Day 4032 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

1 Thessalonians 4:7 NIV

A life apart

When boiled down to its inevitable simplicity, I really do have to say that I truly believe that this is the very purpose of God’s heart for we who are meant to be His as opposed to here where it so often feels as if He isn’t. And it’s not because He really isn’t here as He is rather omnipotent which defines then His ability to be omnipresent which allows Him to be everywhere, in everyone in fact. It’s just that the problem’s that we’re in a world in which most continue to refuse that offer, that outcome for what are an as of yet untold number of others.

And what often makes it all that much harder, heavier, heartbreaking in fact is that these same many do indeed look like us, talk like us, walk like us and perhaps even seem to love like us.

But this is where things tend to get murky as, well, since both looks and language can be used to deceive, unfortunately then so too might the same be said of love. Not that it should be that way as it most certainly shouldn’t. No, for love ought to be at first pure and then to thus exist in purity of everything from compassion to kindness to strength and willingness. Indeed, the love to which we’re called in Christ is that kind that seeks first the edification of another as there’s always something better that all of us can be.

Because what all of us have become and thus too been is nothing at all of He who is Him who came to save us from the same. No, rather such is why Christ came into the living of such a way that brought a foreign love, a strange humility, a confusing kindness and a compassion so alien that almost none then and perhaps even fewer now (at least when adjusted for population expansion) dared believe in Him.

Instead, well, we read that most of those around Him who could see what He did, hear what He said rather determined that He needed dead. And in fact they succeeded.

Or so they thought.

And indeed, sadly many still seem to so assume the same as many here continue to do as they’ve always done in what are then lives still lived under the sun under which there’s still nothing new. Now granted, we have new things. We’ve made some progress in ways. We’ve in fact come up with a great many technological and theological and theoretic advances in all the cultures and customs of what remains a creation still seeking to create even further this faith we’ve placed in our own hands and hearts having the strength to hold what we all seem to hope for life to be.

But even then this itself is something that seems to be unraveling unfortunately. Because many here have what are seemingly such different and there diverging desires and determinations in life that life itself is always chaotic anymore. In truth it’s almost to the point in which we barely share the same world with anyone else as most days it feels as if everyone else is so lost inside themselves that they can’t see anyone else. Rather most everyone is often found anymore with their heads hung down staring at phones held in hands that no longer reach out either for help needed or help offered.

No, we all just seem to have come to assume that the very best life to consume is that which consumes us inside things wanted and worries not. And indeed, we are a strangely unworried people. In fact it so often seems anymore that almost everyone is so assured of what they’re doing, where they’re going, who they’re either becoming or rather just still resorting to still remaining, it’s all defined as unbothered at best.

Indeed, we seem to have become a people who think that life itself is at its best when both it and we are all but entirely unbothered, unworried, unafraid, unchanged then.

Yes, despite our culture’s delight in all this growth as assumed inside our self-estimated progressions in whatever it is that we dare imagine we’ve improved along the way to wherever it is that we think we’ve managed to reach, one of the most common lies that still we teach is that to be unchanged is the best of all human ways. Best because it proves us the same.

Does it not?

Is the reason we seek an avoidance of change not this idea in which we’ve come to honestly believe that to change would be in fact something of a disservice given unto ourselves? For after all, does not the pride of man delight most in our coming to believe that we’re the best we can be? Is this not why all the celebrations and holidays and hopeful ways in which we walk and talk as if we always know what best to do, what more to say, what all not to do of either as is measured by our understanding of what’s welcome here as opposed to the more that isn’t?

Isn’t this why we still seem so sheepish when it comes to our faith in Jesus?

For it’s no secret that the same world which wanted Him dead is the one we’re living in today. I mean in some ways it does seem as if we hear His Name more. And now that could be again because of the sheer numbers we’re talking about. After all there are millions more alive today, perhaps billions even, than there were in those 30 or so in which He walked amongst us back some 2,000 years ago.

And so I suppose that we should hear His Name more as there are bound to be more who believe than there were back then simply because we have more here than were there.

But still, even those times in which we do hear someone speak of Christ, a lot of it is in a vanity of sorts, using His Name as something of a punchline to what is a lifetime that’s been lost to doing as nobody should continue to. For He put us here not to become like the world nor then talk or walk or help or hope or be left mostly alone as so many and so much of the world so obviously wants.

Rather He created us to be His, and though we’ve all fallen quite amazingly short in that regard, He calls us still back to the same.

To be His.

And yes, in a place such as this where being something so different as Jesus came to prove He is, and thus too must still remain as He indeed doesn’t change (as He is the only who doesn’t need to), it’s something which should inspire us to come apart in light of what this world both has become and yet still remains in what is a collective estimation that none of us need to change either.

Simply because we’ve become so able to imagine that we’re the ones living what are lives able to inspire that, again, our doing anything any different would be too a disservice both unto ourselves (as turning away from our apparent perfection would only be stupid) and too then everyone else as, well, who are we to withhold the ideal life we’ve been living from those who are probably looking always unto us to glean from us how to do what all we’ve done to become what we believe everyone else probably wants to be?

No, that would be rude, unkind, unloving even.

And that’s most certainly not who we are!

Apparently there are those who believe nonsense such as this, our being either perfected in love, in kindness, in caring about those oddly behind us in what is a race in which we each seek only to win whatever it might be that another would lose. Sucks to be them, am I right? No, no I’m not. And, well, this is the overall premise of what is the entirety of Scripture itself as is a book breathed to help in our becoming the better that we can only be whenever we’ve unbecome all we’ve been.

Defined at first as repentance which is a turning away from what’s been our way of life as then defines what becomes a journey along which we continue to die to all that we come to realize ought not be in the lives of those who are in Christ because, if He’s truly in us, then what then can be allowed to remain of what remains the same place that misunderstands Him so perfectly that most here even still use His Name in mockery?

No, this is indeed why we’re all called to be holy, which is a setting apart of sorts in which we’re sorted from amongst the rest who will undoubtedly continue to seek just that:

Rest.

Indeed, such is the substance of what many here in this place still assume best. And sure, resting after a battle won or competition the same, it makes sense. For, if we’ve indeed won whatever the war in which we’d been fighting for whatever it was we were fighting for, then sure, our having achieved whatever we’d hoped to have or see, be or become, it does form a rather firm finish.

Because if our goal’s been reached and it’s truly as amazing as we believed it to be, then why go any further? Truly, if our best has been accomplished, then what more is there to find? No, once you reach the very peak in life, any movement at all would only be one taken downward and thus toward imperfection.

And who in their right mind would leave perfection behind?

Well, truth is that nobody would. At least not without good reason as can only be offered in a clear understanding that where we’re standing as whoever it so happens that we’ve come to become, a person who apparently believes perfect is what we are as defined by the lack of movement happening in most lives, isn’t actually where or who we ought to be.

But what can offer us such undeniable evidence that who, what, where we are isn’t what, where, who we should be?

Well, Jesus did when He placed the fruit back on the tree.

By which I mean that He died and did so on the cross, basically putting the fruit Eve took from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil back where it should have remained in what’s since become a call to know Him alone.

Because, well, we sure seem to know a whole lot of other things that have amounted to a great big steaming pile of not only nothing good but in fact pretty much every horrid.

And yet we stand still.

We do nothing and change the same. Why? Because what we’ve become is a people so lost inside pride and vanity that we assume, as a society, that there’s not really anything we could do any differently as anything other than whatever we’re doing already is only that step away from perfection that we just mentioned. And, well, again, nobody in their right mind would opt for that life that’s lived walking away from what’s apparently our best.

But friends, Jesus died for a reason, and well, don’t think it’s our perfection.

In fact, it’s kind of the opposite!

He suffered because of our refusal to. And granted, suffering was never really God’s intention as, with His being love perfected, creating those He delights to call His children only to watch them suffer would be the opposite of who He is. And so that doesn’t make any sense. What does make sense is that, despite His creating us to be His, our having come to desire to become pretty much everything else, well, such is the falling short of the glory of He who we’ve not really ever lived to call our Father.

A fact proven no better than when we killed His Son.

And no, neither you nor I held the knife, drove the nails, mocked or laughed as He hang there in misery.

Because we weren’t there then.

Which is probably the only reason we didn’t.

Because the sad fact is that all of us have since done things only to please or impress those around us. All of us have repeated things that those around us were doing. All of us have said what we believed others wanted to hear. All of us have avoided saying or doing things that we knew those around us wouldn’t like or be interested in. And indeed, all of us have stumbled thus into doing or saying or not saying or doing what we have since learned was sin in having gotten wrong.

And so I don’t find it at all hard to believe that, had we been alive back then, we might have done things we’d eventually become not all that proud of.

Simply because what we’ve become is a people who so love to estimate themselves as the only perfect example in life of what a life should be that we anymore do all but everything without ever really thinking it through. For, after all, if we’re as immune to making mistakes as our glaring lack of change seems to assume we believe ourselves to be, then no, we won’t get anything wrong.

Only problem is that we know we have.

And why?

Because again, we’ve all said and done things for what have come to be understood as reasons not reasonable. We’ve all in fact lived a way of life that is itself almost entirely unreasonable. In truth, there’ve been many times within each of our lives in which we could not be reasoned with. And indeed, we see this thing all but swelling all the time anymore.

Maybe it’s because of algorithms feeding us a constant flow of everything we think we know we like to see and hear. Maybe it’s because we’ve become so technologically advanced that we carry little worlds in the pockets of our pants. Perhaps it’s because our parents didn’t spank us enough, or those we should have been able to trust didn’t care about us enough to lead us in the way we should go, teachers, pastors, coaches or doctors.

Indeed, anymore we cannot even begin to unravel the reasons people do or don’t do whatever it is that they don’t or do.

Because everyone is just locked inside this way of life in which all that matters to them is their continuing onward in their self-perceived perfection.

But to where?

This is what I think we’re missing. It’s that, again, if we’ve already reached our own life’s perfection, then the best we must believe we can ever be is who we already are. But is that truly the case? Are our lives as good as they can become? Is there absolutely nothing that we’d change or do any differently? Have we truly only everything to lose in exchange for the having, holding, hoping to be anything of everything that we haven’t yet?

Again, Jesus died for some reason!

And I’m again pretty sure that it wasn’t because we were killing it down here!

Might have more to do with the fact that we’d become of the mind to kill Him.

Just saying, not probably what God had in mind for us to become. But the simple, historical fact is that, well, we’d become so against God that when Jesus came, we were going to see to it that all this jive He talked would be silenced as it only seemed then as it seems to most still, and that’s entirely offensive. Yes, we live in a world that remains as it’s always been:

Offended by God daring to be God in what are lives being lived by most as if we alone are.

Leaving then the something drastic needing to be done to undo whatever we’d done that caused us to become so cancerously caustic that we killed the very King of Hope and Lord of Love.

Something that, make no mistake, many in this place would not only do all over again but would cheer and laugh and mock as they did.

Tell me then why we still so often live our lives as if pleasing or impressing those in and of this place is the best thing that we can do? And, as that’s a hard one to be sure, I’ll toss up an easier:

Tell me please how does doing as this world does defines us in way possible way as having been set apart from what this world is?

That one’s easy because it doesn’t.

No, we cannot remain as the world will and think of ourselves as being any better or worse than whatever the world has become. Just doesn’t work. Rather so long as anything that this world is remains anything that we too are or are living to please, impress, prove our perfect success, we are then still worldly as well. And that’s not at all who He calls us to be as is proven in Christ coming to do what He did to inspire us to come apart from what is a place that is still willing to kill anyone for any reason at any time.

Even someone who has done nothing but help the blind see, the deaf hear, the lame walk, the dead live!

We walk a world that hates the One who offers us eternal life.

And they do so in what is an impurity, a dishonesty, an immodesty, an immorality, an indecency, a depravity, a darkness so very deep that we’re doing now things that nobody in history would have imagined.

And not in a good way as, while we may think cell phones are cool, trafficking children isn’t.

Friends, this world is rife with immorality, hostility, hatred, vanity, arrogance, pride, lust, greed, laziness, gluttony, and yet still somehow rest and relaxation too. How can this be? How is it that we can seek to change so little when so much of who we’ve become and all we’ve done because of it is so undeniably horrible, wicked and wrong? Do we honestly not want better than whatever this is that we’ve become?

Or are we just afraid of the journey there asking us to lose, leave behind all we’ve lived to deny we’ve always been?

Again, the point is simple in that He calls us to be holy. And to be holy is simply something being set apart for special use. But folks, what’s so stinking special about this way of life we’ve chosen to live in which most live as if Christ doesn’t?

Where can that journey take us as is spent in that assumption that He who is goodness perfected doesn’t exist?

Truth is we’re seeing it.

And it ought to be absolutely nothing at all we want to see let alone choose to remain all but willing partners or partakers of. No, for there is not life where there is no love. And well, this world’s not known love in a really long time, and even barely then as rather we, again, literally violently insisted He leave.

Why stay a part of the same place that still wants nothing to do with He who did all He came to in order to offer us something better in the end?

Makes no sense.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold