Day 4070 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

1 John 5:4 NIV

The rebirth of belief

It changes not only what we see but what we seek and why. It alters what we think and causes us to reconsider the reasons for which we think it. It offers us a fresh start and that even every day if we need. For this faith, one built not on what we see but where it is that we hope to go and the narrowness that is the road by which we’ll arrive, it’s such a strange life as it always seems to find this audacity to continue imagining things better than we’re even able to believe in at the time.

All because as this world spins so too do we lose our ability, our interest to continue spinning with it.

Rather we begin to come apart.

And, well, that’s where a life finally starts.

Because all of us have lived what is one way. Now that’s obviously not to say that we’ve all lived the same as there are among each of us such varied differences in regard to desires, dreams, destinations, definitions, determinations, devotions, disciplines and the all too common lack thereof that have defined for us quite the unique journey through what is this same place we’re all here sharing. And so yes, we have all lived different lives, but in the end, well, they’ve been all lived for remarkably similar things and theories.

And while it’s this lack of any identity that’s ever been anything other than worldly in every way that’s made us as unique and different as we may desire to think ourselves to be from the rest of this mess that we continue to daily see, the fact remains that we’ve all shared this mind to stay. Indeed, to be in at least some way like those amongst whom we walk for now has long been our standard assumption as to the point and purpose of what’s then never been seen as our exodus.

For again, having each of us been for as long as we can remember but members of what is a world’s system designed to seek for such things as comfort and assumption, well, we’ve found enough of both and their like to have created for us this life that we mind not the idea of keeping. Not that it’s always easy or comfortable or even makes sense as I think we’d all agree that anymore it rarely does, even less than before perhaps. But the fact still states that we’ve each joined a race that’s kept us content in this place.

And the overall consciousness of contentment is proven within a loss of reasons to seek for anything else, anything different.

Thus we don’t.

Again, not that we don’t each have different dreams or desires as it’s increasingly obvious we do. But even then the overall sum of them is something we continue to lose inside these cultural categories of what are again worries so worldly that it was truly only inevitable that so too would we be. And this is indeed something that’s weighed quite heavy on me, and that for quite some time now, but perhaps even the heaviest of late as it seems my life’s not strayed from what I’ve started to see as were always plans for less than everything.

All because most of our plans have always been for nothing more than what we see.

And, well, the truth of belief is that everything is more than we see and thus everything we see is nothing at all.

It’s all nothing at all.

Problem is that it’s long been our sight which has led our life in the many directions that it’s gone in search of what are in fact things, hopes, dreams that are long since gone themselves. Because that’s how life goes here. It’s this ever-advancing argument waged between what we have, where we are, who we are and the slight changes, tweaks, modifications that we might dare to make that might make us into something better, something more meaningful, something more hopeful.

But you see, the issue continues to repeat in that so long as we live for, by, in, of only all that we can see, well then the sum of everything that is remains the sum of all that we glean. And indeed, gain has to us long been this estimation based almost solely upon what is such a lack of investigation that it should be no wonder as to why we don’t see anything of improvement, of growth, of hope even.

For so long as our hopes remain themselves tied to what we see, then so too shall they then be hopeless themselves as none need hope for that which is already known.

Because what, where, who we already are, it’s obviously something that we can continue being.

Thus no hope needed.

And that’s just both a supremely sad way to live and yet also the way that all of us have lived. And that’s because all of us have lived as if everything in this world is everything we have to choose to from, so much so that at times our lives have found our minds almost jaded because of the things we have to choose from. For it’s an amazingly short distance from something being seen as an opportunity and it turning violently into an obligation.

Sort of like how we tend to think we’ve still all the time in the world to sort through, sift through, drift through all that we’d still like to do before we’re no longer able to do anything here.

Depending upon personal perspective that does indeed sound like a most hopeful idea.

Problem is that we’ve but only time in the world and thus one day it shall run out.

And none of us know when.

This is the issue with our ongoing insistence upon the substance of assumption. It’s proven in that, contrary to pride’s preference and opinion, assumption has no substance. It’s just an idea. It’s a theory. It’s a matter made entirely of all that is imaginary as it’s born inside ourselves and seeks the same for the sustenance upon which to sustain itself.

Yes, our every assumption is no more than something that eats us alive as it requires our life to seek for whatever it is that we so arrogantly want it to be.

But then again, still we continue to contend with this idea of our being continually content with the content of the current. We walk still within this wanting of all that is only worldly because, well, this world and all it offers is all that we can see at the moment. We want so much but yet all of it is so easily combined into this idea of it being there all we have to choose from.

As for me though, well, I seemed to have reached the end of my desire to have to choose from all there is to see already.

Why?

Because where’s the excitement to find inside whatever already is? What is there to hope for hidden within everything already unhidden? What growth, what gain, what purpose might we meet along this plane of things plain enough to be considered good enough by those who never have enough but rather always want more of the rest they see?

Is that what life’s supposed to be?

Just this swimming through a seemingly endless sea seeking for only those things that we can see, or hear, or have elsewise proven viable, verified?

Is that truly all we want out of all this is?

Just all that is?

I don’t know. Sadly it seems as though I’ve long been found in agreement to seek for my pleasure, my success, my appeasement within this suckling upon the underbelly of a world in which we dare consider ourselves living. Indeed, I’ve given a great deal of my life to dealing my life upon the wager of whatever I wanted at the time. And yes, I won a lot of it. And yet no matter what I won it always found me wanting more still. Wanting something else. But still that something else has always been something I knew I could find.

And I just can’t find any hope in that anymore.

Rather I’ve started to realize that if it’s something that I can find on my own and by myself inside my life inside this world, then it can’t then be anything all that special or important.

Why?

Because everything here is already nothing.

We just walk amongst a great and growing many who can’t bring themselves to see it that way.

Because, well, it’s a place few here care to venture toward as, well, we all know what we’ll find if we ever should:

A loss of life as we knew it.

And that’s obviously something that none of us really want. Why? Because we enjoy our lives. We like the things that we’re doing with them, within them. We know well how to find excitement, enjoyment, entertainment in all those places in which we’ve already found them before. Yes, we have an assurance that is something of a life’s insurance that tells us all endlessly that we can go on continually finding again and again and again all the things that we’ve already found.

Thus we can’t fail.

And, well, to a people of pride perfected, that sounds like a perfect promise.

Thus we give our lives to seeking for only all that we already know is assured inside. And indeed, if it’s something we can see, well then we know it as something we can find, have, hold, be.

But friends, while there seem an endless number of things to want or win or even become in this world, the simple fact is that so long as our goals, our gains, our plans and things remain focus in, on, of this world, so too then must our every outcome become. Because if it’s here then here is where it is. Problem is so too then is here where it’ll stay as His Word has promised plain that this world is passing away and that as naked as we came so the same shall we go here from.

Which should, though it often doesn’t, it should lead us to an obvious question with what’s arguably an equally obvious answer:

What of all that isn’t here?

Sure, here has a lot and a lot of those around us seek incessantly for it. And yeah, we watch on daily thanks to cell phone screens and the social media feeds strewn upon them as so many around us are in fact finding a great deal of enjoyment, of pleasure, of success and thus apparent purpose within the very substance of all things seen and thus wanted by the rest. Indeed, many here anymore give themselves no rest in what is this seeking for success, accomplishment, accolade within the ways in which this world’s chosen to live.

Doesn’t mean it’s a life.

In fact I don’t really know that any of us know just how little we’ve lived of late.

Because even now so much of what we see, hear, learn, it’s all fake. Indeed, just the other day I saw an article from a Christian music platform that promotes music and shares upcoming artists and offers reviews and things like that that was talking about how in the past six months I believe it was that 50% of all the music that they’d been sent to review, to share, to promote, it was ai. It was fake. It was made by some computer system creating content that it thinks of as being what people would like to hear.

Isn’t that an irony?

That we’ve arrived at this point in our “lives” in which we’ve even outsourced our sourcing of music not to musicians anymore but rather to programs, to technology, to something akin to a virtual robot that has no feelings, no emotions, no struggles or understandings as to what life here is like. And why? Because it’s easy. It’s popular. It’s something increasingly considered normal.

Yes, wouldn’t you know it but we’ve in fact arrived at a version of life in which we trust computers to make for us things we want to see and enjoy listening to.

Almost has an ever-so-slight twinge of itching ears, doesn’t it?

Indeed, for so long our lives have been all but entirely defined by only what our eyes see and how much we like it or what our ears hear and how it sounds or what our hands can hold and how much worth or worry we’ve allowed held within it.

Again, is that it?

Is life truly something that’s meant for us to define, to decide, to determine based upon what we like of where we are?

Is all this all there is?

I hope not. And that’s not because I’m not grateful for the life I have nor the time in which I’ve been given to live it where I am. Not because I don’t appreciate all the experiences I’ve had and the many amazing memories made within many of them. Not because I feel as if I deserved something better or could have even done better myself. No, I am truly thankful for the life I’ve had and all the many blessings and opportunities and imaginings that’s made it what it’s been.

But looking around it’s just becoming harder and harder to find anything that continues measuring up to anything of hope in life.

Because the world’s falling apart.

Every day something new happens that causes us to question what’s going on. What’s happening here has become something of this daily worry won within our witnessing what is a world losing its grip on reality. I mean we’re literally to the point in which people are marrying themselves and dating artificial partners they themselves created on some app.

Friends, we’ve snapped.

We’ve lost the plot. We’ve given up going after something better and just collectively settled for staying wherever this is that’s arrived us to this place in mind in which all we seek to find in life is fake.

How are we supposed to like it this way?

Moreover, why continue giving any hope to staying here where it is this way?

No, I’m more convinced by the day that this world was never meant to be anything other than our battlement against everything from all that is whatever it’s become to all we’ve made it out to be inside what are eyes that still know so well how to see the sum of what many continue to seek. Indeed, I truly believe that we’re all still here only to give us as much time as possible to shed as much of this world as we possibly can.

But friends, time’s running out.

Why then aren’t we?

Maybe you still like what you see. Perhaps you still have a hope for a better world, world peace. You might be one of those who’s so successful and profitable and lost there in some overwhelming sense of accomplishment as is proven around these parts in houses and cars. Yes, there are many here who’ve gained so much of what is here that they can’t see beyond it anymore.

Thus Christ continues the same request given to the same mindset in which we’ve seemingly just too much to give it all away.

But friends, what is it that we really have?

What do we really stand to lose?

What more might we happen to finally find were we to ever give away all that is?

Might we finally come to an ability to imagine all that isn’t yet?

But that’s the problem, isn’t it? It’s that we don’t know what isn’t yet. We can’t see what we’ve never seen before. We can’t go wherever we’ve not a map for. Nobody has been to Heaven and come back to help us find the way.

Well, there was One, but not many here seem to be very big fans or willing followers.

But why? Truly, what is here that so many are staying for? What’s the endgame? What’s the final gain? What do we really stand to profit should we earn all the world in efforts given unto seeking always the same if we then never learn to look for the life between the lines we’ve drawn for ourselves to stay within?

I’m just tired of our way because, well, we can see what all it can accomplish. And just being honest, I honestly don’t see much anymore that seems or sounds all that appealing. Rather most things anymore are only grating, grinding, giving off this aroma of death and suffering and misery and yet a people continually assuming that all of this that we’re doing is all that we’re supposed to be.

And truly, if all this world has is all you hope to find, feel or become, then congratulations on having found your promise, your purpose, your reward.

I for one just can’t see any such treasure in a world in which so many find pleasure in pain, in pride, in this version of life that’s only ever defined by what we have already.

Because what we have already is a world crumbling.

Why then built a kingdom here?

No. I guess I’ve just tried that very thing for too long now. Not good at it I suppose. Don’t know, but I do know that not much feels right anymore. Rather everything’s always changing and not usually for the better. Perhaps I’m just tired. And indeed, I think I’d agree.

But it’s that I’m tired of having to see what life here has become because it sure doesn’t seem like anything of what life ought to be.

Instead most things here anymore are only those that it feels we have to get through, deal with, figure out. There’s always some problem, some debate, some argument over who’s to blame.

Friends, we all are!

Because all of us have agreed for so long to just go along with the status quo, so much so that it’s all that we know anymore. Thankfully that doesn’t mean that all we know is all there is to know. It just means that we’ve learned well how to settle for all that already is.

Maybe we can try something different.

Maybe we won’t.

Either way He came to let it be known that there’s to more life than what all we’ve lived it for. And He did so by showing us the death He had to go through to overcome what life here’s become.

And all He asks for our to reach the same outcome of eternal life is but that we lay down this version we’ve been living. And yeah, that’s a hard thing to do as we still imagine we’ve just too much to lose.

But friends, fact is that everything here is lost anyway.

How much longer shall we be?

How much longer shall hope be?

Again, guess we’ll see.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold