Day 3993 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Romans 6:20 NIV

A forlorn freedom

For it is, though free, it is too free as it does indeed lack any restraint, any reason, any reality even. And while this seems unto us as the freest kind of freedom as it does offer what becomes an absolute limitlessness in regard to all of which we might like and love within this life within this world so filled with such frills and thrills as fortune and fame, it will alas end the same no matter the name we’ve made in our making our way toward that way in which all we want is all we win within that try to fill this life with all we think we’re free to feel, find, forget, forsake or fail.

Yes, freedom itself can prove a failure of sorts as liberty taken too liberally can only end at the allowance of a man to completely let go of his every better judgement as instead enjoyment becomes the only prize he pursues.

And yeah, that allows him to put himself always first, seeking thus always whatever may quench that unquenchable thirst that is an emptiness inside of what is a life that we all know should not feel so empty, should not so fail to glow or grow in what it is to know the very reason we’re alive. And yet it’s that very emptiness in life that inspires us to fill it with all that we find or feel might make us hope and bring it near to what is a life we hold not so dear as the many delights and decays that we anymore seek inside most of our days.

Simply because such are all we know to seek as the same are all that this world we’re in still shows for proof that they know what this life is for. And yet this elsewise unlimited interest and intrigue in always something bigger, better, shinier and silly only causes us to become perpetually the same. We’re losing our minds trying to find something with which to fill our lives that doesn’t run out as quickly as every other thing worldly always has.

Never once stopping to reconsider where we’re looking as the possible reason why.

Because I believe that we both know and that yet we’re afraid to say as so because amongst that knowing is this growing understanding that where we’re standing is smack in the midst of the rest of the masses who for whatever reason prefer this life lost in the mazes that are human minds and failing hearts fighting to find only inside themselves everything from the meaning of life to thus the best things to do with one whilst we’ve one to do something with.

As if the created can know the purpose for which it was created by they who must be another as none can create themselves.

But still we try.

And indeed, this attempt to define a life has for so long been our life that all we know is that freedom to always get up and go off in search for that same something more that we’ve been looking for for a thousand years or more. It is the pursuit of all people, this hope of feeling something other than feeble and forgotten. A search undertaking because we seem to believe only that the only way to fill our empty is with those things that those around us consider still worthy of such a welcome into our worry.

But why?

Do they seem happy? Does society truly look joyous or hopeful? Can we look upon the crowds crawling this ground around us and see in them anything we want enough to be cast down still among them seeking then for the same shiftless shifting of soil and such seeking for that same elusive something that makes them feel something for a moment or two?

Should purpose, meaning, love, hope, should these things and their like be those of meaning so fleeting that even in our of it finding we find too only a failure to keep hold of it?

Is life’s purpose truly so slippery as it has seemed always to be unto these hands of both you and me who’ve many times had and held what we’d hoped would make our lives feel whole only to have lost it as if a blanket cast upon a burning building seeking to still the fire raging inside, only to find not only failure to so do but so too a fear of the fire taking away only more?

What all has it taken?

What all unto the fire that is our every desire have we drown in our doing of whatever it took for us to take a step closer to what we both have had and haven’t yet? And again, should all of life be so easily defined as that? Just our always both having but never enough, experiencing but always far from the same? It’s all just never enough. For such is sure to be the consumer culture in which we sink.

It leaves us always faced with more with which to fill our freedom as is still widely found to be best seen as but an endless pit that thus always has room for more to be thrown into it. And indeed, it’s been now proven perfectly evident that we do in fact have a rather bottomless belief in the ever more than we can always seem to see as held inside those things in life that others have with smiles on their faces hiding the same holes underneath.

But alas, as a people still hidebound to this betrayal of hope itself that is that lie that this world sells that believing is best left always to seeing, so then too are our eyes all we look to in terms of everything from trust to trial. Seeking obviously always the former in fear of the latter as the latter’s a matter made in misery mostly while the former finds for us a feeling for hope, sadly still one only insisting that it see its way to wherever, whatever, whoever we hope to be someday.

All things that are thus bound to our eyes to know the way, the same windows which see the wins of those who shine forth in grins giving away their enjoyment of life, a lie leaving us looking only to find whatever they just have thinking that it will bring the joy into our lives too.

This is my hatred of the doom-scrolling that is our daily doing anymore.

We’ve shifted into a world of such social connection that everyone knows both perhaps far more than we should and that telling us that most of it is good, is pleasing, is purposeful and powerful and thus profitable unto a pride that still abides to hide inside those things in life, thinking life inside the same.

But is it?

Does life truly consist either in or of an abundance of either possessions or pride? Truth be told we’ve all had plenty of both and yet here we sit still looking for the very same more that we’ve all always looked for before. So what’s the reason behind it? What’s the point to be proven in our doing only the same things we’ve all done always before?

Can a person find a new promise down an old path?

Does it make any sense to pour new wine into an old skin, allowing it, once within, to swell as it wells into the drink many want via the process of fermenting into a swill many assume worth drinking, and yet thus threatening the very skin it’s in as it expands inside something that can’t grow anymore?

Just how much more can we still grow to want of what is a world that we’ve both won before and yet are closer now to leaving than we ever have been?

Sadly it seems as though the answer to that is still just as unknown as is our willingness to ask it from here inside this casket that is our every craving still of a world we’re still not staying in no matter how much we have nor how much we like it nor how much we don’t because we don’t.

Does it not strike anyone else as ongoingly odd that we give so much time, toil, story and sod unto this planting of plans paved in profits gained alongside a desire then for still even more? That we never seem quite content with the content we’ve contended toward? That no matter the fights we win for the things we want, even once we finally have them, we just want more then?

Where in this way can we find that day in which we’ll say that we’re happy, that we’re fulfilled, that our purpose has been found and we’re overcome by our being then overjoyed to the very point in which we stop looking where we are as we know inside our hearts that we have truly found the very fount of every hope we’ve always had?

Then again, what’s the point in having a hope that you can have so easily as buying it in a store or digging it up from within the dirt?

Is that freedom?

Nothing more than this endless process it’s become in which we become only numb to all that is already, seeking always then for something else? Does not our having had our fill of whatever fun and feeling we fought to find only to find that we want more still only say that we don’t know the way in which to best use this freedom that we’ve been given as it seems that seeking to please the flesh is such the endless process that we can in fact never know peace so long as the flesh remains our piece?

Friends, should this flesh truly be our prize? Life then nothing more than seeking our own pleasure for all our lives? Is that it? Is the very meaning of hope, life, love itself found inside our so continuing to love only ourselves to death inside what’s become a freedom so misused that we use it only to make the flesh feel good?

Truly, is that it?

And if it is, as so many still so clearly contend be it might, then why again is nobody happy in life?

Indeed, speaking for myself alone, I don’t remember the last time I felt truly happy. Don’t remember the last day I spent not worried about something. Don’t really recall ever walking so free and tall that nothing could bring me down. Rather for as long as I can remember I find that I feel that I’ve only failed to be anything but down. And maybe that’s my fault, as in fact it can only be.

But why?

Why is it always us who are the ones who find that we feel so unhappy, so without hope, so unfulfilled despite a life that is filled with all the fun and frills of the thrills and chills of a world so cold that we’ve grown easily the same? The chill offering always an ease of warmth as literally anything is bound to be better than whatever we’ve become.

And that despite our being free to do all of whatever we seem to see as being worth this walk toward always whatever we want.

Could it be that what we want isn’t quite so able to prove us free as this world seems to see?

Might the masses be lying as they repeat this message telling us that freedom is best used to find and feel only whatever and however we want? Is freedom, our very liberty truly something to be best spent upon only whatever we want to get, assume we need, believe we want, hope we’ll like?

For true, freedom and hope should run so hand-in-hand, but the question has become whether or not they do. And I mean true hope. The real deal kind. That version of hope that is always unseen as a hope that is seen is no hope at all but rather just another fact we’ve already found.

Have we truly already found our every hope?

Or might that emptiness which still exists inside only seem to say that perhaps freedom is best spent in another way toward another thing that we cannot find and thus should not seek to so undermine as actually trying?

See, that’s the issue with this world’s apparent understanding of freedom. It’s that, though quite conducive to our contentment inside comfort and victory, it only inspires us to seek those victories that we can win comfortably. But friends, what use have they if they ask so little of us as simply looking for them? What joy can be proven in finding only whatever another already has? What meaning might we meet in our making our way look just like that of another?

Do they know better?

Are they truly free?

Or are most everyone here nothing more than just another you and me who too then seeks still that same something more that our approach to freedom thus obviously hasn’t really found before?

For if it did then why still do we look?

If freedom is truly for nothing more than doing whatever we want, then, having always done whatever we wanted to do, why then are we still looking for something to do, to be, to see and there hope to find what is that better life that our every hope still holds we’ve not yet lived?

Should freedom exist only to find us always enslaved to searching for the best way to use it?

Does being set free from righteousness, as is proven every single day anymore, does that truly accomplish the outcomes that can prove anything of hopeful?

Does a lack of responsibility really give you or me the ability to ensure that what we do or where we go is where and what we should?

And again, having each gone at it that way before, and only there finding whatever we already have that has thus apparently already proven still not near enough, does our then using our freedom in the same ways for the same things really seem in any way capable of helping us find that something different that we hope will make it feel different this time around?

Can’t we see the insanity in our doing only always the same things whilst expecting better outcomes?

Again, we’ve all used our freedom as if it’s nothing more than an escape from righteous responsibility. But what have we found? How have we felt? Anything worth never changing our approach, shifting our hope, asking ourselves what our hope truly is and why all we’ve already found or felt hasn’t managed to prove as fulfilling as we once assumed?

Should freedom be so tied to assumption?

Or should it rather be bound to that which is constantly proven and thus easily so?

And, well, what’s more easily proven than the fact which He said in that we know not what we’re doing?

Can we prove Him wrong? Have we anything to show that says anything else? Has the way we’ve lived our lives and thus used our freedom given us anything that can in any way seem to say that we do know what we’re doing, and that we’re as right as we like to assume we are in our then doing nothing any differently?

Does freedom know to do only one thing forever? Or is not life itself found only in our always doing something new, a fact perfectly proved in His paving of that path into that last place our freedom wants to be so as to hang inside that tomb a sign for all with eyes to see that we’ll never know anything of life itself until we lay down what’s long been our misused attempt to prove freedom itself to be nothing more than our doing only whatever we please?

Friends, my point is that pleasure isn’t the point. Not of freedom. Not of hope. Not of life. Pleasure is rather only this pretense of preference that will always bind us to believing that that which is to be best for us is only that which makes us feel however we like feeling. But freedom, true freedom, it cannot be bound to anything as its very nature is to be without limit. And thus freedom cannot, should not be limited by our feelings or findings or failings.

Rather freedom, true freedom, it’s instead something that must exist outside of us because it would otherwise be only a slave to us. And well, if freedom is nothing more than a slave to our cravings and confusions, then what benefit can it ever bring? Truly, if freedom means never anything more than our doing of only whatever we already have before, which has all been done only to please us, then what more, what better can we, should we expect we might find, feel, be or become?

No, freedom is meant to offer us the limitlessness to see that our past lives as lived in sin were not nearly as free as we obviously wanted them to be. And why is that? Because as much as true freedom doesn’t ever agree to accept any limitations unto itself, nor does it bring with it any consequences as, being without line or limit, it thus cannot fail or fall short or prove mistaken.

Because if we are truly free then there can be no limit, no cost, no consequence to anything we do as rather we’re free to do whatever we do.

But friends, this means then that if ever we’ve felt anything wrong, anything bad, anything elsewise betrayalsome of our every better hope, well then we’ve not found freedom as freedom doesn’t know such things as shame or regret. Because true freedom isn’t bound by the existence of mistake or misunderstanding.

Problem is that we are so long as we are still locked inside that lost kind of life spent spending our freedom upon only those things that this unrighteous world seems still to so pursue.

No, this world knows nothing of freedom as most here bind the very idea to their own ideals and idols. But real freedom doesn’t need such help, much less from us. Rather true freedom is something that exists only in purity as only there can we ever find that promise of a lack of punishment. And, well, there’s only one place to find that.

And it most certainly isn’t in us who know but only the most forlorn of freedoms there is.

Thankfully Jesus offers us a very different kind.

Very different.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold