve gotten wrong or allowed to be broken down.

Just doesn’t make any sense to see it any other way.

That is if you don’t take into account that while we may see all sorts of things, sadly the sort of thing we apparently see more often than anything is a reason to continue doing wrong. And even though we hear a bunch of stuff, maybe hearing and listening aren’t necessarily the same considering we apparently listen better to that voice telling us to seek our own pleasure rather than the still smaller voice which begs us unto the right way in which we’re to walk.

And, while we’re technically alive as evidenced by hearts beating inside giving the power to minds that are seeming to think thoughts, that whole part about the thoughts and attitudes being only evil all the time does kind of seem to fall in line with what we see in the scene of all life playing out in a world still falling down.

So maybe this Jesus fella’s on to something.

Sure, there are those who would still assume He was demon-possessed and thus only able to perform any of those miracles by the house against whom He’s most definitely divided.

But maybe even that kind of lines up with where Scripture asks that we walk not in the way that sinners take nor sit in the company of such mockers.

Because maybe those who exist as companions of fools are vastly more prone to suffering harm.

Yeah, maybe some of what He and His Word have to say makes more sense than most here still seem convinced.

And maybe that’s why the Word asks that we come out from among them and be separate in what are then lives changed so much that we too become not merely willing but rather elated to see ourselves as foreigners and exiles who, seeing the decay of society reach impressive speeds toward depressing lows, look forward to a city that is to come as we grow to delight in our coming to realize that we have here no such enduring home.

Indeed, maybe it all makes more sense than we’ve ever wanted to think.

And, well, perhaps that’s because we’ve never wanted to think about anything other than whatever lie helped us to remain comfortable in a life in which sin was so always prevalent that we perhaps even come to admit that we’ve absolutely no way by which to disprove that.

Thereby helping us finally unto the humility that is the marker of the very Stone that just keeps getting rejected by those who keep building their own little temples made to honor and glorify their own little lives that are still being lived as if the only one who’s ever right, the only one deserves then to be honored and revered is only themselves and thus the only thing to be feared is their happening to fail to please themselves.

All things spoken against within the Word and evidenced by He who is the Way, who Himself went on here in John to say that if any seeks to glorify themselves their testimony means nothing because the outcome would be clearly biased.

Making then liars out of someone, and well, it’s again never us is it?

Friends, we’ve all been feeding ourselves this kind of nonsense for as long as we’ve been here. And what’s bad is that we’ve gotten so used to sustaining ourselves on the same that it’s all we know to look for. We are indeed those who are at daily risk of going from bad to worse in what is a life spent increasingly deceiving those who are being deceived into believing that any of this hogwash makes sense. For honestly, what seems more reasonable: That we’re not wrong in what is a life that we know we’ve all felt such things as guilt and regret, or that Jesus said we’re all sinners who are thus in need of salvation?

Look, I know we don’t want to cop to the second as it really doesn’t do anything for this image of piety and importance that we’ve spent all our lives putting out there to please those who are doing only the same.

But friends, what do we gain in the applause of a people who cheered on the death of our Savior?

No, this is precisely why we’re to put no trust in man who have but breath in their lungs, lies in their ears, planks in their eyes, hate in their hearts. It’s because those then become the same things that we can and will learn from them should we look to, lean on them.

And well, we’ve already done that long enough. Now, maybe you’re truly happy with the outcome. Maybe the known results are truly all you want to know in or of a life. And if that’s the case, then hey, I do truly hope you live long and manage to prosper in what will then be a life in which you will find your reward.

As for me, I don’t want this to be my reward. Not that I’m not thankful as I’ve had a great life filled with more undeserved blessings and kindness than a hooligan like me deserved to see. Guess I’m just greedy for life itself as I want to live as much of it as I possibly can. And, well, if there’s someone who offers to pay my debt as I agree has been charged in the sins I know I’ve committed, and the same offers to do so so that I can be given eternal life, life without end, yeah, I’m gonna follow Him.

Because I know what I’ll find should I continue to follow either myself or the world that inspired me to become what I know I’ve been.

And I don’t want to go back there again.

In fact, I’d rather die than go back to my old ways in life.

Because I know His way is better. Because I know His truth is truer. Because I know mine was always just nonsense that I myself cooked up to make myself feel comfortable doing as I knew I shouldn’t.

And I don’t want to do that anymore.

Guess maybe you could say that my eyes are starting to see things that my ears never wanted to hear. Maybe hinting that I’m becoming more able to not only hear what all He has to say, but even learning the enjoy listening to everything He’s been trying to tell me all this time.

I just pray that all of us grow in this way while today’s still called today. Because I know that one day we won’t have any more tomorrows and I don’t want for anyone to risk waiting just a little too long to have their eyes opened, their ears unplugged, their hearts softened and their souls saved.

Indeed, the only reason anyone would deny those things is, well, because of their having lived a life lost in sin’s obscurity.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold