Day 4014 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Luke 10:42 NIV

A broken focus

Because it’s hard to focus in a world that’s broken. Down here so many things are made to matter and measured the same and so it’s only a matter of time until we find that the same amount of the same things matter more to us than maybe they should. And that’s because we’re a people widely open to everything from suggestion to its assumption of success. We want only for a good life as is lived however a good life might.

But the problem becomes that we all begin to search through both day and night seeking for always something better hidden behind the something more that is always there waiting for us to want it.

And it’s within this that we eventually find that all our lives are being lived as if always empty, always wanting, always waiting for some making to be made that makes them feel like they themselves matter. All because we’ve become so easily convinced that life itself is meaningless unless and until we’ve found some way to fill it with whatever it is that someone else tells us they should be filled with.

And it’s in this that we become what are basically window shoppers walking by these stores of those souls scattered around us looking from our outside toward their inside as to what they’ve found that we might find that might make life feel more like whatever it is that we’ve probably only recently learned to barely begin to somewhat believe all of this might be and what more it might mean should we find the more seen inside the stores through which we all crawl in this mall of meaning made by us.

Yet how can we who didn’t create something then determine ourselves to be the best to decide what it means?

How can we who are but the recipients of literally everything that makes us who we are find always worry or wonder as to who we are? How can we, who most days know far less than we dare let on, how can we then be the ones who are considered those best to figure anything out at all? Much less the gravity of life and how then to live a good one.

Indeed, how can we be those who know what a good life holds having held these hands that have held so many hopes that turned out only hopeless at best and horrific more often?

Don’t you see friends, that’s the problem! It’s that we’ve become a people who are somehow always able to be convinced that there’s some better blend to life that would make life mean more, go smoother, feel better. There’s always some new idea, ideal, idol that this world has come upon that they then don as if a coat of what are now so many colors that it’s all just sort of blended into this muddy brown.

And our goal for life should never be muddy brown!

Not when we have a God above, who both wishes and deserves to be called Father, who is the very Author of such beauty as rainbows and waterfalls and butterflies and stormy skies which precede the rainbows just mentioned. He has created for us so much at which to marvel and so many mysteries held even still of Himself alone that we could spend our entire lives, and forever too, with never needing anything more to do than just sit in silence and watch the violence in which His works explode as the sun rises and the calm in which it sets again when each day is done.

But we don’t.

We don’t just sit and do anything anymore. As we discussed yesterday, most days find us without even time to think. Rather we’re always so bothered by some new idea of better that we never even wonder whether or not it’s worth wanting. We just want it. Why? Because everyone else alive seems to. And again, surely they must all be right. And so we awake most every single day only to get back in line in a way of life in which we’re all still trying to find what some say they have but none seem to hold.

Because the reality is that none of us hold any of this. It’s all simply too big, too beautiful, too bright, too light, too heavy, too hard, too scary, too uncertain and far too unsteady for us to even begin to believe that we might.

For we’re not the authors of life.

We’re rather but the often uneager readers thereof who, somehow, all seem to always be reading a different chapter in what most days seems entirely different books written in alien languages that are too filled with entirely too many utterly blank pages.

And how do we explain this? How do we expect another to understand this? How could anyone understand it when, honestly, we still don’t and we’re the ones living it?

What’s it?

Our lives.

Indeed, we are the only ones living our lives and it seems that regardless of age or experience, we’re all still mostly only struggling to figure it out. And I say this because it seems as though something new matters every single day. In fact there are days, and a growing number of them despite our number of them only shrinking, in which we’re usually quite vastly lost thinking about what may be upwards of hundreds of different things.

We are truly so prone to distraction that even what we delight in changes more often than the sky above does as the clouds roll on by.

Nothing ever stays the same in life. And yet we’re supposed to know what’s best in life anyway? We’re supposed to just give way to walking away everyday into the world wanting for whatever they may have or hope we might want? We’re supposed to simply live at the suggesting of something new all the time? We’re supposed to spend our lives being always amazed and ever-impressed with whatever another comes up with as a passible theory as to what might matter?

No, for again, how are we to know? Last I checked we’re only those who are promised each to lose a life, with literally all of us having proven just how good we are at so doing in what’s now a past in which so much mattered that matters no more.

We really sure we’re right this time?

Again, how could we be when everyday it seems that something new, something different, something else altogether is what seems to matter? Does the meaning of life seem something that thrives in such constant confusion? Should life mean something different all the time? Should all these varied interests and inspections truly form the foundations of our existence and what we assume best for it?

Should not life be built a little more solidly?

Is that not Christ’s point in His parable about the wise and foolish builders?

For He tells us that wise is the one who builds his house upon solid rock for when the waves of this world’s wants and the tides of this world’s lies and the winds of this world’s worries all gather together and beat and blow and beg us fall, we don’t have to agree as we can see still clearly through all the chaos swirling around us as our foundation isn’t spinning, isn’t shaking, isn’t sinking.

But foolish is he who builds his house upon the sands of a stumbled society’s suggestions and assumptions and preferences and opinions and presumptions.

Why?

Because when the winds and waves and tides and lies come against that house, it has no such support, no such strength, no such assurance that it can stand as it’s built on sand.

And sand does move. Sand does sink. Sand is but a billion specks that hold not together but rather shift to accept whatever another places upon it.

Is that what we should want for life? To always be at the mercy of a world not seeking His? To wake up and give away every single day to our doing only whatever another is, wanting whatever another has, believing only whatever another happens to have to say that day?

Don’t we see yet that this world knows only to change its mind like the tide? For down here things matter one moment that mean nothing the next. And it’s been going on like this for all of history itself. Never once has anyone ever found true contentment. Never once has anyone never known what it was to want something else, that same something more that someone else wants too. Never once has anyone ever managed to make it through this life without temptation.

Rather we are all the fallen who’ve fallen in love with the idea of falling further. All because we’re all always told that that’s the direction in which better is found. That’s where happiness waits. That’s where meaning hides. It’s always inside that life that we’re not living as is filled with all we’re not holding as is always then defined as all we don’t yet have.

And it’s in this that we always find that we always feel as if we need more. As if we need to do something else, try something different, want something bigger. It’s never enough for us. Rather we’ve become a people of perfect want. We can always manage to find some way to fit inside our mind one more idea for one more thing that just might mean more than all the things that then mean nothing.

But again, that’s the problem!

How much can anything mean whenever everything means something?

Do more things that seem to mean something help any of them mean more? Or is not less truly the only way to find more? I mean, we’ve been told of this idea for all our lives, that less is more and more thus less. And yet here we sit in lives that don’t sit as we still assume that there’s always something more to do in order to find the more that we feel we need to find to make sure our lives are as full and thus fulfilled as possible.

Does life then consist of an abundance of possessions, of opinions, of preferences, performances, platforms or profit? Having each of us found or felt a wide array of all the above, why then were they not then enough when we had them?

And what then makes us think that having more of them now will mean what they didn’t before?

Maybe less is more.

Or at least it’s one thing that we’ve probably not tried inside these lives spent trying to find more in every place and everything that it’s only turned out that it isn’t.

Which is why He came to do something different. It was show us that our way, as spent upon the wide open highway of hope racing alongside a hoarder’s mentality, is only a sure way to find a whole bunch of stuff that means absolutely nothing and continues to accomplish only the same. And the truth is that deep down we all know this already.

After all, if everything we’ve ever thought to matter really did, well then why are we all still looking?

Seems as if we’ve not yet found what we’ve all been looking for. And that probably goes on to at least plausibly suggest that perhaps we’re not looking in the right place. Because, and stay with me now, what if life’s meaning isn’t found where we’re currently found living it? What if the purpose of life isn’t ever to be proven inside this general perusing of a people to and through all manner of possible preference?

Indeed, what if the basis of life, of love, of faith in both found and waiting for us only up above, what if they’re found in such small measure here that indeed only one thing matters?

Can you so narrow down your life and all your estimations as to what might matter within it to just one thing? And even if we can, as some of us try, why then can we still not make it five minutes without some outside idea coming along and dragging us away for a while?

Again, should life be so prone to such shifting?

Should meaning always mean something different? Should our purpose be proven inside our doing always something else, wanting something more? Or again, is not less the only best way to find more of what means most?

I’m personally convinced that it is, and yet I must confess that I say this still sat here across from a wall absolutely covered in stuff that I’ve been telling myself for days that I need to thin out and sell off.

Why then haven’t I?

It’s not because I’ve not had the time to take it down, take some pictures and put it on ebay. It’s not because I don’t want to make a little bit of money to help buy some groceries for my family. It’s not because I don’t long for the peace that I believe will be proven when I’m no longer tasked with trying to figure out what I’m planning on doing with it all.

No, it’s just because I’m slow to be convinced that I’m ready to let it go.

Because maybe it still means something. Maybe it’s still something I want to have. Maybe it’s still something that I think I need. Maybe I’m still convinced then that having more means more and that my life then means more too the more I have within it.

Does it?

No, and I know this for sure as I’m sure tired of spending so much time and so many thoughts upon stuff I’ve bought with money I could have used to help my family or grow my business or donate to someone who doesn’t have a fraction of what I’ve so often forsaken and taken for granted.

Indeed, I’m tired of being the perennial consumer in life. I’m sick to death of always wanting something else which then opens me up to always looking for it. I’m fed up with always feeling as if my life’s empty and in need of filling.

I’m over the distraction of it all.

And yet, again, I look from this laptop on a shoebox and see that wall that’s been unfinished since we moved in last April.

What then can I know of peace when even my room lies still in pieces? What can any of us know of peace when our lives still look for more pieces to the puzzle we’ve become convinced it is? What can any of us know of life so long as we live as if we know what it’s supposed to go like, and that it’s supposed to look like some museum of mazes and misunderstandings as to what might matter and all that once mattered that doesn’t anymore?

Friends, it’s not supposed to be this hard!

But the simple fact is that we’ve forgotten how to focus. And granted, how can we when we’re standing here in a world surrounding us with so much stuff that so many want or wish only to tell us about how much we need it? This world has become nothing more than a glorified pawn shop. Every single day each of us line up to sell off what we’ve most recently tried trying to find the meaning of life only to spend the money we make on buying something else that someone else tells us will work.

And thus we find ourselves perpetually tossed about like rudderless ships atop a stormy sea trying to see something, anything that might act as an anchor to hold us in place so we can finally catch our breath.

All because we’ve all spent all our days trying to find life inside so many things that now all we know to matter is having more. We think that life itself is somehow the product of quantity. That having more is the surest way to feel more alive. Again, being busy is seemingly our very best guess as to how to be ready for He who isn’t coming as a guest but rather to lead some of us unto our rest from what should be a war that we wage every single day in which we fight to not be found distracted, complacent, confused or elsewise sleeping when He returns.

No, we’re rather still here to put our houses in order, ensure they’re built upon He who is the Rock, and to, having done everything, make sure we can stand our ground when all we can do is stand real still and hope He sees us amidst the chaos.

But friends, it’s just like any other stranded survivor that washes up on the beach of some barren and abandoned desert island. Those who are coming to find us can’t possibly see us if we spend all our time doing a million different things, none of them having anything to do with writing SOS in the sand or starting a fire so big that they can see the smoke for miles.

Indeed, we’re here to set our lives on fire, burning away within them every varied intention, plan, assumption that we’ve ever presumed might matter. He calls us to start bonfires of all we’ve felt might matter in life. All so that when He comes back, not only can He see us clearly amongst the weeds beside whom we’re growing, but too that He knows we’ve spent our lives knowing the one thing that mattered most was always Him.

And thus everything else that we’ve ever had or been told we should has been gathered unto the shore and doused in gasoline.

In what are then lives waiting in such eager anticipation for His promised returning that we stand ever ready to strike the match and watch it all go up in smoke.

All because we’d finally become so able to focus on what mattered most that we wanted everything else to be taken from us as we also learned that what matters most never can be.

No, nothing in this world can give our lives meaning, and nor then can anything we lose here take it away. Not when He is our life and all that means anything within it. Just comes down to whether or not we know Him to be what matters most or if we’re, like most, still stuck looking for more of everything else. And don’t get me wrong, it is hard to focus in life on the faith that nearly everything and everyone in this place seems to think isn’t worth all that much.

But friends, I think this world’s lack of peace, confidence and resolve seems to solve the problem.

Because if they’ve not found what best to focus on, well then we can be sure it’s not here. For everyone around us is losing their minds worried over so many things, wanting for so many things.

Let us try something different as we instead sit on the outskirts of this world looking to the skies like the outcasts He calls us to be.

For He calls us to be holy, which is to be set apart. And, well, what better way to be set apart from this world we’re in than to focus in on what most here consider foolish, worthless, hopeless and stupid?

Indeed, leave the world to follow their broken compass as you decide to sit at the feet of Jesus and just let the world go on losing its mind with all its deceiving and being deceived into thinking that the meaning of life is supposed to found hidden inside the one place in which we’re all promised to leave everything.

What a sad way to go, wasting an entire life seeking a false hope with a broken focus!

#LeaveNoSoulUntold