Day 4045 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

John 12:46 NIV

The removal

Inarguably the hardest part which is therefore met more often than not with what continues to prove an all but blanket refusal. And that’s because amongst what we’ve all become is a people who seem still able to see that we’ve simply too much to lose along the Way that is the Life that speaks the Truth of our indeed needing now to lose so much of what’s indeed all but become our life. And this is a proverbial knife right to the throat of what’s easily seen as all but our every hope.

And hope is a hard thing to let go!

Thankfully another part of this process is that He helps us to see that much if not the majority of what we’ve all thought we knew was neither anything new nor anything known. Rather it’s all mostly been made up, mostly by us but so too those around us, in this almost desperate attempt to keep all of us distracted from the disasters that both we’ve delighted to find and thus pretty much all of life has become.

Yes, He comes to help us see our dumbs so as to inspire us to stop doing them, wanting them, chasing them, wasting them even. For indeed, we’re a people so far gone in depravity that we even prove now those who basically delight in our going from bad to worse in this life we’ve made out of deceiving and being deceived. We’ll truly stop at nothing and let nothing stop us along what seems a path of constant chaos chosen merely for the commotion that keeps us from hearing the honesty of our inhumanity.

For the reality is that there’s nothing at all even human about much of whatever this is that we’ve become and are doing. Rather each and every day we continue to show and say that we both like it this way because we still believe we know where we’re going, despite our getting nowhere other than worse, and thus that we needn’t any help as, well, we’re the ones who wrote the itinerary and therefore, again, know what we’re doing and why.

Can’t really seem to explain why all we do is complain, but hey, there are always sure to be some unforeseen symptoms/side-effects of anyone’s doing of anything.

Except that we’re not really here doing anything anymore. Instead the main undertaking in life is just wanting things, things we’re oddly enough increasingly unwilling to do anything to have. Granted, on the surface that looks pretty bad but if you could only feel what we feel inside then you too could see that, well, no, no it’s still pretty bad. And yet we’re not sure why because, again, our plans sure seemed fine!

All of us have in fact life so figured out that there ought to be nothing but success and tranquility coming our way. And that’s not to say we don’t meet our share of the both as I’m sure we do, at least I hope. But it is to say that our way, if it’s truly as amazing as we’ve long made it out to be, well, it shouldn’t be this hard for the hope to see or be seen.

And yet it is. In fact it seems that all but everything in life has become harder to see thanks to the deepening degree of darkness through which some of us are walking, most are still dancing and while a few are finally on our hands and knees crawling. Why is crawling the goal? Because the truth is that we’ll find both nothing of life and thus within it until we’ve become so done with how we lived it that we come broken and begging before He who came to change everything.

Which is exactly what He has now done.

Which is exactly why we’re supposed to too do a new thing.

A thing in fact so very new that everything changes. Sure, it’s a process that proves to take some time both thanks to His patience and that necessitated because our arrogance and indifference and just simple negligence in regard to anything that asks anything of us. We do enjoy putting up this fight whenever we realize that our pride is on the line.

In truth, we’ll seemingly fight far harder to protect our pride than many would to protect their lives!

And that’s mostly because unto us pride has become life as anymore we only live for whatever it is that we can show off to those around us who have themselves absolutely no interest in us or whatever it is that we’re doing, trying in all of our trying so hard to please and/or impress them as they too have a long list of things they’re trying to do in order to please and/or impress someone else.

It’s all truly devolved into nothing more than some endless slave auction in which we ironically sell ourselves unto the doing of whatever it is that another may want for us to do.

And yet we still live as if we’ve here something to lose despite our having already given away our souls to score nothing more than a few “friends” who agree to follow along as we share our diary online for all the world to see who it is that we think they want us to be as is become by us trying to pretend that we’re not dumb enough to give away our lives to doing basically anything another may ask us to do.

No, we still retain this idea that we’re the ones who’re in control.

But in reality we’re rapidly becoming nothing more than said ‘who’re’ without the apostrophe and with an ‘s’ tacked onto the end.

And that simply because anymore all we do is whatever another wants us to. We’ve truly become nothing short of dancing monkeys who hop to and get to spinning just as soon as we see the world watching. Always ready to put on our little show with our funny little hats and tiny sequined costumes. It’s all kind of cute really, that is until you realize that there’s nothing funny about living a life lost in the dark of doing as a dark world desires.

Alas, seems as though many aren’t yet to the part of this story where they find out who the bad guy is.

For if they were they’d find out it was them and that was only because they’d become so worldly in their always trying to please the same that they too now stand in ongoing enmity against He who came to save us from the darkness that has in fact all but become us. Simply because we’ve chosen to believe that where we are is what best defines who we are, leaving us then seeking to live like, look like, lean on and thus learn from the world everything that they believe is best to define who we’re supposed to be.

Which then leaves whores quite clearly on the table as it’s truly incredible the things people down here are doing for what honestly amounts to nothing more than mere human attention.

Spending a life then placating an algorithm so as to gain from these now many of them as many followers and thus feelings now equated as self-worth and social acceptance as all of us have both felt we needed and many still sadly think they need.

Indeed, we’ve conspired toward a great and growing greed in regard to all we think we need from what is the world that is both where we are and then so too still sadly where we seek to stay. Not sure why as everything here continues to display the very darkness from which He calls us to come as we instead turn to flee the fallout soon to be found by the fallen in reward of His recognition that we all did indeed do it our way as opposed to His.

As if that’s to prove the victory that our pride still loves to assume it can be.

Which it won’t, but again, we’re just not quite yet to the turning point in our varied stories as are mostly still being rewritten by those who’ve all but stolen the pens as they lie in their pens of social praise and personal applause. Truly amazing what we’ve settled for down here as we’re seemingly quite charmed by the cheers of those who are pleased with some pretty messed up things.

I mean anymore it’s almost as if helloween is every day of the year as we walk amongst so many who look, act, speak and live what are quite ghastly lives. Everyone here speaks in lies and has all these masks that we hide behind. We have so many grotesque movies and tv shows that you almost can’t watch anything anymore as even a 30 second commercial sometimes proves long enough to both turn your stomach and break your heart thanks to the gore and godlessness of it all.

And too we all still eat our weight in candy and, well, everything else too.

But yeah, we’re uh, we’re doing well down here. Apparently. And that’s apparently only because it’s truly become so very dark that none of us can even see one another anymore. And indeed, this too is proven as easily as a quick trip into town to grab a few things from the grocery store. You’d be amazed at how many people clearly don’t have any interest in even acknowledging the presence of anyone else around them.

For we’ve all dissolved into our own little worlds crafted entirely of all the words we know we’re supposed to say whilst then never our saying anything other than whatever we’ve been made aware we can.

And that by a world that still clearly loves to pretend that we’ve each got it all figured out except for how our every personal ideal is somehow so morally questionable and potentially offensive.

Yeah, not sure how we’ve each of us managed to fully understand life and thus how best to live it when it seems that all of us are doing something fairly different. And yet it all still manages to fall under the wide-open umbrella of darkness that defines us as those who basically exist only to do as we please, never once stopping to think about the cost or possible punishment to be incurred in the said doing thereof.

All because, well, that’s one of the first things this darkening world teaches us how to do: Deny the existence of any possible consequence so as to further this fervor found in regard to our doing of whatever it is that any of us may want to do. And even that for only however long we enjoy doing as, well, there have in fact come things in life that we delighted in for a time only to find that time had passed and so too our interest.

Seemingly proving that we can learn, can change, can in fact stop doing things and will actually do just that just as fast as we find that there’s no longer any point, profit, purpose or promise to found in the continuing thereof.

But again, most here just aren’t seemingly to that point in this story in which we all find that pretty much all of everything we’ve ever done was either dumb, dangerous or the two combined into deadly.

But that day’s coming.

And quickly.

Guess then the only question remaining is what of us will then still find its removing, only then by force and that from He who tried to do this the easy way only to hear most of us continue to say ‘no thanks, we’ve got this’. And indeed, we do got this but the only problem is that we don’t seem to realize yet what it is that we’ve got because all we’ve got is an already steaming pile of doubt and denial that’s been designed by the darkness in which we’ve each of us lost us.

In our seeking to find whatever it is that we seem still able to assume is worth more than whatever it was that we’ve already agreed to lose.

Which is still something itself that we can’t quite seem to see thanks to the darkness both for which and thus in which we’ve lost it.

The ‘it’ in this case being only our souls which have been sold for a return so low that all we have now to show is a whole bunch of fans and followers who hang on our every word, so long as we continue to say whatever it is that we said in order to inspire them to follow us.

Yes, this has become life. It’s this ongoing show of pride in which we play the lead role in what we can’t see is nothing more than a life spent rolling our lives over the edge into at first every form of insanity enjoyed by man and then, in the end, unto an eternity spent with the same as whoever it was that we’d lived to please.

Only problem then is that He who came to save us from this charade said that wide is the road which leads unto destruction and there are many who are living to find it in full.

A destruction He helped us see as He hung there visibly torn thanks to the darkness that had so consumed us that we cheered and mocked and belittled this blessing of such supreme forgiveness that He died ahead of us so as to lead the way through darkness that is this valley of the now shadow of death which, thanks to Him, has lost its sting, but only so long as we turn and stop doing the things that gave said sting to it.

And indeed, the majority of what the majority of us have spent our lives doing is in fact what made death now the fact of life that it is.

For at first God created us in His image and, last I checked, He is endless. He is eternal. He is the First and the Last, Alpha and Omega, Beginning and Ending. He is the final word. He is the Way. He is the Truth. HE IS THE LIFE!

And thus without Him all we have is a lie.

It’s just that it’s gotten so dark down here that we don’t seem able to tell the difference anymore. Because anymore dark is put for light and wrong is considered right and to tell the truth is the surest way to find that you’re no longer a friend as instead folks have begun their promised gathering around all these deceivers who will willingly tell them whatever it is that they want to hear.

Lies such as how everything’s going fine down here and they’re doing so well and they’re so very brave to live this life their way. Yes, we are suckers for affirmation, for attention, for acceptance and applause and all the other adoration that’s always readily offered by a darkness that just doesn’t care whatever anyone else does because everyone is busy doing their own thing and doesn’t have the time to stop enjoying themselves to even ask themselves what they’re doing or why.

No, we all just keep doing whatever it is that we’ve become convinced we should by a world that does nothing good and yet somehow still doesn’t see it.

Simply because of the darkness that has now become us thanks to this simple fact that tells us that whatever we do long enough is the very same as what we’ll eventually become. And that’s because such idols as are our ideals, lifeless as they are, they thus take from us the life we’re ready and willing to give them. Giving then in return only whatever it was that we gave to them.

Thus life has devolved into this self-perpetuating cycle in which we descend the ladder of everything from morals to modesty seeking some new delight in some new depravity that we can’t help but idolize thanks to our seeing the enjoyment someone else is having thanks to their having it in their lives. So we decide we need it to and set off in a pre-planned willingness to do whatever we have to in order to have this thing that we can’t imagine living without.

Despite our having lived this long just fine without it.

But again, such is the darkness. It prevents us from seeing such things as all the foolishness found in our doing of whatever it is that we’re doing for what are reasons that we may never even once stop to question. All because the chief victim in this darkened world is discernment as, well, we definitely don’t need anyone asking any questions that we may not be able to provide a logical answer to!

Because the simple fact is that we don’t know why we do what we do. We just do stuff. Most of it simply because we just want stuff and in this world you have to do the dance and sing the song and share this post and make sure you’re following along so that you don’t miss the next giveaway of whatever it is that we just can’t then imagine going on without.

But friends, that’s kind of the point of Christ’s having come to die to this way of life that we all still manage to live. It was to show us that we’re too supposed to move on without all of what we’ve become, never then doing again the vast majority of what we’ve done because pretty much the only thing we know how to do is sin against Him.

Yes, He came to charge into that tomb so as to help see that we too need to lose, have removed the way of life that we’ve all come to actually believe is a life worth living.

Because it isn’t.

Because, honestly, there is nothing worthy of life in so much of what we’ve all done in our lives. Rather sin remains death and so every time we do anything that isn’t right, we choose to die!

Why keep making that choice when He’s now offered us eternal life?

Look, I completely understand the sheer gravity of our having to give away all we’ve ever known, every ounce of whoever it is that we’ve become. It’s hard as it is truly the very laying down of a life in exchange for a kind of change that means everything is different.

But friends, seeing as how everything here is darkened and deadly and dying, what then do we really have to lose in His helping us to remove all that’s alive in us that’s only dead in us, and thus our removing the death from us in exchange for an endless life in the Son?

Yeah, we all have a lot to walk away from and doing so don’t make much sense in a world that is still running toward all He calls us to leave behind. But the simple fact is that everything here, and everyone too, it’s all going to die. This world is passing away my friends! Why then continue living in lockstep with what is a way of life then aimed at ending?

No, Christ came to save us from this clear and present darkness and to guide us into the life that’s not afraid of the light as we thankfully come to live in such a way that finds we’ve nothing more to hide.

Again, I know what that means that it means that we stand to lose everything. But friends, what greater freedom could we ever possibly find than that of a new life not filled with anything of all the shame, all the guilt, all the regret, all the sadness, all the sorrow that we’ve all come to know in this life in this place?

That’s why He came to leave this place! It was to go and make ready our place in that place that this place cannot compete with.

Because in Heaven life doesn’t end, nor do joy or peace or any of the other things that make God the loving Father He is. And so, again, what do we really have to lose in having removed the life we’ve lived in which joy is hard to find, peace is all but absent, love is pretty much nonexistent and life itself is promised to run out?

No, let us agree to leave behind all that He has shown us isn’t a life. Not because it’s easy but simply because it’s needed.

For as much as there is no darkness in Him, nor is there any life without Him either.

And we should all want to go on living.

Or so you’d think.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold