Day 4023 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

1 Timothy 6:10 NIV

Fortune’s misfortune

It’s not something anyone ever sets out fighting to find as rather the fame of fortune is what we all find we feel the need to find instead. And this pursuit for prosperity has indeed come to become quite the common care amongst our culture of what’s anymore made up of we who are a people only concerned about prioritizing our perspectives, many of which are placed all but entirely upon our estimation of the necessity of what’s no longer quite so simple as making a living.

No, seems as though long gone are the days in which our ways were aimed always at just getting by inside what was then a life not so enamored by the allure of enamel.

And thus as of today all our ways are anymore aimed always at the having of more of, well, anything really. Doesn’t even matter what as the quantity has so well overtaken our understanding of quality that we pay no mind to the lack of life being found, being felt, being lived as life itself is left behind as either a backseat rider at best or a complete afterthought altogether. And again, it doesn’t really seem as if we care as to which or whether.

Rather we’re all seemingly quite content with the current concept of what most here seem to assume all of every life as being best to be. Which, for lack of any other way in which to put it really, is just busy. Indeed, being busy has become something of our drug of choice seeing as how the highs are easily capable of helping us continue believing that we’re doing always as we ought so long as we’re doing something and the lows, well, they’re too readily overwhelmed by another dose of doing something.

It’s all become quite easy. Not fun necessarily. Not even productive in all honesty. But then again, honestly, we don’t really care all that much anymore. Why? Because our being busy is always done under the guise of this ongoing assumption that our doing of something, all of which is done for something, will thus always accomplish for us the something for which we’re doing whatever it is that we’re doing.

There’s always a payout, payoff, payment that we believe promised to come our way thanks to our way having gone always toward the begrudgingly doing more of in this self-perceived blessed assurance of what is also believed to be more of. More of what? Again, who cares! For as a people of quantity, having a greater quantity of absolutely any substance found inside our lives, inside our minds, inside our homes, inside our garages, inside a storage locker on the other side of town, it all combines to amount to what means, unto us, a fuller and thus more fortuitous life.

Something that it seems every single life is always trying to find.

And this seems the case as inside every single day we continue to waste away unto this chase unto all the things for which we’ve all become so convinced that every life is meant to live. And as this list grows every single day thanks to every single thing that every single one of we who are all of us come to believe that we all need to live a life even close to decently, the list of lusts just grows and grows until we’re so far gone in search of gain that even pain becomes something of an evidence we’re willing to welcome.

All because we’ve become willing to even believe that without pain there can be no gain.

And, granted, there is some truth to that as comfort doesn’t really accomplish much. Comfort rather hinges a life toward complacency seeing as how we’re too a people who love life to be easy. We absolutely adore this idea that we can reach this day somewhere along the way toward wherever it is that we seem to assume we’re going, as is gone toward because we seem to assume there awaits there something well worth the work and worry of every trip we take and trial we face, in which we’ve arrived or achieved all it was for which we’d hoped.

All to the tune of lives so full and this fulfilled (apparently) that we from there and then on feel never again the need to do much of anything thanks to our having accomplished the finding and/or feeling of whatever fame, fortune, fun or fellowship we’d once sought to know back when we didn’t know then what we’ll apparently know by then, then again being whenever it is that we arrive at that time in which we look up to find that we want nothing more out of life.

Thus enters the comfort that is amongst our highest of all idols held in what are hearts all but aching to stop the breaking that has become this life as lived always on the run after what is the same ever more that we’ve all always wanted before.

It never ends.

No, there’s always something new to want. There’s always some new model of something we already have that does something ours doesn’t. There’s always a limited time offer that asks we hurry toward our arrival upon that ever demanded and always demented demanding of a decision being made in regard to whether or not we need this thing that won’t be available for long! Indeed, time is running out! Call in the next 5 minutes to ensure your spot in line in a line of others already lined up to buy what those who aren’t in line won’t ever be able to experience.

It’s all just madness. Every single life has become something of this all you probably shouldn’t really eat faith buffet from which we all gather to slather our souls under loads and loads of lusts and trusts that are placed in new things every single day. So much anymore is so nuanced in newness that we can’t even begin to imagine how we might not need it. I mean, just look at all the functions and buttons and thus beliefs in all the things that it can do!

So many things that it might truly help us to not have to do quite so much anymore.

Because honestly, we’re kind of tired. We’re a little torn. We’re plenty worn inside what’s become a life of want always wanting us to do more and more seeking to find always the same. It’s all just more. All we know of life is to believe that it’s always lacking something which leads unto our assuming that there’s always something else, something more that we should be doing in order to guarantee our consuming of what’s become a world so confusing that none of us have any idea what’s going on.

We just keep going along believing it was started for some reason that was apparently one good enough at the time in which we made it to continue making it for what are reasons that we can’t really remember anymore.

Probably because there’s since been about 36 updates that have all become new plans we’ve made on the other side of decisions the same.

There is no contentment in a life without comfort, which explains why we all seek for comfort.

But again, the problem is that there can be no comfort so long as we’re lost in a consuming mindset that has us consuming this idea that we need to remain consumers who line up at stores trying to buy whatever it is that we became convinced we just had to have, idols which demanded again the doing of whatever we agreed to do in order to see through to the heart of this hope that is this exciting thing that we want only to hold.

Indeed, all of life has devolved into this constant effort being always given unto our always getting of whatever else it might possibly be that we’ve apparently come to see as being worth the work and worry that we have to endure along the way toward the getting of whatever it is that we’ve come to equate as a gain worth the same as all we give away to get it.

But the problem becomes that at some point in time all but the very entirety of our mind becomes so mangled inside priorities misplaced thanks to our prioritizing things that could never actually bring anything of everything better unto our lives that our lives themselves learn only to seek for what we simply don’t need. Truly, we have in every way become a people who care nothing of need as we know anymore so much want that our very existence and the simplicity of its survival are those backseat afterthoughts I mentioned above.

We don’t have time to worry over such things as survival, sustenance, the substance of a life lived as if life isn’t lived here but for a little while longer before we’re then on our way to somewhere else.

No, there’s simply here too much stuff. And too, and perhaps even worse, there are also too many others who want it which only offers to unlock our competitive nature which will always ask us to prove we’re better than another in the race or fight for or toward whatever it may be that someone else may see as being the something else they need. Something we may ourselves have no interest in other than our wanting to win whatever it is that another might want.

That’s why ebay exists.

It’s because we thrive on this ability to bid on our having of both something novel and new but also something that we beat someone else to the getting thereof. It’s indeed something of a double-edged sword in that it satisfies our lust for more whilst also offering our ability to overcome someone else.

We love it!

Why?

We don’t know. Because we don’t know why. Don’t why we want whatever we do. Don’t know then why we do whatever we have to in order to get whatever it is that we don’t know why we want. Don’t know why we want whatever it is that inspires us to do all that we’d rather not feel the need to have to. But we agree to it all anyway because the promise is one more thing. It’s one more win. It’s one more package on the way filled with the pride of our having added unto our lives.

What?

Something we’ll probably honestly forget just as soon as something else comes along that again has us off and running trying to find some way of our having it too.

This is the problem with progress. It’s one proven in that thanks to progression there’s again always that newer version. There’s always that novel perspective. There’s always some new show to watch, game to play, car to drive, place to go. Life here is continuing to unfold in what are ways so foreign and fascinating that it finds for us that constant feeling of there always being something else that we’ve never seen, never heard, never held.

And well, we just can’t bear the thought of our lives going on without our having the opportunity to see, hear or hold whatever it is that we haven’t yet.

And so we awake unto each and every new day with plans already in place to do whatever it is that we have to do in order to ensure we can afford to pounce on our opportunity to purchase or experience whatever it is that has thus become worth more to us than the time, effort and intention that we then are found giving unto our getting and then having of one more thing inside what’s then a life that is not being lived but only being filled.

And make no mistake, they are truly not the same.

No, a life filling up with all that’s here is thus a life with every intention of staying here where it seems that both our treasures remain waiting to be found and thus too our hearts willing to continue scraping this ground trying to find wherever it is that they may be.

And all along the way we continue to agree to keep doing whatever it is that we’ve become convinced we both have to do and then, to make it easier, want to do all so as to not lose what is probably a limited-edition opportunity at the having of something that again means more to us than the time and effort we give unto the getting thereof.

But friends, issue is that our lives won’t be measured by what we have. I mean, there’s probably a fair deal of reason to imagine that part might play a part. But in truth, even Scripture tells us that it’s not what goes into the body that contaminates it but rather what comes out thanks to what went in. And indeed, this then ought to inspire us to be supremely careful as to what we consume.

Not because the consuming thereof is a sin necessarily, but simply because the mouth then speaks whatever the heart’s full of.

In other words, what we take in is what we can give out.

And, well, if all we know to take in are those things that demand we do things that we don’t even stop to ask ourselves if they’re even right or not, we’ll then have only inside our hearts things that we may have no idea as to whether they’re right or not to thereby share with those around us.

And I can’t see how that’s in any way a decent idea.

Why?

Because Christ calls us explicitly to stay awake, to keep watch, to be ever ready as He has promised to come as a thief in this night, ready to take away every life that isn’t being lived looking for more than everything this world has to offer. Why? Because if all we think life to mean is only the sum of all things here, then here will have become our reward and He’s simply entirely too loving to do anything other than give us whatever it is that our hearts have come to desire.

Indeed, He tells us that whoever loves their life will keep it. And indeed, there are a great many here who do love their lives thanks to all that time that they’ve chosen to spend filling them to the brim with their belief in their need to have all these things that they’ve either come to have or hope to hold before too much longer.

Thus their focus has become fortune, a faith placed in the riches of this world and too then a heart so filled with the wanting of things of this world that their every effort is thus given unto their getting of the things of this world. And, well, good for them. Honestly. If this place manages to have all that someone may wish to hold, then I hope they find it. I hope that they live such a full life that they can’t stand it. Because my wish for everyone is a life of happiness, of contentment, of thus the content that makes them indescribably joyous.

My problem is that I can’t see such substance here.

Because I too have tried to find it. I’ve searched high and low and bid both the same upon so many things that I wanted and won believing them to be just what my life had come to need. And indeed, so too have I done some things that I now cannot believe I actually did in my trying to get what I now don’t even remember.

Isn’t that weird?

That we sometimes come to remember more of what it was that we had to do in order to get what we don’t even remember having anymore?

But doesn’t that also kind of prove the point I’m trying to make in that it’s not necessarily what we have that equals the sum of what we’ll be judged by but rather what we did in order to get whatever it is that will play a part in our judgement?

Because, as I said yesterday, God’s not against us having things. Rather, and watch closely, He’s against things having us. And, well, this is the line that we cross so often in that way of life in which we live for want. Because along the way to our getting whatever it is that we’ve come to want, we slowly stop caring about what we have to do to get it.

We just start resorting to some at first questionable things, then sketchy things, then illegal things, then straight up evil, wicked, nefarious things in order to continue finding the means by which to have whatever it is that we want.

Take it from me, I once was a thief.

Indeed, there was a time in my late teens, early 20’s in which I would steal things. I remember so many times that I would slide something into my pocket and the pride I felt in looking at this thing that I’d wanted that I ended up getting for free thanks to my doing of things that are blatantly evil.

Don’t remember many of the things themselves, but I remember most of the stuff I did to get them.

Am I proud of it now? Not even close. In fact I’m so ashamed of it still that any time it happens to cross my mind, it’s like reading a book about someone else’s life. Because that’s not who I want to be. That’s not who I was made to be. It’s not who Christ calls me to be and thus it’s someone that I will never be again. No, together me and Jesus killed that man.

That’s all that I’m proud of anymore. Just the doing away with he who was and perhaps remains willing to do some truly immoral things in order to merely have things that are only found in this world.

Which is where I now have the joy of knowing I won’t be one day.

Can you say the same? Do you have the hope of leaving here and going home? Or rather, like many, has this world become your home? Is your life still being lived for the things in and of this place? Indeed, where is your treasure believed to be? Because indeed, such is where your heart will be too. Why? Because again, it’s not what we take in that proves the problem necessarily, but the simple fact that what we take in is then what we have to put out.

And thus we are to be judged by our fruit, because of both what we bear and also all we’ve done in order to ensure its growth.

And so, what are you growing? Where are you going? What are you going after? And, well, what all are you finding that you’re willing to do in order to get there to wherever it is that your treasure awaits?

Friends, truth is that this world is filled with folks who are so desperate to find fame and fortune that they’re resorting to doing unspeakable things in order to achieve them. And the hard truth is that all of us have done the same. We’ve all done horrible things trying to get whatever it was that we’d come to want. But the Good News of God’s grace is that we don’t have to keep doing the same things.

Because Jesus came to both do a new thing and, in doing so, make all things new.

Have you been made new? And if not, well, what’s stopping you?

Yeah, this place has all sorts of prizes to offer unto those who become willing to do whatever it takes to get them. But friends, the vast majority just isn’t worth it. And that’s not because having something is a sin but simply because so often what we have to do in order to win whatever it is that we grow to want most certainly is.

So again, what is it that you’re doing in life and is it worth whatever it is you hope to find?

Chances are it isn’t. But the sad reality is that many here seem not to know it.

At least not yet.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold