Day 3997 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Colossians 2:22 NIV

Merely

Only as specified and nothing more. Just. Simply. Solely. As is and never to be anything then that isn’t as only that which is is that which is seen as can be as is seen by those who’ve eyes that could see, should see the ever more which lay out ever before all we’ve all since been and long since become. Eyes that alas see only excuses to refuse us the opportunity to use our God-given ability to move to thus move closer to our becoming something more other than that which is as presently specified in what is simply a life in which we just do only as we all already have.

We are as is and never to be anything more so long as we remain the only ones who seek to determine for ourselves the best that we ourselves desire to be.

All because all we are is but a people who think of ourselves as having already arrived at our very best life as if such can be lived in line with this mind that has us so daily turned around seeking always something more but doing never anything new. Indeed, such insanity has truly, in almost every way possible, become me and you for daily we do such nothingness that we too are but mere humans who then think it best to do only what other mere humans think best for us all to do.

Do they know for sure? Can we be so sure they might? Why is it that we do all delight inside this deceptive design in which our time in life is to be believed as always best spent upon what’s anymore akin to our basically living only to pay rent unto those we’ve allowed this lordship over us as if they’re better than us, bigger than us, smarter than us?

Are they?

Is there truly this general hierarchy amongst humanity in which we’re to be perpetually divided into classes cast into a caste system seeking to at first inspire those upon the lower rungs to reach higher seeking a hope held the same but alas having instead become but an excuse we use to feel sorry for ourselves as we lose daily a little more ability to believe in anything better simply because those who’ve instead become our kings and guides have insisted we down here become blind to being anything but mere rule followers?

And that for a few dollars handed out in what’s then an exchange for our soul as has then instead become sold unto being but sheep led always unto the slaughter that never should have become the delight of we sons and daughters of He who is the Most High, the same as who offers us life in what is a measure that nothing here, no human treasure can measure against.

For He is not some mere human who’s then but breath in His lungs nor doubt in His heart. Rather He is the unchanging One who is the same yesterday and today and every day still to come. He is He who did come and having came promised once He left that He’d come again to lead us home, those few who seek to share in His delight to lose what was and is a sinful flesh as is defined as such because it has become so willing to want for nothing more than the praise and applause of they who are but sinful people too.

Indeed, why is this the thing we do?

Have we not read that question posed in Scripture which asks those asked to “judge for yourselves” the answer to the question preceding as was poured from the lips of Peter and John:

“Which is right in God’s eyes: to listen to you, or to him?”

An asking which seemingly has the clear backing of Christ’s calling us to give unto Caesar that which is his and yet to God that which is His.

Something we seem to struggle quite well with, and I suppose reasonably so seeing as how we’ve come to think of us so high and He so low. Indeed, humans looked upon His crucifixion and considered Him forgotten, forsaken, afflicted and thus unworthy of being listened to anymore. After all, He was at that point but a dead man progressing unto the nevermore that we’ve all thought before of our very death being someday.

That’s why we fear it still.

Because many here still seem to assume that death is nothing more than the end of life, a lie causing them to consider it better to seek this world’s best in what’s then a best life as is easily agreed to as being best by those who themselves seek oddly enough something always slightly different.

Strange that.

For if our sole purpose and best pursuit in this life is this idealized version thereof, and yet all of us have different ideals ranging from merely slightly shifted scenery to those massively different perspectives from which and in which we see everything and everyone along the way to wherever it is that we alone hope to go, well then how do we ever expect to arrive upon our commonly sought consensus of our lives being best?

And even if we don’t care as to what others might think of our such measures, how can we even be sure ourselves?

Have we seen all there is to see?

Have we learned all there is to know?

Can two feet truly step upon every single inch of every place we here can go?

Can we do all we really want to in what is a life that’s but only so much time in which to do possibly less than whatever we already have?

What have we already done? Has it come to become anything new? Or as we age do not we do mostly only the same things over and over again? Is such violent repetition our reward? Are human praise and applause the accolades and accomplishments that are truly best able to leave us on our deathbeds sure we’d left nothing on the table that was a life that has by then all but passed us by?

Are we afraid to die?

Most here are. Those same most do everything they can to imagine they won’t, seeking out every possible delight and distraction which might prevent that happen of a mind wandering toward that wonder as to where we’ll go from here. In fact anymore it seems that nearly everyone is scattered into that scene of seeking something, anything that can in anyway keep them from thinking about the coming fall out of our each having lived so fallen as to think of Him like us as opposed to seeking our to become like Him.

Not that we don’t adore the idea of our being divine. For in all truth, such is the lie we continue to choose to continue to chase, this life given unto the waste of our thinking always that we always know what we’re doing, are always right in the doing thereof, thus to be easily justified by all those of similar eyes seeing similar lies inside lives too quite the same. For all of us live as if we are ourselves gods and kings, all because we think these things are owed that which we’ve ourselves long given them.

We are entirely enthralled with the idea of royalty, regality, legality even. In fact we’re so consumed by the last that anymore all we seem able to talk about is who’s right and wrong as is measured by, you guessed it, we who are upon the thrones in our lives.

And so no, it’s not that we don’t like the idea of the promise He gives in our being the adopted children of His who are then fellow heirs with Christ of the promise of eternal life.

That all sounds amazing!

It’s just that we just don’t like what the cross proved as being the only path there.

And that because we’ve still plenty of pleasure and success and satisfaction and stress still to seek and survive here inside what we’ve sought to make of, in, out of this life. The three former obviously reasonable unto a people of such a fall that the flesh is all we really care about, despite it being the part of us that’s to endure that fear of our coming death. The latter though a matter slow to make sense as it doesn’t seem that stress is something that any of us enjoy all that much as it insists this pressure upon us to do whatever it is, become whatever it is that we feel as though we’re low on time to so do or be.

Yet we allow for it for some reason.

Probably because we’ve become a people who think it makes us look good to be always running around seeking for a life continually drown upon delight and divide as is drawn as the only line to walk by those who too have grown to agree that we who are but mere humans can somehow elsewise see our way to being what no human has ever become all by themselves.

But that’s a truth that never sells. And that because we continue to buy only that lie that tells our eyes that it’s on them to see what’s our own way to our own day in which our own name is so known and so loved that we’re not considered quite so dumb for our having become so dumb as to think those prone to mistake are instead able to find a life free from them being made.

Which is probably why we pay no attention to the past, learning then nothing from history, leaving us destined unto it repeating.

It’s all because we know what we’d see should we look back on who we’d been.

And, well, seeing sights of such losses of life as those years spent in slavery to sin and every other such chosen captivity would pretty much all but perfectly, and that instantly, entirely undermine this idea in mind that tells us that we ourselves can become such beacons of freedom that the entire world becomes our fans and seeks to be our friends, all so they too can find their way to our way of life.

Yes, it’s not that we want to adhere ourselves, our lives to what we know are mere human rules.

It’s just that such is the only way by which we too can gain what is a world looking back to us someday.

You have to play the game we’re told to play if you’re to win the reward of their turning at some point and looking back at you for what you, by then, will have seemed to gain in what’s, by then, a larger portion of the world wishing to become like you.

And unto a people of such vanity and pride as we’ve become, that idea of all this world looking unto us and cheering us on and standing in awe of all we’ve done and become, it’s too good a hope to pass up. And so we agree to go along, to learn the rules, to uphold the expectations placed upon each of us as are given with the express understanding that should we go on doing as we’ve been told by those who then act as our leaders, we too shall find ourselves having been trained by those touted as kings.

Thus making us kings ourselves.

And that’s a story that sells.

And one that all of us want to buy as that’s the life that we all wish to live. Indeed, I think sometimes of how differently that tempting in that desert would have gone had it been us instead of Jesus. For the devil offered that hungry Man some bread, which we’d have taken as we’re scared of hunger. Offered Him the chance to put God to the test in what was a basic opportunity to see if He could fly, a chance we’d have taken having always wanted to try, especially with the promise of our being saved should we fall as we’re all quite afraid of such danger.

Offered Him even all the kingdoms of creation, something we’d have definitely not so denied as such are what we’ve already given our lives to trying to earn in what’s as low a measure as what is that commonly-held treasure of human applause and approval.

Yes, we want so badly so much that’s worldly that we’ve thus found, and that obviously, plenty of reasons to go along with doing as the world asks us to.

Completely forgetting the point of that question posed by John and Peter.

For instead we’ve come to think it better to listen to people and seek our glory and gain from thus only the same.

Yes, we too love the acknowledgement of those around us. In fact any more so many of us live our everyday seeking any way by which we might earn a few more fans and followers, subscribers who are but suckers who’re convinced to suckle upon the substance of the things we say or the sights we show. Don’t even care as to the show we sell so long as the seats are filled and the people in them so thrilled that they’ll tune back in next Sunday morning as we go on storing up for ourselves treasures down here where our every hope and any joy has long since agreed to stay.

Not that we see it that way. Rather we seem to see this world as still our oyster with that proverbial pearl inside. And indeed we each awake inside every new day doing only old things trying to crack this place wide open so that we can finally retrieve that reprieve we feel this world’s praise to be.

We want for nothing more than whatever those around us tell us via voice or vote is best for us.

All because such is the game that life here’s become.

“Do not handle. Do not taste. Do not touch.” Do not say that. Do not do that. Do do this. Do say this. Do care about this. Don’t care about that. It’s all lined out for all those who line up to fall in line behind those so blind as to think that people, who’re clearly but sinners still, are somehow able to lead one another unto something better than this nothingness we’re so clearly still willing to be.

Why are we so willing to be still nothing more than those who are followers of rules and rights, the fallen delights a people falling too?

Is that all there is to all of this? Just us down here playing as if we’ve got better ideas than He who is up there asking us to just stop fooling ourselves inside all of this doubt and deception that has each of us setting upon what are lawn chairs that look like thrones built of a people’s cares as to what we’re doing and whether or not it’s what they want us to?

Friends, we are more than puppets upon the strings of these songs this cancerous culture sings in shouts and shots fired from mouths that do more damage than any weapon ever has. For yeah, weapons can wound and maim, oh but friends, it’s our words which aim those who hear them unto the directions that we so clearly barely care to worry about anymore.

We don’t care as to the eventual outcomes in life, of life. Not even our own! And so much less then those of those around us. Couldn’t care less because all of life’s become about us. We seek our praise, our joy, our enjoyment of our being praised. That’s all we care about. And yet, as that’s all that we care about, we’ve become willing to do whatever it takes to get it.

And thus we line back up every single morning already planning on giving another day to walking that very same way we did the yesterday now dead. Never once seeming to realize that a life lived unto people’s eyes can only ever become the same. It’s just dead, and us then nothing more. All because all we care about it doing as we’re told or elsewise expected to.

All because that’s the only way for us to win what all here are afraid to lose.

The cheers, the support, the applause of a people paused upon this cause of doing nothing. We’re doing nothing.

We’re becoming nothing!

Why?

Because of this ongoing lie that tells us all that the best thing we can do in life is match our steps with those marching proudly toward hell. A journey so many take because unto them the very best thing that can ever happen in life is for this world to them find as worthy of being loved and approved and accepted for who they are.

That is the gospel of this fallen people!

Be yourself. Believe in yourself. You can be whatever you want to be, do whatever you want to do. Life here is all about you.

That couldn’t be farther from the truth!

Life isn’t about us. We are not the champions of this chance. We’re but the confiscators of hope itself as is anymore sold in rules and lists and expectations exceedingly expecting that we do nothing but what other people do. As if we who are but people know what’s best to do!

We don’t!

And yet we each awake looking only unto those who re just like us to lead us to our being still like them who are but us in different clothes, different skin.

Same sin.

That’s what Jesus came to free us from. That way of life lived lost thinking we could find our own way to everything that we could ever want. That way of life spent following behind those who’d already found everything we’ll come to crave. That way of life spent terrified of the grave simply because mere human understanding has us standing still convinced that that’s only where all of life ends.

This place is certain that we need to find as much pleasure, success and enjoyment as possible before that last breath that most here still believe will be their last.

Are those the rules you wish to live by? That this life is only lived just to die?

Friends, that’s what this world tells us and demands we agree with. That’s what this world teaches us. That’s what this world expects of us. That’s what this world has settled for, and make no mistake, still this world does so increasingly hate any who live in any other way because any other way may happen to show a version of freedom that most here will never know.

Because most here will remain slaves to themselves and captives of a culture that makes it seem reasonable to imagine freedom itself as nothing more than our ability to do whatever we want to do. A version of freedom that only keeps us enslaved to ourselves, writing our own rules and denying our every wrong.

That isn’t life. It’s the one this world has chosen to live and expects for the rest of us to also go along with.

But we don’t have to.

That’s the freedom that most here will never know. That kind in which human expectation isn’t given a say. That kind in which mere human rules don’t get an opinion. That freedom in which all that matters is pleasing our Father, and thus never again caring as to the desires or demands a people who continue to deny Him that honor.

This world knows no honor.

I can’t settle for that.

I hope, I pray that you won’t either.

Because there is something better. There is a life still to come. There is a promised peace unlike anything this decrepit place can ever even pretend to offer. So please be careful as to where you seek your treasure and whose map you follow to look for it.

For many here are seeking their reward here, and the Bible tells us they’ll find it. But friends, there is nothing rewarding about a life lost to pleasing mere people as people can’t do for us what Jesus already has.

People can only convince us that He didn’t do anything at all, that He is nothing at all.

Many here do believe that, but since that’s the case, why then should we be so worried about anything else they think?

No, leave the dead to bury their dead for we’ve better things to do than try and please those who live for rules written by and for those who think of life as only lived until they die.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold