Day 4017 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Ecclesiastes 2:20 NIV

A hopeless design

That is sadly what it seems we’re all sure to find as having become the very foundations of our every life. Why? Because to despair is indeed to be here. It seems every day anymore that all we seem to see is that tomorrow has something better in store as our each and every today only seems to show up and all but instantly steal away whatever meager measure of hope or happiness we may have dared to try and have. Simply because it seriously seems as if the entire world is against such things.

Rather it seems to me that we all seemingly agree that such outlooks as anger and fear are far more apt to help us find whatever it is that we’re looking for in life.

Problem is that we don’t even stop to reconsider what as, well, we’ve not the time to allow such doubt into our mind.

No, rather time’s a matter always measured in how fast it’s wasting any time that we’re not stuck chasing after whatever it is that our blind belief in it making our lives better can’t then ever seem to see actually has us only wasting our lives in our always trying to find something to make better something we’re not really living anymore anyway. Because the simple reality of life is that, while a needs-based system, it’s meant to be something that seeks satisfaction in needs being satisfied.

And we’re not about that kind of life.

Instead we’ve all become so well-fed that we allow no rest to our heads nor hope to our hearts as there’s always something more to want thanks to our needs being so well met. This is indeed a danger God discussed in Scripture, Hosea 13:6 to be exact. “When I fed them, they were satisfied; when they were satisfied, they became proud; then they forgot me.”

And so we can see clearly that who we’ve become is something that everyone else before us became and thus too something that God knew we’d eventually be too. And that’s because, since He doesn’t change, nor then has ever changed His goodness shown toward us. Rather here inside of every day we continue to find that we are well fed. We are given water to drink, a roof over our head and a bed upon which to at least try and rest the same.

And I say try to rest because, as verse 23 of this chapter in Ecclesiastes goes on to mention, “even at night their minds do not rest” as instead we lie awake trying to think of either more stuff to want or how to get the more we already came up with.

This is anymore all that life is.

It’s devolved into what seems a series of self-imposed problems that we ourselves love to design because most of them are designed here inside what is a heart that has become what it has always been right from the start. We’re told in Jeremiah 17:9 that “the heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure” A verse which concludes as it asks “who can understand it?”

Issue is then that we seem to each believe that we can understand it inside what is a life in which we follow it almost exclusively as it always seems to seek the very sum of everything that it alone has come to convince us that we need.

And it’s in this that we find the deceit.

That the heart is defined as deceitful means that it has “a tendency or disposition to deceive or give false impressions”. Meaning then that the heart is a liar. And sure, that seems a fairly harsh thing to consider considering how it’s the heart that we’ve long believed to house our hope as we so love to so learn to so lean so we can listen in to all that the heart tells us we need within what are anymore then only lives that are only lived for only whatever it is that we’ve so learned to love that we anymore can’t imagine living anymore without.

This is the understanding part.

And that’s the true issue because ever since we became this assured that we could understand all our heart desires, as said desires are always exactly what we want (who’d have thought?), we know now only to trust in ourselves and too this way of life that’s become so very filled with self that we’ve become the proverbial false prophets always prophesying lies telling our minds all about how great our lives are going to become if only we can figure out a way to find whatever it is that our hearts will want next.

A task our itching ears are always down to hear as it sure sounds like the roar of a crowd cheering us on in endless applause as we too join their collective cause spent chasing after a way of life in which we all come to live as if the only thing that’s wasting is time that we’re not chasing after whatever it is that we’re to want next.

That’s all we care about anymore. It’s always the next best thing. It’s that there’s always something new, something novel, something updated or some limited edition trial that we simply must try or take part in so that we don’t miss out on whatever it is that has so many others so up in arms over this thing that they too can’t wait to get their arms around. Indeed, the only waiting we seem at all willing to entertain is that done in jobs measuring a typical 40 hours every week.

Why?

Because we need the money we make to help us buy all that we’ve become unable to imagine our lives going on without.

And so we’ve become willing to give ourselves unto jobs we probably hate, at least some aspects of, all so that we can rise above this sense of worry of our not having something that we want so very badly that the getting thereof has become, unto us, a more worthy outcome than the input we give unto whatever it is that we have to do in order to get it.

Which, again, is usually something that is in some way grievous as it, at the very least, grieves our existence of its very existence as is given unto what’s basically sacrificing the one thing we can’t get back for what is, in truth, a bunch of stuff that we’ll eventually only lose our lust for and probably sell off in some garage sale.

But thankfully we’ve all managed to become entirely too short-sighted to see said outcomes. And this then allows for us to continue onward in our largely tunnel-visioned way of life that all of us live in which we daily continue to focus in only what we want, barely even being worried as to what all we’ll have to do in order to get it.

We just want whatever it is so badly that we’ll eventually become willing to do just about anything to make it come true.

Indeed, it seems that we’ve come to believe that a life is only best lived when everything in it is some sort of dream that we fight day and night to make come to life all so that our lives are prospered or improved in whatever manner we’ve come to imagine might actually happen just as soon as we happen to have whatever it is that we can’t even manage to dream about anymore because we can’t sleep anymore either as rather we lie awake every single night again trying to find some way to make it all get figured out.

Life has become a puzzle in which we’re each somehow the ones who come up with the picture without ever stopping to make sure that we have all the pieces nor even know how many pieces we’re supposed to have.

Because we can always manage to find one more that we might need in order to finally complete this thing and hang it on the wall right beside all the times before that we tried to find a perfected life only to have failed to figure out the last piece of that puzzle and just moved on to coming up with another one.

Is that truly what we wanted this life to be back when we were those kids who could actually dream because they really did sleep at what was the dark end of a really fun day spent running around without a care in the world all because they had parents who ensured that they were fed and allowed them the opportunity to embrace their ability to have fun without all the parents knew a grownup life would do to the innocent interrogation of a child living a strange way of life spent asking why rather than what next.

That’s what we’ve all lost here in our race unto this place in which we all got old trying to hold a bunch of hopeless lies that we were told, probably by ourselves, that we needed to have and thus needed to hurry in our trying to get.

Indeed, we all got in such a hurry to get wherever it was that we became sure our best life was waiting for us.

And here we are living inside what are joyless lives in which we find that no matter what we’ve found, it never feels able to fill the hole we carved in our souls trying to make a little more room to house a couple more things that we both thought we needed to have only to finally have them and then realize that what we’d rather have was the time we spent trying to get what we now have that isn’t quite what we thought it would be.

And indeed, this outcome is one entirely too common among man. For all of us have given at least some portion of our lives unto this search for what we think we’re supposed to fill them with. And we’ve all found a great deal of all those things that we cooked up into being all but vital necessities unto the very living of life at all.

But are they?

Have any of us ever actually found anything that we couldn’t actually live without?

We’ve all held a great many things to such a high estimation. But have any of them truly accomplished such a meaning? Of all the things we have in our lives, what of them do we truly need to stay alive?

I think that should we ever dare consider such questions, what we’d all find is that of all we’ve found or still feel as if we need to find, not much of it actually adds all that much to life. Because, and please do get this, not even our worry over things can add time onto life. Rather all it can do is take time from life as we could be doing just about anything else instead of worrying about something else that we want.

We could read a book. We could take a bath. We could take a nap!

You remember taking naps?

Man, kindergarten was awesome! They’d roll in little carts laden down with chocolate milk, we’d have a snack and then be told to crash on little pads spread all over the class. And chances are we’d awake only to watch a movie before we went to lunch which was usually followed with a recess from the otherwise arduous process in which we’d go outside and run and play and enjoy the day.

All because we were free to be kids.

We weren’t afraid to be kids.

Nowadays being childish is something that the world looks down upon because, well, we don’t have time for such foolishness as fun and naps and movies and snacks because the snacks make us fat because we sit inside an office all day long getting neither sunshine nor fresh air, we’re losing our hair because we’re so stressed out of our minds working jobs we hate for bosses that often share a similar grading, all so that we can reach the weekends and hit the stores and buy the stuff that we’re doing it all for.

Yeah, being a kid is considered stupid these days!

So much so that we don’t even let kids be kids anymore. Rather we shove screens in front of their faces and do our best to teach them to become another part of the system that we all now are so lost within that none of us ever dare to look up and wonder what we’re doing nor why we’re doing for whatever it is that we’re doing it all for.

Because, to be honest, I don’t think we care. We just want stuff as in this world the having of stuff is what we all seem to believe success is. We’re all measured by the quantity of the stuff we have. Be it money or trophies or collectibles hanging dusty on our walls, all of life is only a matter of how much we can become convinced matters enough that it’s, unto us, worth more than our time.

Which is, again, the one thing we’re all going to look up one day only to find we’ve ran completely out of in our run toward more stuff that all then stays behind when God says we have to go.

Where?

Who knows?

Why?

Because again, we haven’t anymore the kind of time that we can spend upon such things as wondering what will happen when all that’s going on right now isn’t going on anymore. We don’t want to think about such things as such strain would cause a break of our hearts and a humbling of our brains as it would cause us to think about what we’re doing and why.

Things we can’t afford to consider in life because we’ve become quite used to being so miserable that we don’t even know that misery was never the mission.

The mission was rather that of the Great Commission in which we’re here to carry the love of His Word into all the world as we worry exclusively about loving God so very much that all we care to do is love others however we can via whatever tools or traits He’s given us to help us do just that.

A mission we allow to fall so flat because we’ve become quite convinced that we need all of whatever makes us us to make sure that our lives are going just fine as is usually measured, again, in how much stuff we have. Indeed, our greatest pursuit isn’t the love of God or love of others. Those things probably still matter. But at first we always have to ensure that we’re in a life comfortable enough, successful enough, satisfied enough that we can then afford to risk it.

To risk what?

Doing as God has called us to do which, in case you forgot (and judging by the way of life most are living here, we have), it’s to sell off everything we do have whilst giving the earnings to the poor followed by our following Him who told us plain that He had here no place to lay His head as, instead, He came with the express desire to leave as He came to love in such a way that His entire life was lain down upon a cross taken up so that He could take us up out of the way of life we’d come to live.

A way of life so very lost that we actually thought we’d found what life was supposed to be all about.

And that, somehow, it was defined by something in, on or elsewise of this ground we’re standing on.

But let me ask you this:

Can the meaning of life or best purpose thereof truly be so defined by the place from which it was taken?

For the Bible tells us that man was taken from the dirt of this earth. Should we then spend so much of our time trying to find the meaning of life or purpose thereof in that from which God took us? Or is this not something akin to the pillar of salt outcome that came of Lot’s wife inside her looking back to see what was going on in the way of life that she’d lived in that place that God had taken her from?

See what I’m saying?

It’s that no, this earth cannot give us anything better than what God himself used to create the very people that we are. Genesis describes us as having been given dominion over the entirety of His creation. We are thus the very pinnacle of His creative undertakings. Why then do we continue to look for so many other things, made either in or even of this earth, to add into our lives trying to find some way to make them better?

Friends, what’s better than a child living so reliant upon their Father that they never even stop to wonder as to where their next meal will come from or where they’re to lay their head at night or what to do with their lives?

Can you imagine the peace, the hope, the joy we might meet were we to flee this common way of life being lived falling away from Him and rather in love with only all that distracts us from His purpose, provision and promise?

I dare say we wouldn’t be doing so much of what we’re doing as we’d find out pretty quick that we never needed to do any of it.

Because while we’re all clearly stupid, we’re not dumb. And so we’d not do anything we didn’t need to. Rather, like those kids we used to be who used to sleep on the floor of our kindergarten classrooms, bellies full of chocolate milk and happiness, we too might allow ourselves to come out of the stress of this mess we’ve made of what life wasn’t never meant to be.

For the reality is that He didn’t create us to all but reach this place in which we all but hate all of life itself simply because the world in which we live it has so much to sell that we both want to buy but often just can’t afford.

No, in truth we’ll never be able to have all there is to hold in this world. So why not stop trying to and just seek for that way of life in which all we try to find is the joy, peace, purpose of life itself?

Don’t know but I sure think we’d all end up finding a freedom we never knew we always had should we ever stop trying to have more stuff that only then keeps us slaves working our lives away trying to get what can’t give it back.

Because yeah, that is a hard reality to wake up to every day. But friends, the despair we feel ought to tell us that it shouldn’t be this way. For such feelings are given us to help us turn away from the directions in life we’re not meant to go. Sure, continuing to go in them anyway will probably find us more stuff to hold. And yeah, having more stuff in this world seems to remain the general estimation of the very purpose for our every existence.

What if it isn’t?

Don’t know about you but I don’t want to reach the end of this ride only to find that I managed to have a bunch of stuff but that hope, happiness and peace were never among the bunch.

Because I don’t personally believe that God would allow us to conceive of such ideas as joy and rest if not to try and help us see that we need those things.

Most here don’t seem to. But so too shall most here have already had their reward.

And that, to me, that sounds pretty scary because I cannot imagine this world having the very best of anything. No, I believe that there’s another place in which we can find a life so perfected that His love intends for us to experience it forever.

And so then, if this world doesn’t have the very best, then why give our very best to having anything it does have?

No, let us rather do as asked to and store up for ourselves treasures in Heaven and spend our lives working as if for God rather than people or what people want. For while we can indeed gather a whole bunch of stuff in this life, we have to give our lives away to get it.

And, well, I just don’t see that being at all anything even remotely resembling a fair trade.

Not even close.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold