Day 4093 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Job 6:4 NIV

What is terror?

Is it the soul of someone suddenly seeing struggle as nothing but a success able to avoid it? Is it a heart left heavy having had to hold the wholeness of hopelessness when faced with a distress too deep for words? Is it the kind of fear we find or feel when found face-to-face with that which promises to our entire lives waste? Is it the wasting away we’ve ourselves chosen inside every single day along what’s been a story spent seeking our glory and thus denying Him any share? Is it a life lived in which we never learn to care as to the turmoils and tragedies we leave behind as we walk unashamedly toward only those places in which we believe wait only our prizes?

Is it the work of the Almighty seeking to help us find humility knowing that there’s no other path by which Heaven shall be found?

Is it nothing but worry won within our wanting life to always be easy, a war lost when so often it’s not?

Indeed, terror is a tactician of sorts as it sort of insists upon such things as stress, unrest, hardship and, yes, disappointment. And the hard part is that for it there exists no ointment, no balm, no Gilead anymore to which any of us may dare flee seeing to find what’s then not there either. Rather there’s just this one life we’ve got both behind and before us and it is one in which it feels so often as if either terror or tragedy are ever beside us.

Perhaps because they both need to be as we need them to be.

Why?

Because what is life if it’s easy? What is life if it’s not scary? What is life, where can life go if all that life goes through are only those victories and vanities that we all insist all of life flow to? Who can we be, what can ever we hope to become if what we are already is a people able to uphold, withstand and understand the sheer gravity of everything?

Who can we become if not for a life’s terrors seeking always to inspire us to keep on the move moving toward the given promise of there being room for us in that ark that is that grave that is that place in which He saves we who are His and not afraid to show it because we’ve spent our lives thus far knowing so much terror and so many tears that, as those torn, we’ve nothing here toward which to look forward?

Other than the leaving.

Indeed, I believe that this is why this life is hard. That’s why this life is scary. That’s why this life is so often so far from easy. It’s all so that it becomes easy for us to both see things for what they are and too that what things are are nothing of anything they were meant to be and that thanks to people, including you and me, having willfully forgotten the Lord, forsaken the cross, denied then the cost of what is our own salvation in what have been lives lived as if on vacation and there then with nothing to do here.

All because we don’t want to do anything.

For we were created for this sort of hunter/gatherer existence as God intended for us to have dominion over all the lower rungs of His creation. He gave all He created unto us so as to sustain us, to help us, to heal us. He gave us animals and plants to eat and to use for our dwellings as we do just that. He designed us to need His sustenance as was given us because He wishes to sustain us, to provide for us, to progress us toward the deeper measures of His promise for us which include unending life.

But that in a place now not like this one.

And that because we’ve taken this one and forced it into this existence in which simple sustenance isn’t seen as enough. That’s why we’re told that godliness with contentment is great gain. It’s because, well, we’ve clearly forgotten that again and again! We’ve made a life out of seeking ever more and thus never knowing anything of enough. We are never filled, never happy, never satisfied.

Not with anything.

Because, as opposed to living this life simply enjoying this life for all that God continues to provide and spending our time then not seeking for the more we never needed but rather giving that time unto praising Him for His ensuring that our needs are always provided, we’ve moved past the hunter/gather existence and sought for ourselves this competitor consisting of always insisting that we need something else.

Indeed, just as He said we’d do, we have come unto this kind of life in which, now fed and feeling secure, we have forgotten Him.

And if you don’t believe me, just look around friend!

This world has become everything I cannot believe a God who created such things as life and love and that most precious of all gifts given unto us from up above which combined the two so perfectly that time, I cannot wrap my mind around how so much of what we see is at all how any of it is supposed to be. For instead of a Garden, a paradise, some land flowing with milk and honey, what we have instead is a gauntlet, a prison, a land flowing with the blood of the unborn simply because we’d rather harm the innocent than accept our responsibilities.

No, we’ve clearly lost our fear of God.

So much so that most seem quite content to continue living as if He isn’t, doesn’t, perhaps never did.

Clearly then unaware of what that would mean if it were true.

An unawareness which also brings unto us a similar unknowing found in our often feeling fear instead of peace and finding worry instead of rest. Indeed, why is this life so often so troubled and troubling? Why can’t we just manage to find that kind of life in which everything goes our way? Where awaits that day when everything becomes easy and we never from there on know anything more of everything scary?

After all, I thought He was good Father. A loving God. Some Prince of Peace.

Where’s the peace? Where’s the love in our living a life that’s so often left so far from anything we’ve made perfectly clear we’d clearly prefer? Where’s there anything good in His plans when it seems our hands are always left holding some hardship or horror, our feet wading in the hatred of those around us, our necks hanging from the very chalice of those who lord over us because we’re too poor and pathetic to overpower their insistence upon us being their victims?

Yes, why does it so often feel inside this life as if we’re here but to be the victims of something?

Why are we so often being victimized by life itself?

For it shouldn’t be this hard! Things shouldn’t be this bad. This many people shouldn’t spend so many days so sad and angry and upset and waiting for something in their lives to break before they do.

And for once, we’re right in thinking so!

It shouldn’t be like this. Life shouldn’t be this hard. We shouldn’t be this unhappy.

BECAUSE WE SHOULDN’T BE THIS UNHOLY!!!

We brought this all on ourselves! Everything bad that happens to us is because of us! We’re the reason that life is miserable. We’re the reason that life is scary. We’re the reason that God terrifies us so very much that most of us have resorted to just convincing ourselves, and whomever else we might, that He’s not alive because if that’s the case then we’ve nothing to worry about in regard to this waste of a journey we’ve chosen to chase.

No, if God isn’t there then we can continue ahead here doing the same whatever we want that we’ve both always done and which has led us to who we’ve become.

Which is a people who, again, clearly lost our fear of God.

Problem is that He knows that there is no life waiting to be found whenever this one ends without that fear. For life was meant to be a journey spent in peace, in rest, in a simple gratitude for all He’s given as opposed to this hostile attitude we all continue to show because we don’t have all we’d selfishly hoped to get. Life was meant to be easy, to be safe, to be happy.

But there is no rest for the wicked!

There can be no happiness in the midst of all this hardship we see and so often force upon one another. There can be no ease, no safety, no comfort or tranquility when we continue trying to be anything, everything other than who and what He created us to be.

Because He didn’t create us for hostility or hatred. He didn’t intend for us to become so filled with greed and gluttony. His plans for us weren’t for us to forget Him, to forsake Him, to make fun of Him as He hung in our place paying our debt for our sins. His intent was rather for us to tend a garden.

We’re the ones who chose war instead.

And worst of all, it’s always been a war waged against Him.

Why?

Because we willfully forgot who He is, what He does, what He’s done and what it all means. Rather we listened to the devil who talked us into taking that fruit thinking that we too would become as gods. And, well, if we could somehow manage to rival Him then we’d not need Him would we? And, well, what is more profitable to a pride than that kind of life in which we can live never once having to ask anyone for anything?

Forgiveness especially!

No, we want nothing of such humility. Because around here we know that the good guy finishes last and that only the good die young.

Ever wonder why?

It’s because this world hates that which is good, but that God so loves those who try to do what’s right that He pulls them out of this mess sooner than the rest because He doesn’t want for them to see, feel, hear the fullness of what His plans for us now entail. Yes, He posts the bail of those who beg to just be home, a home that isn’t here in what is a world in which there’s now so much terror, so much horror, so much hardship and unhappiness that all we seem to ever care to do is just hate one another.

Truly, it’s as if we simply can’t get enough of making things worse.

All because what we’ve all become is apparently convinced that second place is just first loser. And, well, pride refuses to be called a loser. Rather we must win. We must succeed. We must accomplish this version of life in which everything we ever see is only that which coddles, comforts, contends in wins that we’ve won in what then becomes a life in which we have so much to lose that we refuse to risk ever coming in last.

Doing then whatever needs done to ensure every battle won and every prize the same.

Indeed, the good guy finishes last because he knows there’s nothing here for him to have.

And thus the bad guy wins nearly every story told every day.

Why?

Because we apparently prefer it this way.

Why else would we continue to do life this way? Why else would every movie being made be filled with so much violence and foulness? Why else would all our songs be sung in lyrics and lines that prove a loss of love and an ability to find so many ways to mock the very sanctity of life? Why else would so many take to the streets to protest those wanting to protect the unborn so they’ve a shot at life?

Why else would we be found cheering as the Christ gave up His life as if a fool was getting what He deserved thanks to His having had the audacity to tell us that we could be doing better?

What could possibly be better than all this that we’ve become?

Everything.

Friends, there is absolutely nothing that can’t be improved about whoever this is that we’ve all become. There is nothing that wouldn’t prove a step in the better direction. There is no change that would prove unneeded if we could truly see just how far we’ve fallen.

Which is why He terrorizes us.

It’s because we’ve become a people who find it entirely too easy to sleep in the midst of a life spent doing wrong. Because we’ve managed to lose our ability to feel shame. Because we’ve forgotten what it feels like to be afraid. Because we’ve perhaps never known to fear God because we’ve become just like those masses who still contend that He’s not there.

Indeed, He fills this air with fear because, well, how else are we to learn what fear is unless we’re forced to go through things that terrify us?

How else might we learn our lack of peace until we’ve met with His violence? How can we learn to seek His help and healing unless we’re caught in lives in which we need them, need Him? How better can we learn the fullness of all we’ve become unless He does what He knows is needed so as to open our eyes to finally seeing what all we’ve done and how so much of it is nothing we ever should have?

This is indeed the entire premise of the story recounted throughout the book of Job.

It’s this idea of the righteous sufferer. This discrepancy seen inside how this life is seemingly hard, unfair, unfriendly even to those who don’t seemingly deserve to have to endure such hardships as loss, worry, the horror of losing one’s family and along with them all the comforts and successes they’d ever known. Indeed, Job lost everything in an instant.

And he, like we, felt he didn’t deserve it.

Why?

Because he, like we, believed himself to be something he wasn’t.

Why?

Because there are none righteous in life. There are no good people to whom bad things can happen. There are just people who, having done bad things, shouldn’t really complain then when the same kind of things happen to them. It’s fairness my friends. It’s the equality that so many are so worried about and always up in arms over. It’s the equal outcome that we’ve all come to crave.

Something we asked for thinking ourselves to be good people to whom good was then deserved.

Proving then that we’re both delusional and thus need be disturbed so as to rouse us from our spiritual retardedness.

This is why He terrorizes us. This is why He causes fear to well up within us. This is why He sends those trials and tempests that aim to destroy us.

It’s because we can only really see the fullness of whatever this is that we’ve become when we’re finally broken down and left holding what are but pieces of a life we’d spent our lives building in what are ways He never once asked us to in our continuing to do all those things which cost His Son His life.

Yes, He needs us to see what we’ve done in our lives so that we can, in that, finally find that we deserve nothing but the very worst of journeys in this place. We deserve so much suffering, so much hurting, so much hardship that it becomes amazing that anything decent ever happens here at all.

That’s the point!

It’s all to help us finally become of the ability to see that where we stand is the direct result of all we’ve done. But also, in His goodness and grace, to prove that He’s been patient with us all this time, watching us do all that we’ve done that we never should have even been of the ability to ever even imagine, all so that we could arrive at the outcome in which we come to terms with the fact that we’ve all turned our backs on Him and spent our lives running away from all He called us to be.

He sends things that make us afraid, that cause us pain, that ruin our lives so that we can understand that these lives we’re living are in fact ruined.

Why?

So that we can finally make up our minds to walk away from it all and seek finally for something better somewhere else.

A promise given because there’s just no living in all the death that this world’s been filled with.

That’s why we need life’s afflictions. That’s why we need the miseries and monsters that He helps us to see and asks we endure. It’s not because He doesn’t love us. It’s rather because He loves us so very much that He refuses to leave us as He’s found us.

That’s the message we keep confusing.

It’s that, yes, we can come to Christ just as we are. But no, we are outside our minds if we think that we can stay as we are. Friends, we have to change if anything else is ever to change. And, looking around, I hope we can all agree that there’s not much that doesn’t need change.

Ourselves included.

This is why He terrorizes us. This is why He sends us into battles and storms and struggles that our ego will always contend are entirely undeserved. It’s to break that ego so that we can finally let go of this idea that’s long had us convinced that we could do this and thus didn’t need Him.

He sends us things that make it impossible for us to ignore Him.

All because He knows better than our preference of comfort ever could that our being so comfortable here isn’t at all good, not for us nor for anyone else. This world should not feel like home.

Because this world’s hurtling toward hell, and whilst warm, not much is going to prove all fuzzy and cozy once it arrives.

So He sends hardship, horror, sadness and sorrow and, maybe most importantly, shame into our lives so that we can open our eyes to see the sin we’ve been living in.

So that we can finally learn to stop living against Him so much as we have been.

Friends, yes, the truth is that God sends us more than we can handle. He gives us over to the facing of trials and troubles that we can’t manage on our own. He breaks us down through all the struggles we have and the fears and pains and worries we feel.

All because He wants more for us than He knows we’re more than willing to settle for.

So while it may feel like it never stops raining and the pain of life never stops hurting, maybe those facts are the greatest of all life’s blessings.

Why?

Because pain and misery and disappointment are perfect reminders that there must be something better.

A better we’d simply never seek, and thus too fail to be if not for all those things that we endure in life in what is a place from which we now need to be saved.

After all, He can’t save us from that which is already safe.

Good thing this life isn’t then.

Let’s us hope in the existence of a place in which safe awaits.

And rest and peace and perhaps even life with it.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold