Day 4005 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Ezekiel 7:26 NIV

In real time

Can’t speak for anyone else as I’m not anyone else but for me personally I grew up with this tendency to see the Bible as some really old book that was written a really long time ago by people who then lived a really long time ago in what was, in light of our culture having long proven one of continuous advancement and progress and innovation and such, probably really not all that much like us. I mean, how could they be? We have cars and stuff now! And so the Bible has always seemed something of a promised antiquation from a truly bygone civilization.

And so to see it unfolding before our very eyes is something which, to me, proves it very much still alive as just as active as back when it was likely more acted upon.

Something that itself seems to be growing in a daily clarity.

For anymore all it seems that we seem to see is but this sea of a burgeoning insanity consuming all but all of humanity up until this point today in which we all have so much to say and yet say nothing that seems to prove all that able to help in any way. Rather what we’re witnessing is what appears to be the very fulfilling of what’s one of those seemingly ancient prophecies in which we read that God would all but give us all that all of us have asked.

Most of which is poured unto this premise of His just leaving us alone to do as we please and become increasingly pleased as we do, so much so that anymore it seems that all that pleases us is either ourselves pleased or arguing about whatever may happen to please another that we ourselves are not pleased with their being so pleased by.

That is what’s become of life.

Anymore every day all but instantly devolves into some debate, some dysfunction, some furthered division in which we seek to always divide ourselves into smaller and smaller groups or cultures until the point in which we’re again the only ones who are ever seen as being right, as being holy, as being truthful or honest or helpful or healthy or having the very keys to life and love and that place promised up above.

Indeed, it seems as though we each have become our own priests, our own prophets, our own promises perhaps. For anymore all we do is done unto this hope that we’ll be proven as right as our pride has long tried so very hard to convince us we’ve always been. And yet it’s within this confusion, this delusion that’s being designed this destruction of every opportunity, perhaps even ability, to work alongside one another toward what has for centuries been that standing call to come and lay it all down as we exchange it for the placement as last amongst the rest.

A place our ego will never believe best.

And thus too a place we’ll likely never agree to be because, well, again it seems that we have each arrived upon this time in which our minds know only to find that we’re always right and that, because of that, anyone else who sees or says anything any differently is the very cause of all this insanity we see unfolding in our streets, our homes, our hopes even. For truth be told it’s feeling more and more as if all of life itself is unraveling into something that I don’t think any of us ever would have been so elated to be so becoming.

Because there’s nothing coming but all that’s unbecoming to life itself when the only story we seek to sell is only that in which we’re only who are well, who are wise, who are right.

Rather what awaits at that day coming closer and closer in which we’ve all escaped society to stand both in our own way and therefore in our own way is but a hatred of all the rest who don’t agree to do the same. And this is something that we’re in fact seeing happen as we speak. Because anymore the only words we seem to know how to say are those seasoned not with salt but rather by hearts and minds and souls and lives so salty and sullen that we seem to assume it safe to so hate one another as we do.

And true, there are things that we’re called to hate, things such as sin and stuff. But never once, at least that I can recall, never once do I remember Him asking us in that relic of a book spent toward righteousness and holiness and even hope itself to have chosen so widely this pathway to hell as is being paved every day in a new layer of hate as is poured not only, not even mostly for those things that we’re supposed to despise but rather for those with whom we just can’t see eye-to-eye.

No, rather than loving our neighbor as ourselves and seeking to be found here serving as if we’re learning our true place in this race to what is a life turned upside down in a forever thankfully flipped around, instead we’re of this collective head that is growing into this belief that it’s somehow better to see ourselves as right and everyone else as wrong than to work with one another to address the wrongs we all have and appreciate the good we could bring.

A good we can’t see because indeed it does seem as if this time too has at least started to come through in which we’re beginning to lose all manner of all manners, of all meekness, of all kindness and all compassion.

Things the Bible calls us to pursue far more often than it asks we chase this waste of what’s at this point likely to prove one more day lost unto that way in which we’ve so clearly chosen to go instead.

A way that is teaching us all to mind not another dead as we can readily find some reason they’ve misspent their lives doing those things that we’ve ourselves never done as we contend them things we’re not supposed to do. Never mind the things we’ve done that others know are wrong too. No, our failures and flaws matter not in response to the many more, and larger too, of those around us, those who may look like we do but don’t live as well as we have.

For again, we’re each the only ones who know everything and get thus the same always right.

And what’s strange about this reality that’s befallen humanity is that I do believe that much of this faith is supposed to be taken quite personally. I mean, after all, it is referred to as a relationship. And so this salvation is something that is indeed entirely personal as it’s something that meets each of us wherever we are living as whomever we’ve been doing whatever it is that we’ve been doing, mostly against Him. And it’s also only us who will kneel before that same Jesus and confess our sins and receive our outcome.

It’s entirely a personal thing.

But the issue seems to remain that somehow we’ve managed to take what was meant to be a personal relationship with the Savior who left Heaven to come and find we the ones who walked away from the 99 and spun it into this assumption that His having saved us, redeemed us has then sat us upon what are thrones of judgement as if we’re all of the sudden entirely perfect despite that old book being there to say such things as that which reads how “by one sacrifice he has made perfect forever those who are being made holy.”

Yeah, we oddly enough seem to have gotten stuck on that whole “has made perfect” part.

Because that’s just what we’ve all been trying to say we were!

Never mind that the verse goes on to say that the same are “being made holy.”

Being meaning that the process is still ongoing thanks to such things as repentance and the subsequent sanctification being lifelong processes meant to produce in us a fruit that we continue to bear in better measure as we go on toward that hope of that home that is Heaven and not here.

A message we also seem to have managed to miss as we seem to still seek for our treasures in forms such as human applause or approval. Mostly from our sharing or saying whatever it is that happens to be on our minds without perhaps taking the time to let it simmer unto an assurance that it’s as worth being said as our head wants it to be.

Because not all things are helpful. Not all things are kind. Not all things that we say, think, do are truly as perfect as we seem to want them to be, to seem, to sound like. Instead history has shown us time and again that we have this really bad habit of jumping to conclusions and saying things without all the evidence and assuming things based upon only the substance of what we want to hear or believe the outcome should be.

And indeed, perhaps some of the things we say and do do in fact have that heart-filled hope of making things better. But it’s not just the outcomes that matter.

How we get there matters to.

But that’s what we seem to have forgotten around here as we daily dive to this continued willingness to divide, to destroy, to debate, to defame, to deface those who share in this image of their too being a part of His creation. In fact, looking around it seems that we’re only growing in that. For every day there indeed seems a rise of calamity, of confusion, of a continued delusion as is being designed in again our thinking that we’re anymore so very right that we need not anyone else to help us anymore.

And well, as we touched on yesterday, God just might give us what we ask for.

And in all honesty, why shouldn’t He? Why shouldn’t He leave us alone? Why shouldn’t He let us have our way? Why shouldn’t He take us on our word that we’re good from here, that we can handle the rest, that in fact He can rest as we’ve become so good, so right, so upright that we can take His place and act as His priests and do the job of His prophets and perhaps even help to save this place from all the disgrace we see in those lives being lived wrongly around us?

We’re just offering our assistance.

Something He should be willing to accept seeing as how He’s again already perfected us through His sacrifice.

Granted, it was a sacrifice of His Son who hadn’t sinned but who’d rather lived in humility seeking only to help the rest of humanity. But I’m sure we’ll pick that up along the way.

But the problem seems to be that despite our each having been made perfect, something we’ve each again been trying to tell everyone else we already were for as long as we can remember, we’ve still managed to only arrive here at what is this time in life in which all of society is crumbling into such an ongoing hatred and hostility that many are even breaking down and wondering if there’s any way to come back together.

And personally, I don’t think there is.

Because in order for any problem to be fixed those who might aid in fixing it must at first admit that a problem exists. Which we do all seem to agree on. But from there those same who see the problem have to also agree that perhaps they had a play in it becoming the problem it is. And, well, that’s where things get a little iffy. Because while we can all see plenty of problems in this place, doesn’t seem that many of us see any of us in them.

For again we’re perfect and get nothing wrong and so then nothing that is wrong is a result of anything we have done.

But friends, where then does that leave us?

Where are we when all we are is but everything right amongst a world in which most everything’s wrong? Where can we go when we alone each seem to know the best way to go and yet each of our best ideas is aimed in a totally different direction? What can we be of anything better whenever we already think that we’re good enough and everyone who isn’t like us thus isn’t?

Who can we be when we seem to see ourselves as priests, as kings, as the righteously redeemed unto a self-imposed righteous authority that nothing in Scripture asks us to act upon?

For instead it says that we’re to consider others more than ourselves. To forgive so that we might be forgiven. To do unto others as we’d have them do unto us. To love God and love people. To hate sin but rebuke the sinner in such a way that encourages rather than devours. To stand as if cities upon hills, not just kings upon thrones. Cities because such are welcoming unto those who’ve lived out in the cold and are just worn and weary and wanting a place in which they might find peace.

Indeed, blessed are the peacemakers for the same shall be shown peace.

But friends, where’s the peace?

Where’s the kindness, the compassion? Where’s the humility that honestly wants those around them bettered rather than embittered? Where’s the growth toward that hope of our filling up that home to which He came to lead us? Or have we forgotten that? That He is the only One meant to lead, and yet that He leads in humility, in modesty, in meekness even? Sure, there is a call to uphold our Christian authority, but to do so well so as to build up those we meet along this shared way toward whatever comes of wherever we go.

But upholding it well has nothing to do with standing in condemnation for anyone amongst creation as we ourselves should see in Christ that we too have misused this life to do things, say things, become things that are entirely unbecoming what He came to call us to be.

We are not the moral authority.

He is.

Problem is that we seem to have forgotten this as instead we continue to live as if we are the ones to whom this world should look seeking to see what all a life, a hope, a faith should look like. I’m telling you, social media has made a mess of just about everything, our minds mostly. Because it’s convinced us that this world needs to hear from us, see in us this image, this sound of those who have it all always figured out.

Even when we don’t.

But we’ve become so convinced that we have to that we often just pretend that we do. In fact we’ve arrived at that time, this time, in which it’s said that such things as counsel and instruction would cease. Not because they’re gone, but because they’re nothing we feel we need to seek. Because again, we’ve got it all figured out. We read the book, know some verses, say our prayers and condemn with curses those who don’t do what we do, say what we say, live how we live, love how we live.

Friends, the moment that the church, the very body of Christ, becomes convinced that it knows as much as well as He who is the head, we’re dead. Because there is no finish line in faith. We are none of us to ever be complete in this place. Rather His Word, though old and widely thus disregarded, it reads that He intends to continue this good work He’s began in us until that coming day upon which He returns to collect us and take us home.

We’ll never be done growing in Him, in hope, in humility. No. There is always something we can do better, something we can differently, something we should just stop doing entirely. And that’s because we’re not perfect yet. We all still make mistakes. We all still get things wrong. We all still have a past that we’ve probably messed up in so many ways that we dread anyone else knowing about it.

But the problems will continue to arise so long as we live as if we don’t.

Why?

Because that lie can only cause us to continue seeing ourselves as so good already that we need no more improvement, no more instruction, no more council, no more help.

Things we’ve all already told Him we didn’t need before.

Guess the logical question is just how many times we can tell Him we’re doing just fine on our own before He leaves us to prove it.

Because His Word says He plans to do just that.

He tells us that there will come famines not of food or water but of His Word being heard. Tells us that those considered leaders will become harder to find. Tells us both because, well, it’s just hard to find what you refuse to look for. And it’s hard to feel the need to look for what you’re all but convinced you don’t really need. And it’s hard to realize what all you still need when all you can see is all that you don’t want to admit you still do.

And, well, so too then shall it become harder and harder for this world to get any better when each of us continue in this direction we’ve so clearly chosen in which we ourselves are already as good as we can be whilst everyone else is probably only seen as somewhere beneath whatever it is that we think we’ve become.

But friends, look around and tell me what we’ve become.

It what you see what you want to be? Does what you hear say the sound of anything you want to hear? Does the common approach to all of life being lived around here seem anything that any life should so desire to remain?

Or do you not see a world in need of help, a people starved of humility, a humanity losing its humanity?

I might be wrong, been there before, but the latter is what I see more and more commonly. Just a world drowning in hatred, in hostility, in division, in judgement.

And that both of those around us and likely then that of God.

Yes, I believe that His judgement is beginning as this world has made clear where most are intent upon staying. And so He’s letting the world have its way and people are indeed enjoying their commonly sought rewards of pleasure, success, enjoyment and applause.

Never seeming to remember that everything here will be lost.

I fear how close we are to that end because it seems we’re as unready as ever as instead of godliness being grown amongst us, within us, it seems instead we’re mostly growing only weeds of want and war. For all we seem to see anymore is exactly what verses like this tell us we will. It’s all calamity and rumor and gossip and arrogance and vanity and judgement.

Indeed, I never imagined that we’d see His Word unfold before us in the ways it is. For again, I kind of always thought it a really old book about a promise still way off in the future.

Guess you just never know how close you are until you get there.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold