Day 4075 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

2 Corinthians 4:8 NIV

It doesn’t matter

At some point along this ride through what is this life and whatever else it may become there simply comes a point in which you stop keeping points. You stop keeping score. You quit worrying about the weather, the war, the worry about whether or not the fighting or fun will ever come and which of them might beat the other to you. Maybe that’s just because it starts to seem as if most things here are just there to beat you, to confuse you, to lose you inside what is this maze that is this mind that has mankind by the throat.

A mindset sat upon still trying to gloat as if to gain or successfully avoid pain was ever to prove worth anything.

An idea we’ve all believed before, but a belief itself that becomes so frivolous and foolhardy that we eventually find ourselves having to make a choice between continuing to believe for such trivial things as time and comfort or if we’re rather to shift our hopes to perhaps even the both running out so that we can just be done with all that’s under the sun as, yeah, there’s so little that’s ever new anymore that it’s all just getting pretty old.

For all of life has continued to unfold inside what is this frame in which such things as fighting and fame remain priorities and pursuits worried over and wanted by those in suits who apparently exist only to file suits seeking for always some brand or breed of injunction aimed at stopping another from doing whatever they’re doing that we’re all supposed to apparently agree to worry about.

I don’t get it anymore.

Truly, life here has become so bland, each day the same as the one just before. This world’s stuck in such this cycle that all we know is that which repeats, headlines we read as we turn on our sheets in what are beds made for heads simply too heavy for our to hold any higher than we care to anymore. No, so many here are daily succumbing to the general dumbing down of life itself, a programing aimed at the inevitable loss thereof.

And why?

Because entirely too few care about all that much these days. Indeed, we’ve settled within this way in which everything just continues to fade into this gray of a day so plain that even pain starts to become something of a welcome companion just for the simple sake of our feeling something again. For again, life here’s grown quite boring, mundane, maniacal and drained. It’s truly as if so many exist only to remind themselves that they’re alive via the animosity they can stir inside someone else’s eyes.

And I’m tired of that life.

I’m tired of this place in which we watch so many just waste away worrying about things that have no bearing upon forever, other than betraying it by tying it to trying for only all that’s here. Truly, it’s crippling this sadness in which I feel so frustrated that I can’t seem to find the right words to say to make go away what is this day in which this way we live just doesn’t make any sense anymore. For it’s all just cold and lonely and scared and yet angry and filled with hope but that for only that which grows darker by the day.

What are we doing here?

Why do so many like it this way? Why can’t those same many ever seem to see the collapse? Why rather do the many all just continue to clap via little blue thumbs up and tiny red hearts that signify only a momentary agreeance found with something that barely caught our attention long enough to watch the clip but never read whatever someone else may have had their heart screaming to be said about it?

Why do we talk so much about what we think when so much of what we think isn’t worth talking about as it usually only flows in words that walk as if weapons straight into the hearts of those who we’ve no compassion for anymore?

Again, it’s all just becoming this brutality in which humanity descends deeper and deeper into all manner of darkness, depravity, disagreement, division and the general insanity that all are basically adamant to mean as they exist only insisting that nothing seek the greater good anymore. No, the only good that most seem worried about is only that of their own, and honestly, they don’t even know what’s best for themselves anymore.

But then again, how could they? How could any of us when honestly all but all of life has become this fight fought from the basement floor upon which we feed ourselves whatever scraps have fallen into our laps from those who lord over us in every way we’re so eager to let them?

Friends, when did life become whatever life is?

Do we even know what life is or have then any ability left to understand that whatever this is that it’s become is nothing at all of all it was meant to be?

I mean seriously! God created life in a Garden, an honest utopia in which there was allowed to exist only all that was conducive to life. And yes, even a simple trust in His knowing what’s best for us as was proven, for a breath or two, in those two staying away from that tree that bore a fruit that still plagues you and me as daily now we watch and see this endless contest between good and evil, a war won almost hourly by the decidedly more heavy of the pair.

All because we all breathe this air of a world that just don’t care anymore. About anything. About anyone. Often times not even ourselves! Indeed, we’re so far gone that people have just gone numb trying to still the pain left from a life spent trying to find what felt right in a world that’s just wrong. Indeed, we’re anymore pumping ourselves with so many chemical thrills trying to find a way to feel better about ourselves that side-effects have become something of benefits as at least they bring some excitement to our lives.

Granted, popcorn-lung and tooth decay aren’t really all that fun in any way whatsoever.

But hey, they’re the outcomes of things that are fun on the way in, and, well, fun remains our friend as it brings with it this ongoing popularity that defines us as basic poultry that has indeed lost our head and left us to exist basically just running around trying to figure out where we put the darn thing.

And all the while a few, deemed freaks, losers, weirdos, they stand on the sidelines of this sideshow and watch daily as things grow always darker, dimmer, more dangerous and yet more folks more famous thanks to their having too agreed to basically lose their minds trying to find some measure of their pleasure in a world so lost chasing success that anymore the only thing considered best is this idea that we can each of us determine for ourselves what’s best for ourselves.

But that from only all that’s here in what is a place in which there is no fear of God nor then finding out that we’ve been wrong, nor then any hope of all that many ever turning around from this train wreck and seeking for something better.

No, rather we’re all promised the weather not of whether things ever get better but instead the weight of having to wade through a world that won’t as we wait for a world that is.

Better.

For there comes now a new world, a new home, a new Jerusalem as was always the promised land, promised first to them who went through a desert to get there and ever since unto us who are still in what feels a veritable desert so completely dry of anything we could even accidentally call a life. Because honestly, if we were alive in what was our home, then no, there really shouldn’t be so much unhappiness or discontent, let alone this content of a culture so current that all most seem to know about is whatever’s trending as they’re lending themselves like toilet paper to a world that does with them what we all know toilet paper is meant to do.

And that’s why I’m just over it. So much so that I honestly don’t care what happens anymore.

Why?

Because it honestly doesn’t matter.

Seriously, have you, in the past several years, ever once stopped to ask yourself why we’ve stooped so low as to care so much about so much of what this world insists we should? After all, is any of it even any good anymore? Is any of it actually helpful in terms of hope or happiness? Is anything that’s trending ever anything other than everything that doesn’t matter or mean anything only pretending it does because so many “influencers” are willing to agree?

Truly friends, what more do we need to see before we can see that this world has gone so insane that there is in fact no hope left for this place?

Granted, doesn’t mean we can all just walk away as rather we’re of the faith that tells us He’s still a reason for us to be in this place. But we can stop fighting against our being given the cognizance to see that so much of what we see both shouldn’t be but yet sadly is. And indeed, I’m starting to believe that perhaps we’re all meant to do far less about this mess than our version of logic would have us believe.

After all, doesn’t really seem to matter what we do, or say, or think even as none of it ever seems to make all that big of a difference.

I wrestle all the time with why I continue to find the audacity to get up early every morning to write an 8-10 page essay on a single verse from the Bible that so few read, meaning then that probably even fewer will ever have any interest in reading what all I find this need to say about it.

A fact proven in what has been an impressive lack of social media success proven ever since I started doing it.

But I thankfully know that numbers were never the goal. And that because, well, there’s actually nothing here to gain at all. Not fans, not followers, not even dollars as they’re just paper that we tend to spend on plastic that we put up on our walls or don’t know that we’re eating in our food. Truly, everything here is just done. So many have just given up. I mean we’re to the point of just scrolling on our phones, too entertained by them to be bothered by actual conversation with a real live person sitting right beside us.

And it’s hard to watch.

It’s hard to hear. It’s absolutely brutal to see all the lifelessness that’s been allowed to replace even what life was when I was growing up. Again, I know the Bible says that it’s not wise to ask why the past was better than the present, but perhaps that’s only because the answer wouldn’t help us fix anything anyway.

Maybe it’s just too broken. Maybe we’re too far gone. Maybe there is no going back.

And honestly, I’m fine with that.

Because anymore I just want to go home and I’m rapidly losing my ability to care as to whatever I have to go through to get there.

Rather I’ve arrived at this frame of mind in which I find that I’ve found that I only expect life on this ground to grind. I expect every single day to throw something my way that I don’t want to deal with, know about, care about. And that’s because I’ve finally learned that this world is so leaned the other way from where I’m going that all it knows is everything I don’t care to anymore.

All the politics and professional sports and pitiable viral posts, it’s all so feeble and unfulfilling.

And yet the vast majority of the world considers it still fun and enjoyable and somehow profitable.

Probably because we’re to the point of gambling on everything.

Which is but another thing that just increases the pressure we’re under down here. And that’s because, well, it just seems as if not much is meant to go well anymore. Instead it’s as if everyone is just none too happy to spend out the rest of their days walking in all the ways of the wicked and standing in the way that sinners take and sitting in the company of mockers, and thus partaking of the chance to be found doing everything that just about everyone else is doing in what’s become basically a mockery of life as so many spend it lost inside so much wickedness and sin that they all just grin as if God might do the same.

He won’t, but that promise has obviously never stopped us.

And, well, what’s to make us think that’ll change?

In what is a world that won’t!

No, the hard reality is that we’re in this reality until He says we can leave. And yeah, there’s a daily influx of so many things we don’t want to see, don’t wish to hear, don’t want to know are actually happening just outside our door. Indeed, this world is getting harder and harder to live in as the wickedness, the weirdness, the sin, it just keeps flooding into our eyes, our ears, our minds, our lives thanks to it being continually shoved down our throats everywhere we look and anywhere we go.

Honestly folks, I can’t even go to the grocery store anymore without feeling this sense of sadness welling up toward despair over some of the stuff that I see on the way there, or because of that which I’ve learned or heard about a few of the brands of things I used to buy but can’t anymore because it’s all either junk or plastered over with every manner of worldliness that I simply can’t agree with.

Good news is that I think it’s supposed to go this way as He gives us each every new day and in them so many ways to see so many things that just don’t seem right, just don’t sound right, simply don’t feel right all so that we can begin ridding our lives of all these things that are only holding us back from becoming who He created us to be, and that so that we’re ready to leave whenever He says we can.

Doesn’t make it any easier to watch as most of the world doesn’t really seem to ever see what we do.

But the simple fact is that this is our life to lose in a world already lost.

Maybe rather than accepting this struggle with that reality, what if we instead saw it for the hope it’s meant to be? For again, all of us have at times lived as if we either belonged here or could if only we would do whatever it was that the masses wanted us to. All of us have dabbled in the normalcies of a fallen and still falling society. All of us have known enough worldliness to know now the difference that is holiness.

A knowledge that is meant for our benefit as it does help us look around and see what’s becoming of this world we’re in and feel inside this growing understanding that perhaps now’s the time to get to running toward He who is the exit while that chance still exists.

Because the world growing darker only proves we’re running out of time. Now I don’t know how much longer we’ve left as none know the day nor the hour. But friends, we should all be able to tell that this world is falling increasingly under the power of he who is defined as our adversary. We should be able to feel this weight increase as the wait begins to decrease. We should have within us this ability to realize that so much of what we see with our eyes and hear with our ears is not at all conducive to life.

Not even here.

No, this world is putting on a daily pageant of all that simply shouldn’t be.

And yeah, it’s increasingly painful to see. Because, well, no amount of physical pain can match the misery of watching folks waste what will soon prove one of their last opportunities to opt for life eternally.

For it’s a misery mixed with the reality that there’s very little we can do about it.

But we can do something.

And that’s speak the truth. Share the Gospel. Refuse to lower ourselves to the depths of depravity this world is racing toward. Indeed, we can “live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us.”

Because He’s going to visit us what is one last time upon this world. And it’s upon that day that all here will be done and over as every knee then bows in a unanimous agreement that He is Lord of lords and King of kings, and hopefully Savior of some.

But friends, that hope of our being among the some saved can only come if we refuse to allow ourselves to be polluted by this world any further. If we disinvite the way of life this world continues to live from being the line we too continue to walk. If we turn and repent of all that this world is and all that most here do. If we agree to lose that human desire to feel as if we belong here and rather embrace the fact that we don’t, a fact we’re shown all the time as we watch a world continue to lose its mind going from bad to worse in their deceiving and being deceived.

Yes, things here will get worse, this we can believe. And yes, it will hurt to watch the horror of so many choosing hell over Heaven. Shouldn’t be easy. Rather it ought to be crushing, but not so much that it removes from us our hope of that Home. No, we instead have to endure the fight of holding tight our faith so that He who is the Spirit sent from the Son of the Father can lead us toward that day upon which He’s promised to return and free us from what is a war.

Life here will become confusing, scary, painful, miserable. In many ways it already is.

But we’re still here. We’re still going. We’re still hoping. We’re still trusting that what we see is not all there is but rather that there’s more to this than we could ever even begin to believe.

Friends, the best is yet to come and that’s only because one day our fight will be over and we’ll never again have to witness, hear, feel the horror that life here is starting to become. Don’t let the ride out of here distract you from where we’re going.

Because again, what matters more than anything is that promise He’s given us.

And it should mean so much to us that everything else doesn’t matter anymore.

Especially how hard the ride home.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold