Day 4113 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Isaiah 53:3 NIV

What is esteem?

Is it this thing that we’ve invented intended to measure the worth of another’s intent or their content? Is it the degree to which we agree with whoever someone is as is often defined only by whatever someone does? Is it something we do trying to determine who we’re willing to look up to, who we’re willing to follow, who we’ve no such interest or intent? Is it an advent of an event to which we attend what is this coming of either a friend or foe, the difference only defined by what little we know of who another really is? Is it our trying our best to see only the best and that in everyone else?

Is it our hoping that everyone else sees in us the best we too are trying to be, and that even though we know we fail more times than not?

Is it not our attempt to gauge another’s attempts to be what we alone perceive as being the best?

Indeed, to hold someone or something in high esteem is this cultural thing we all then learned to do in which we learn to lose our typically reserved nature in favor of our finding favor with those from whom we intend to glean something that we hope means something. It’s this effort given unto giving glory and honor and praise unto those who, like us, are in this place but who, unlike us, seem to be here with something rare, something different, something unique that makes them stand out from the rest of us freaks.

It’s this deciding that someone or something in this life is worth finding, worth following, worth thus the faith demanded in our doing of both the above and every single one of their like.

For esteem is form of respect, of admiration, of sincere appreciation for this other, be it sister or brother or, sadly the case has come to be, even some thing that we happen to see and then grow to assume we need simply for the measure of beauty, of rarity, of sovereignty or other such magnificence that this person or possession may well thus bring unto us.

And you see, there it is yet again!

Our holding of someone or something in high esteem is this thing that we all do in which we all choose to place our faith, our trust, our hope and thus our every appreciation is done because we think the same can do something for us. It’s something of that old adage of our hitching our horse to another’s wagon. We come in either alongside or even following behind what is another’s life seeing within them and whatever it is that they’re doing something that can, for us, stave the common losing that we’re all sadly used to.

That’s basically why we do all that we do.

It’s because we’ve become so very needy, so very greedy, so very sinful and silly that we spend the majority of our days lost in a million different ways trying a billion different things to escape from the reality that we ourselves have made for ourselves and too then likely had a hand in making for the rest of those around us. And to be honest, what we’ve all created sucks!

Which, to our credit, we’re not technically the ones who were ever meant to define life as neither were we the ones who designed it.

Problem is that we still somehow and for whatever reason seem to all but culturally believe that we’re still those somehow best to both grade it and that despite basically all we do only continuing to prove that we all know far better how to degrade it.

Which I suppose is why we seem to know so much and so many that and whom we hold in high regard.

It’s something of a reverse psychology that we’ve oddly enough spun around upon ourselves in that we’ve ourselves sunk so very low that now we seem to easily know all of those and all of that which is obviously higher and better and thus undeniably more helpful and thus hopeful.

Our sinking has shown us the difference, thanks to the distance, in those who’ve not yet sunk with us.

Granted, in our vanity we still continue to seemingly see plenty of ways in which we ourselves should be held in high regard, because we hold ourselves in the same. But still, holding oneself in high regard accomplishes nothing except hindering the entire growth process and that of everything from hope to happiness.

And yes, many here will never know this because as life sits, well, we’re all so patently deluded that we all still think that all that we’re doing both matters and is too being done so well that we then matter too.

We don’t.

And why?

Because most days find most of us doing still plenty of things that are only done because we’ve all believed that nor did He.

Indeed, such is the very basis of sin! It’s our missing God in those moments in which we had or have both the opportunity and the ability to see Him, to hear Him, to choose Him, to chase Him, to change ourselves so as to be found hopefully more worthy of being given the ability to continue doing all the above. It’s our choosing to do the things that we either know we shouldn’t do, as if often the case, or those that we’ll eventually learn we shouldn’t have done, which is equally frequent.

And yet all of it adds up to the very same outcome and that is that we live as if He didn’t and doesn’t.

Why else would we do and say and think so many things that so clearly hold still no regard (esteem) for He who came to this earth and said and did all those things that Scripture tells us He had to do in to help us lose what is that life that we’ve lived lost doing those things that we’ve all done as if the Son is as equally impossible as we’ve all long contended the Father?

And why have we all lived as if we’re God and He’s not?

Because we don’t want Him to be.

And that because if He is then every word He’s said means exactly what it already clearly means.

And if that’s the case then, well, we have no case.

We have no hope.

We have no future.

In truth, if He’s God and Jesus then did all that the Gospels tell us He did, then we have no life as we rather know only all the death that is our every sin.

And yet we despise(d) Him? We reject(ed) Him? We hold(eld) Him in low esteem? We look(ed) at Him as if He’s the One wrong, the One deserving of all that suffering?

We think(ought) Him the One who lost?

And why have we all thought that and ended up living accordingly?

Because we can see and understand what His path is and where it led and why it went where we know it did. For we’re a people familiar with guilt, not our own maybe, but we know plenty about deeming others guilty for their mistakes. We’re a people well aware of what regret is, again, maybe not something we’ve ever felt ourselves thanks to our having gotten everything always right, but we’ve heard of others telling tales of those times in their lives in which they found that they were wrong.

Indeed, we’re entirely cognizant of what wrong is, probably because most of us still seem to assume it the very opposite of what we think we are.

But the point is that we’ve all come so far from what is a simple awareness and appreciation for even the simple fact that we’re alive and that with both a heart and mind that both (should) work together toward the seeking forever our better and even that better in forever. We don’t seem to care anymore, not about either. Rather we just use the both for only this hope that continues to keep us convinced that we’re good enough as it is.

And too then that everyone who isn’t like us and doesn’t thus live like us is wrong.

And, well, comparing our existence to that of Christ, seems pretty easy to see who’s getting it right!

After all, we’re basically living like royalty compared to He who is our King. I mean we’ve got all these amazing things like friends and family and thus then this constant familiarity with what’s, at least sometimes, a world that seems rather friendly toward us. We, unlike He, have a place to rest our head, a nice warm bed in a fancy home or simple apartment. We’ve got an abundance of possessions that we enjoy or at least did once.

We have cars and jobs and bank accounts that fund our nights spent going out and having fun and making so many wonderful and even funny memories.

We’ve all had an amazing life.

He died at the hands of, well, just about everyone who knew of Him by the time He was in His 30’s!

Indeed, this world had had enough just after a few decades of dealing with Him.

So yeah, seems as though He rubbed so many wrong that they, not being able to be wrong as none of us have within us the courage or humility to consider that we so usually are, chose to rid themselves of the bother He’d become.

Can you imagine that? Feeling as if you’re needing to get rid of this guy who’s delving into such criminalistics endeavors as healing the sick and giving sight to the blind and telling the lame to get up and get back to walking?

What a jerk!

Or at least that’s what we’ve all considered Him to be.

Why?

Because on top of pointing out and offering to heal or elsewise help with such obvious infirmities as blindness and leprosy He also speaks unto the hidden diseases such as pride and greed and gluttony. He also talks about human depravity and how it has no place in the place He’s offered to prepare for those who find in Him something so new to care about that they basically just stop caring about anything else.

He points out our sins and, even further, dares to tell us to stop living in them.

Why?

Not because of the judgement our ego seems to assume inside such an honest accounting of the many mistakes we know perfectly well we are in fact making, but rather because He defines every such mistake as far deeper and there more grievous than just these feelings of shame and regret that I know we all know.

He calls it death.

Even going so far as to carry a cross, not His own mind you, to what is that place upon which all the world and all those who’ve ever lived within it did indeed consider Him afflicted, forgotten, finally getting what we’ve all basically said He deserved.

Granted, we here today obviously weren’t alive back then but would we had been, well, chances are we’d have found ourselves in that crowd gathered around that hill cheering on this chilling scene.

Because we can’t see our greed, we can’t realize our gluttony, we all but refuse to admit we’ve got an entire life filled with such moral losses to lose.

Because we don’t want to.

We don’t want to lay down our lives. We don’t want to take up our crosses. We dang sure don’t want to follow Him because, again, we know where His path led. And, well, the grave pretty much remains the very last place that most of us have any interest or intention of going.

Most of us literally still believe that the grave is the very last place we’ll ever go.

Some of us are even wasting our wealth upon trying to find some way to avoid the whole thing.

And why?

Because we so love our lives for all the wealth and glory and honor and prestige and popularity and power proven inside that we can’t bear the thought of ever losing them.

And yet in Him and His life we see that very loss.

Jesus literally told that one dude to go and sell everything he had, give the proceeds to the poor and then, having thus freed himself from common human obligations given unto cherishing idols, come and follow Him toward what is promised to be eternal life in Heaven.

Cost too much apparently.

Guy went away sad because, while Christ was doing some amazing things and seemed then to have this divine authority that had given Him such ability, letting go of the life we’ve not only come to know but had in fact come to love, it’s just too much.

We think we have too much to lose.

At least partly because we still consider Him the One who lost. And that because, well, He did. He lost everything here, life included. He watched His friends walk, some run, away when came that day when it all got real. He ate His last dinner with the very sinner who He knew would betray Him to those who wished to kill Him. He walked the prior years in many trials and massive tears as He tried so hard to show people what life was always meant to be and how it’s something so simply beautiful that we’ve all clearly missed it.

Yes, He came to help us see that we are victims of both sin and self, literally just trying all He could to help us escape from the chains of everything from unhealthy bodies to unholy lives.

And we killed Him for it.

Because we have no regard for such honesty. We have no appreciation anymore for any such modesty. We have no interest in simple morality!

Just look around!

We live in a society that seems to still assume that freedom is meant for nothing but our doing only always whatever it is that we want to do. We say words as if they mean nothing. We treat others as if they mean the same. We literally hate everything that either isn’t us or doesn’t treat us how we want to be treated.

That’s our only golden rule!

That everyone else needs to treat us how we want to be treated and, if we’re then and only then so inclined, we might well treat them kind in return.

But it’s always us first.

We’re the ones to be pleased, to be praised, to be held in high regard.

Because we think we deserve to be.

And that we believe because we walk in world in which we’re taught and shown every single day that Christ doesn’t. This world is filled with those doing things that can literally only be done if the one doing them has no awareness or appreciation of the fact that Christ is alive and coming back. In fact, most days it seems as if that’s the only kind who are here because so much of all we hear is just stories of folks doing, saying, thinking, buying, believing, becoming the most godless things ever imagined.

All because to be godless has become so easy to us that we’ve made both a life and even a living doing it.

Friends, how is that? How is it that we’ve managed to become so morally corrupt? How have things become so very bankrupt in terms of holiness, even simple honesty? Why all the constant hatred and hostility? We are we all so angry all the time? Why do we fight so much? And that often against the truth?

Afraid we might have something to lose?

We should be, but no, it shouldn’t be something in this world or all its vanity. Rather what we should be worried about losing is life eternally!

That’s literally why Jesus came to die!!

It was to help us see the hell we’re headed for so as to turn our hearts around and help us head off in a vastly more hopeful direction because, well, nobody wants to endure anything of all He did!

Let alone forever.

And yet we missed that message entirely. Instead all it seems that we all hear and heard is that we’re the ones who are so very good that we need to get rid of this guy who says otherwise.

That’s why so many deny Him still today. It’s because His message hasn’t changed. And nor has the opinion we have of it. We still hate it. We still debate it. We still argue with it trying to disprove it so as to prove ourselves justified in simply denying it. All so that we don’t have to abide by it. Because, again, we just don’t want to. We want to live our lives the way we come to love our lives.

He asks that we see them for the morally bankrupt betrayals of all that’s good and holy that they’ve all so obviously become.

Now we can either humble ourselves and agree with His assessment, which pride cannot allow, or we can reject Him, we can deny Him, we can join hands with an entire world that obviously still hates Him and find in that so many friends and so much fun and so much fame and a veritable fortune thanks to our having taken the devil up on his same old offer.

A choice we’ve all made because, to a people who clearly prefer such things as comfort and pleasure and social success, his offer just seems better.

For again, Jesus’ ask is that we lay down our lives and take up our crosses and spend out the rest of our days looking forward to leaving this place.

That’s why we hold Him in low esteem. That’s why we refuse to read the Word. That’s why this world is going to hell in every way possible in what are ways that seem to be getting there quicker by the day.

It’s because He who is the Way is still the One that most people hate.

Because it’s easy to do so. It’s common to do so. It’s all but expected that we do so by those who’ve done the same for so long now that they know of no other way.

Can we say the same?

That all we know of Christ is to hate the mere mention of the Name as it brings to mind all the guilt, all the shame, all the things we’ve said and all the mistakes we’ve made?

That we know only to refuse any possibility that His path is the one we should choose despite it looking the proverbial end to everything we’ve ever sought to be or hoped to have?

Yes, His path is different in every possible way from every possible thing that we’ve all ever wanted our own to be. His is hard. It is scary. It is lonely and filled with so much pain and heartbreak and misery that it makes sense why so many want so little to do with it.

But friends, I think it being the right path is proven as easily as seeing all that this world chooses to remain and continues holding in high regard.

Down here such things as hatred, violence, perversity of speech and thought, addiction, animosity, anger and danger remain things that are daily cheered on and gazed at with approving eyes.

We can see what this world loves.

And that should make it easier for us to desire the path that this world hates, the one spent following behind He who too this world doesn’t care for.

Not because it’s easy because it most certainly is not.

But simply because this world isn’t what it was meant to be and, well, truth is nor then are we. We were created to be more than we’ve so clearly settled for. Now we can either continue to hate the One who came to save us from what we’ve become or we can humble ourselves to taking up our crosses and finding out why He did it.

Again, doesn’t make it easy and that definitely means it’ll never be popular.

But friends, again, look at what is popular within this place.

Should make it easy to see why hating the Name isn’t likely to prove the path to a life we want to live.

Thankfully His path does as His leads to Heaven.

Who really cares if it gets us there via a way that is of low esteem as is held for all such things as our too being likely lonely, probably broken, truly tired and perhaps even bloody?

So be it.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold