Day 4055 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Romans 8:6 NIV

Life and peace

What a piece to have of a promise to come in this life we live in the place we’ll lose all we love of what we’ll find was only barely a life that was only barely alive as eternity will soon prove both far better, far bigger, far longer and far fuller! Alas it seems so often that it’s almost impossible for us to imagine such a gift being given thanks to our standing inside what remains the one place in which we fight to live a life as best we can. And while that can be a good thing as doing our best is the least we can do, choosing to remain focused on the world while we do our best is the worst choice we could choose.

Why?

Because everything here is already gone.

And life itself then, this one we’ve always known, it’s merely a matter of eternity’s inevitability waiting for us to catch up and realize that to be the truth.

This is indeed why God remains so patient with us. It’s not because we deserve it as most days we make clear that we most certainly don’t. Rather it’s because He does indeed want none to perish but rather for all to come unto repentance wherein awaits the reward of what is a hope held inside a home that cannot be broken down nor broken into. He’s truly just waiting for what’s to Him a few more days for a few more of us to realize we need to change our ways and turn toward the hope defined here.

The hope of life and peace.

But again, these things seem here this strange incongruence. And that’s because we’re all fairly certain we have the one while we all definitely want the other and yet the other has become all but impossible to find thanks to how we’ve all chosen to spend the one. For all of life here has become nothing more than a scrambled confusion designed inside our each doing only always whatever we see fit to try and fit inside what is a life in which we do want peace but it’s always a hope held somewhere lower than other things.

Things such as pleasure or profit or power or popularity. Indeed, peace would be nice, but let’s face it, we’ve made it this far without it and, well, we’re seemingly doing pretty okay as well. Not that everything in life is perfect as I’d hope I’m right in my assumption that pretty much everyone would indeed love to find that day in which there were no wars, no arguments, no hatred or the animosity that it almost insists upon.

Truly, I do believe that our vast majority would prefer a kind of life in which everyone was kinder, more loving, more caring, more compassionate.

But alas, such a peaceful outlook is something anymore seemingly seen as a hopeful outcome entirely too unlikely to even consider. Indeed, I remember growing up and whenever someone would ask folks what they dreamed of they’d more often than not say world peace. It’s almost as if we honestly held the concept as something of a possibility.

Granted, those days seemed to be lived in a decidedly deeper degree of civility.

And, well, pretty clear to see that that’s changed dramatically!

For anymore even being civil is something that’s somehow escaping civilization. I literally mentioned that idea just the other day. Is it truly even okay to consider what we have a civilization considering the glaring lack of civility seen amongst an increasingly depraved, distant, distracted, divided and divisive humanity?

Or might we actually prove able to alleviate some of our chosen issues should we ever come upon the audacity to admit we have them?

Unfortunately I think it’s become perfectly evident that that day isn’t coming as rather we as a whole just keep going the same direction we’ve been directed by whomever it is that we’re following as has been determined either by us and thus for ourselves or for us and that by another. Either way there comes a day upon which we’ll all look up and see that it was our minds that made our lives into what we by then cannot unmake them.

For time shall prove the ficklest of all fickle mistresses when she one day decides to run out right when we obviously never expected her too.

Simply because none of us ever expect her to.

Rather this version of life in which we live in which time does exist, for now at least, it’s somehow become one in which we live as if we have always plenty of it. And that despite our being perfectly aware of so many who’ve long since run out of it. I suppose it’s something of a coping mechanism in which we compartmentalize the reality of our lives into this ability to not see the glaring finality that is rapidly approaching us all.

Probably only because we’ve long since become of the mind to assume that all that’s coming is death.

And sure, there is reason for that as, well, death does come for us all.

Question is whether or not we’ve the audacity to believe in something beyond it.

But looking at how we live our lives anymore with all of this consumerism and competition and comparison always driving nearly our every choice, well, it’s pretty clear that we’ve chosen which voice we’re going to live our lives listening to. And, well, it’s sadly not that of He who came to tell us to make ready to leave this world by emptying our lives of all that’s here and turning our ears to hear what our eyes can’t see as is held inside that hope of treasures being stored in eternity.

No, instead we mostly still seek our treasures here as such is what our minds both know to do and thus easily understand.

After all, we can both see and feel the obviousness to the successes found in both ours and others having lived looking to what this world has to define for us what we should do up until this time in which we seem to find that what we do matters not so long as it accomplishes for us whatever we want.

Thus giving our own minds over to the doing of that which shouldn’t be done simply because we’ve all allowed the flesh to become the only god we know. For in truth, the flesh is the only thing we seem to know how to serve. And our having each found and felt a great deal of pleasure and satisfaction in so doing, makes it easy then to see and understand why so many keep doing it.

It’s easy.

It’s normal.

It’s common.

But is that really all we care to be? Easy? Normal? Common? Truly, were we made to become nothing more than this sum we’ve become of nothing more than whatever it is that this world has? Are our lives truly best defined by the things we hold inside? Or should what we hold inside seek to better define our lives as, well, better?

For this misunderstanding is one proven in our tendency to look upon the things we have inside our lives as the evidence of our successes or failures therein. Success apparently only proven in the continued accumulation of more and more and more, always finding a way to keep stored every ounce of it. Failure then easily known anytime that we happen to accidentally let go of something we have.

All because our minds are convinced that life consists in an abundance of possessions which have themselves nothing of life, of peace, of purpose or profit or even the promise of accomplishing any of it either.

And yet we somehow don’t care.

Likely because our minds have become so mangled here inside whatever this is that we so brazenly call a life that all we seem to ever really think about is whatever the world tells us we should. Which, more often than not, is only something so blatantly worldly that it’s truly amazing that we honestly can’t tell the difference. But I guess that’s because anymore there is no difference. There is indeed no distance even. Rather our every life as is lived inside our every thought is something lost to looking through all this world has chosen to do trying to determine for ourselves what of it matters as is considered only based upon the profit it can bring us should we too agree to worry about it.

Indeed, I believe this to be something seen quite easily in what has become the rather impressive usurpation of social media. For such was sold as this device by which to share with our friends and family the memories and milestones we make and too the moments of life in which we made them. And yet it’s rather become nothing more than some glorified shrine of selfies and stupidity wherein all it seems anyone cares to share is what they had for dinner and their vilest of opinions within the comment sections.

We’ve taken something meant for community and spun it into something that inspires only confusion, competition, comparison and, perhaps most obvious of all, discontent.

For nobody’s happy anymore. Nothing is good enough. Nothing is worthy of being talked about because there always seems something viral that’s demanding of us the giving of our minds to the popularity thereof.

And we all slowly just become unwilling to keep playing the game because we eventually start to realize that we have to stop living life in order to do so.

And yet so many still apparently assume that what Christ asks is simply too much?

For indeed, He does ask that we lay down our lives and take up our crosses and follow Him. But friends, fact is that we’re all really good at laying down our lives as we’ve been doing just that for such a long time that I again can’t really believe that any of us have the audacity to call whatever this is that we’re living a life. For it seems to me that life ought to mean at least a little bit more than some version of technological validation given us from strangers who at this point might not even be actual people.

But yet we’ve become so transfixed in our minds with this idea of public adoration and approval that we seek incessantly for only acceptance and affirmation.

Both proving that all we care to know of life is merely that whatever it is that we’re already doing with it is as unworthy of being changed as our lust for laziness and worry have us convinced it is. Truly, we want nothing more anymore than simple approval won within likes and follows, an ever-growing number of fans who fan the flame in which we’ve literally sat ourselves on fire.

All to simply glow so bright amongst a truly dark world that we’ll gain the attention we’ve so sadly come to crave.

As if Christ taking our place wasn’t evidence of attention enough!

But you see, there’s the break. It’s something proven easily in the word enough. And that’s because the mind, as is truly affixed to the flesh, both physically yes but more so emotionally too, it’s continuing to prove that it knows nothing of enough. There are no limits to ever be found in our seeking to find that which feels good or sounds good or makes us look good. Indeed, folks are to the very point of starving themselves or injecting themselves with what’s nothing more than another chemical cryout that will one day form the basis of some upcoming class-action litigation.

All to become whatever it is that the world has convinced them they’re supposed to be.

We are still somehow desperate for human approval, maybe more so than ever before thanks to social media having somehow convinced us that we basically don’t exist if someone else doesn’t validate it via their liking our posts.

This is the life we know.

But friends, where is the life in it? What purpose is to ever be proven in our doing of what’s only ever popular for a moment? Do we not yet understand that? That popularity is a fleeting thing? That five seconds of fame is truly all we can ever hope to have? Indeed, what kind of hope is that? What kind of life is that in which we live only to do whatever it is that someone else will hopefully chose to voice their approval, appreciation, acceptance of?

Since when did we need humans to verify the importance of our existence?

Well, since forever I guess.

For it’s always been this way, granted more glaring in this age of social connection having become whatever it is. But that’s just it, what is it? What is this that we’re living? What has life become in what’s become a life in which all that matters is screen time? You know I saw last night that 64% of gen z can’t cook. 21% of adults read below a fifth-grade reading level. 19% of high school graduates, those who have graduated, can’t read. 66% of fourth graders can’t read proficiently.

And yet we act surprised that somehow shoving a phone in their face and letting them play video games all day somehow seems to have backfired so amazingly!

Indeed, another study shows that kids aged 8-18 now spend upwards of 7 hours a day on some kind of electronic device while most spend less than 2 hours a day outside and only 1 in 10 toddlers and preschoolers only play outside and that only once a week.

We have invented a way of life in which we never go outside, do our very best to never learn any new skills, have all but completely given up on reading and rather spend upwards of half our day glued to a screen either comparing ourselves to the lies we see or watching some garbage streamed into our living rooms while we sit beside a family who themselves is so connected to their devices that they’re utterly disconnected from one another.

Again I ask, where’s the life in that?

And, well, seeing what all is becoming of society as a whole because of it, where is it that we expect to find peace either?

Friends, I’ll put it bluntly, I honestly only feel at peace whenever I think of leaving this place because whatever this is that’s become of life, it’s not life anymore.

We don’t do anything. We don’t learn anything. We gave up trying to improve, to better ourselves. We instead just became so addicted to technology that I’ve literally seen babies throw a fit because their mom took a smart phone out of their hands!

How did we get here and even more importantly why would we ever want to stay in whatever it is that’s become of this place?

Truly, anymore it’s all politics and our opinions about them. It’s hellywood movies that push their vile agendas down our throats. It’s truly all become nothing more than an abject mockery of our gift of this ability, this opportunity to live a life. For all we seem interested in living for anymore is the drama, the division, the darkness and the depravity which drives it all.

Indeed, we’ve become so desensitized to the sanctity of life that half of us think it’s commendable to kill babies while the rest has no issues watching two half-naked dudes beat the bejeebers out of each other.

No wonder we stopped talking so much about world peace!

This world don’t want peace.

This world don’t want life.

We don’t even seem to want life!

No, we’re seemingly all quite fine with just a little more time in which to spend doing nothing but decaying further into our fervor for violence and deception and moral degeneracy.

Thankfully there still remains another way, and it’s one anymore so very different that the easiest way to find it is just not doing as the world does. Truly, if it’s popular here it probably shouldn’t be welcome in our lives. Why? Because what has always been and will always be popular here is focusing on the flesh. It’s doing whatever feels good, listening to only whatever makes us feel good, caring about only whatever someone else tells us is good.

All because we can’t read well enough to pick up a Bible and learn for ourselves what good really is and how it really isn’t us!

Because the flesh doesn’t want to hear that because that would mean that we really are as wrong as the cross says we are. And that would mean that we really do need a Savior. And that would then make our mocking of Christ as stupid a way of life as it’s so sadly become.

Again, thankfully we do have a little more time in which we can become something else, something different, something better. And yeah, it will mean letting go and getting rid of pretty much all that we’ve become.

But friends, what is it that we really have to lose?

Cell phones and hatred?

How horrible!

Look, it’s not hard to see the death in living unto the flesh anymore. Our society is decaying so quickly that not even being blind would help us remain unaware of how bad things are getting. This world is truly dying, and millions around us are cheering it on. This proven in that death and the deeds done clearly not worried it about have become those sure to go viral, thus leading to fame, thus bringing us the fortune and fans we’ve come to crave in what is a place that cares far more about such popularity than peace.

Can you say the same? That you’d take fame over peace? A fortune in place of your life?

Indeed, what are you giving your life to and will there be peace in the place toward which that roads leads?

Friends, this world may live as if hell doesn’t exist but that sure seems like a surefire way to end up finding out otherwise in the only the worst way possible. But to be honest, the way this world’s living and the utter lack of peace, kindness, love and morality seen around here anymore, no, no this world’s making it perfectly clear that hell does exist.

And this world has become the closest to it that I ever care to get.

And again, the only peace I find anymore is only that felt inside the thought of leaving here.

Because I’m tired of the heaviness of it all, the worthlessness of it all.

That Christ offers us hope is truly amazing. And that that hope is of life and peace is the single most incredible thought that I can think.

I’ve thought enough of the others to know that for sure.

Have you?

#LeaveNoSoulUntold