Day 4076 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Psalm 76:13 NIV

The difficulty

In this life we’ve come to measure pain in scars or at least the wounds which leave them. We estimate danger based upon the particular risk inherent within a situation. We believe sorrow something seen only inside a mirror showing a reflection of someone dejected due to a trouble they’ve brought not on themselves. Indeed, it seems we believe still this idea that has us convinced that bad things happen to good people, and that probably because we see daily good things happening to bad people.

And it’s within all of this that we all stumble unto one of the more challenging aspects of not only life in this place but even more so of this faith that calls us to be here but become something else.

Something that neither belongs here nor then continues to seek that feeling as if we could, should as in Christ we can’t and thus we arrive eventually upon this understanding that we simply won’t. But still, there comes for us many days in which that boat don’t float as it holds a hope that seems quite contradictory to that which we’ve had before as is still the same as is held by most here. And that hope that we’ve all known is one proven in pride, popularity, posterity, prosperity in this life the lot.

Indeed, we’ve all sought our wealth within such things thinking them all means to what is that still-sought end of our coming to win what is a journey that is both easy and safe and comfy, but perhaps mostly one that just makes sense. Because, in the end, I think that that’s what we all seek for more than anything else. We just want to be able to understand what’s going on, to wrap our minds around the things that are happening, to have at least some ability to comprehend the insanity we see.

But friends, I’ve come to believe that what we’ll find is that if we could understand it, well then perhaps we’re still a part of it.

Truly, this has become something of a strange consolation in my life over the years. It’s something won within this reality in which we walk in which we walk through a world falling apart and yet always having a party as the veil which was torn is hung back in place daily by those many in this place who’ve clearly no care, concern as to see His face as rather this place remains the promise they seek.

What understanding of that can we make?

I tried so hard for so long to understand the ways this world works. Looking back now it somehow feels as if I’ve often played the part of Solomon in that I too have applied my heart to the seeking for wisdom as I too assumed won within the understanding of everything that is whatever it is. I’ve indeed sought for understanding in regard to everything. I guess I’m just curious like that, always wanting to learn anything that I think may help me to better uphold my part in this journey.

But as the years have gone away and I got old because they did, all it seems I’ve found is but that less and less makes sense.

So I failed it seems.

Because I truly don’t seem at all able to understand most things. My mom and I joke all the time about how little we know as we both try our best to exist in the pursuit of common sense and this largely antiquated appreciation for how things should work. And that’s because, well, down here things don’t work as they should. Things don’t go as they should, at least according to our expectations. In fact, most days feel as if they just dissolve into an utter disaster just as soon as I share these posts and open that door as I begrudgingly accept the fact that I’m still here.

In a place I truly struggle to want to be.

Why?

Because, as we talked about just yesterday, it’s hard to see. Every single day brings us news of some new confusion, some novel delusion designed inside a mankind that’s so marvelously lost its mind that still many here worry more about time than what they could be doing with the little we’ve left. No, rather most here seem to still assume that they’ve all the time they need to do whatever it is that they do, things done under the sun that are both nothing new and thus as if the Son doesn’t shine just beyond the length of time that we’ve remaining here.

Because most folks continue to live as if life is to be lived only here.

To them that idea is their greatest hope.

To me it seems life’s cruelest joke.

For I too have done the common doings here. I’ve sought the same prizes and bought all the lies that I believed would help me to have them. I’ve traded in a life spent doing better for the I lived for so long doing whatever I wanted, which was usually only something inspired in me by another. Indeed, I’ve rehearsed the jokes and learned the jargon, brandished the logos and embraced the fashion. All things done to try and make it seem as if I belonged in this scene.

Knew my lines and everything.

But then a day came when I crossed one. Then I crossed another. Then another came and I crossed it too. And this became something of an experiment, this crossing of lines and losing in so doing that way of life that we’ve designed inside a place in which we trade our faith for fame or fortune or friendship with those still excited in their enmity against eternity.

And that because of their blatant hatred of the God thereof.

All because so often it seems as if we just can’t see any evidence of Him being a God herein. Rather here the wicked win. Here evil entertains. Here disaster is a delight, watching others in danger one of our favorite ways to dispense our anger into a character we hate in a show we love. Yes, here love is measured however anyone may so choose for themselves, a fact gone so far in the wrong direction that we’ve deemed “minor attracted persons” as those who should plausibly have the freedom to do with that what you can imagine.

Indeed, this world has become this scene of things seen that are so backwards, upside down, turned around and burnt to a crisp. And yet so many seem to still like it like this. Why? Because we’re a people who move the lines. We set daily to redefining everything so as to always ensure that everything matches up always with our current confusions. We delight in doing things more darkened and dangerous all the time, pressing the envelope and mailing to the world via phones that we’re now known for staring at all the time.

Yes, this is this life. It’s an existence of such substance as addiction, animosity, division, disaster, hatred, hardship, jealousy, jadedness. The last perhaps the most common of all in that all of us seem most often entirely tired of all that is the way it is in whatever is a world such as this. Because many of us seem still able to agree that most things here aren’t what they ought to be. Now, that most certainly doesn’t mean we agree as to the best way to make things better as we mostly disagree in regard to what version of better things should become.

Truly, it seems we’ve now moved past the time in which we see things differently and we now just see different things completely.

And that’s the difficulty.

It’s that this world has all of these very obvious priorities that we too have had, but that the key word is had. Because, well, in Him we don’t have them anymore. Rather Christ, doing the washing part of what He’s promised to do, He’s begun to from us remove those things which He knows don’t belong in the heart of one who hopes in Heaven as home. It’s that whole “eye of the needle” parable. We’re the camel. And indeed, we’ve all of us lived as if a pack-animal meant to carry as much of all that’s here as we possibly could.

And indeed, we’ve each become so often so laden with worldly pleasures and treasures that trying anything other than whatever we did to get them seemed the last thing we’d ever be interested in.

But then came that day when we crossed this line that we couldn’t see as was drawn in the sand by a hand we also didn’t know was there.

He keeps it interesting like that!

For, well, He does things like that. He takes us by the hand and helps us toward this idea of a better land, a better life spent therein. He leads us into His Word and then unto His will as is written within in which we begin to see that no, we’re not crazy in our seeing some of the insanity around us for the insanity it is. He helps us grow in this humbling chance to know that which He defines as good, and that it’s often the exact opposite of what this world passes off as the same.

Because folks here are unwittingly fulfilling the very Scriptures they deny the very veracity of in the ways in which they live their lives. For indeed, around here good is put for evil and evil thus considered good. Wrong is put for right and right then sometimes seen as wrong, in certain circumstance at least. Darkness is seen as light and thus easy to carry whereas the Light that points toward crosses to carry proves a request entirely too heavy a burden to bear.

Why?

Because it’s far easier to just not care.

And indeed, this is pretty much the very best way to describe the mindset behind so much of what we see unfolding down here. It’s all done by folks who just don’t care anymore. About anything it seems. Indeed, it seems as though every single day finds at least one more way in which society has settled for making something mundane or immoral seem as close as we need to get to their obviously better counterparts. Because, again, this is the difficulty. It’s that we live in a land that daily does the least necessary, and sometimes not even that!

That’s why so many things continue to go bad.

But what makes it hard is that part of that cross we’re asked to carry, the one some of us are carrying, it’s proven in our growing in this ability to see things from God’s perspective rather than our share of human preference. And that’s a very big difference! One so massive in fact that it changes everything. Literally everything. I honestly don’t know that I could explain all the ways that my life has changed over the years. Don’t even know that I remember them all.

All I do know is that I now wake up every single day not even thinking about why the differences will be felt in the day lain out before me.

Gave that up long ago as I’ve come to know that to be different here is the very best thing we can ever hope to do. Indeed, if this world does it, believes it, buys it or prefers it, just do the opposite and you’re probably headed in the better direction. And this, I think, is proven in that, again, so much that makes up the way things are here is simply not at all the way things should be.

Again, don’t know either that I could count all the things that I’ve come to see that simply shouldn’t be.

For yes, here the wicked win. Here the prideful are prosperous. Here the only danger we seem to agree upon is that of not enjoying our every delight to whatever depth we so desire. Here we set daily this fire and burn within it every victim that is anything other than we want for everyone to be. Here we mock that which is good, decent, upstanding and that because most days we’re found standing still amongst that crowd that shouted out loud that most horrendous of all statements:

“His blood is on us and on our children!”

What understanding is there to be made of a people who still live the same way? What sense is there to find a society that still does so much as if the Son doesn’t exist? What can we ever expect to find but grief in a place in which so much evil is done and yet so little sleep lost over it?

I can’t make sense of it. And honestly, the more I try the more I feel the need to cry because I just about can’t bear to watch it unravel anymore. That’s been something knocking on the door of my soul for seemingly a long time now. I want so badly to go back to those days in which we didn’t know everything that everyone was doing, everything that was going on.

Indeed, turns out that knowledge is power but that power doth truly corrupt because so too has knowledge proven to be increasingly grievous in what is a place in which anymore there’s so much to know about so much that we just don’t need to know. Can’t count all the things I’ve seen or heard or elsewise learned that I only wish I never had.

Because so much of it’s so bad that I can’t get away from it far enough nor fast enough.

Much like this world itself.

For I’m done trying to understand the things that are done here. I’m over trying to make sense of scenes so senseless, soulless. It seems I’ve finished my research into the goings on going on around us, even to the point that I despise being on the internet and just got my new flip phone yesterday.

No more smart phone for me, I want to be the smartest device in my life again.

Because all these screens are nothing but windows to a world in as full a measure as we care to consider. But what started as a tool meant for community and learning and the growth in a hope for both has become something used as a weapon of war meant to wound within arguments waged in comment sections and youtube videos trying to prove that everything you’re doing is wrong and search engines that give us the answers to questions that we’ll only regret asking.

Indeed, I again can’t recall all the things that I’ve learned thanks to the internet and social media that I simply wish I hadn’t.

For it’s all shown me all that this world cares to be.

And, well, in light of what I’ve learned, seen, heard, I don’t want to be here anymore.

No, I’ve just about lost every ounce of any desire to understand this world. To be like this world. To be liked by this world. And that because it’s easy to see what this world is. Again, in this world the wicked win. The arrogant are affluent. The prideful are both prosperous and popular. Idols are everywhere. Ideas are given us all the time. There are so many words, so many worries that have been insisted upon us that we probably can’t even tell anymore which thoughts are ours, if any of them are.

And it shouldn’t be that way. But sadly we’ve settled for this entirely communal approach to pretty much everything and while it’s allowed us all to feel as if we’re a part of the community, the community continues to insist upon its every chosen enmity against He who is our Father.

And I can’t agree to that anymore.

Because no matter what prize I may have won, the number of friends I may have had, the amount of money I had in the bank or how much cool stuff I had hanging on my wall, I had no peace at all. I had no contentment. I had only confusion, regret, anger, and such then this loss of self that I didn’t know I needed help.

Even when help came!

For this world teaches us to slap His hand away as we go on our way toward all those things that we’ve become convinced of which our lives should consist.

They shouldn’t.

Our lives need nothing from this world but rather to be emptied of the same as we’ve all spent more than enough time already trying to find some way to understand what it seems so many others do. For it often feels as if everyone is able to find what we can’t and feel what we don’t. We see the fun. We hear the enjoyment. We witness daily a world doing whatever it wants as if there is no such thing as cost or consequence.

Because here there isn’t.

No, rather everything goes in a world in which everyone’s appreciation for self-control is gone.

And sure, we can spend some of our little time remaining upon straining to make sense of it all. We can argue and debate with the ways of this world trying to find some way for them to seem reasonable, logical. We can give the rest of our lives over to seeking for something that helps us understand why everything feels upside down down here.

Or we can just accept the fact that this world is the closest thing to hell we’ll ever know and take that for the gift it’s meant to be.

Because yes, there are things seen here that we shouldn’t have to see. People do things these days that nobody should even be able to think of doing. Because it’s all crumbling. Now we can either try to hold it all together as we continue trying to study it or we can wash our hands of it and walk away.

Just know that trying to make sense of this world and all that’s being done within it will require us allow this world to remain in us. But if the overall promise is that we’ll not remain in the world, well then why allow any of the world to remain in us?

For the truth is that God’s said that many here will have had their rewards the same. Here. And so we’re watching what is a world that is in fact “living their best life”. All while sin runs rampant and selfishness continues inspiring many to do things that are so completely unacceptable that it’s amazing the lack of shame we see these days. The difficulty is to be proven in seeing it all unravel and realizing that there’s increasingly little we can do about it.

In fact, all we’ve ever been asked to do is share the Gospel and live good lives as we do.

Probably won’t change much nor help all that many. But friends, I think we’ve all seen enough to know that this world is what it is, and thus nothing of what it could be, should be.

So be it.

Stop trying to understand it. Stop thinking you can make it better if only you could. We can’t as there is nothing to understand about the stance this world’s taken against God. After all, if we could understand it then odds are we’re too close to the same ability to still stand with them.

No, we gotta let that go and that as fast as we possibly can.

For we’re leaving sooner than we realize.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold