Day 4120 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Jeremiah 2:13 NIV

The bush became stone

And in our excitement to miss the opportunities hidden now forever therein thanks to the choices we’ve made instead we’ve since then determined to so forsake the better that we could have been that now instead we get all pleased with ourselves and this ability to accomplish the destroying of two things (or more) with what is but one stone slung in one attempt to achieve as much as possible both as fast as possible and with as little effort as required. Indeed, killing two birds with one stone is yet another age-old adage that we all know well the meaning and merit thereof.

Just doubt we’ve ever considered that the two birds (or more) that we’ve killed were every opportunity to perhaps have become something better than we are, nor then that the stones we’ve thrown are in fact our hearts that have become so solidified and unalive thanks to our decision to do as little as possible whilst always remaining perfectly adamant that it works out as well as we insist.

Yes, we’ve become a people who know well to make a mess of whatever we refuse to see may be a masterpiece.

Be it the two birds we applaud having been felled with a single stone or rather that one bird we’ve chosen to hold in our hand while then debating, discounting, denying the worth of those two (or more) left unchosen in the every bush we’ve passed by on our way to what are our lives that are so filled with both mistakes and misunderstandings too that it’s amazing that we can even continue thinking that we are standing in anything other than the loss of every life we’ve never lived.

All of them missed, every single one, because of hearts that have become like stone and now beat then to only the tune of everything we want to do whilst simultaneously getting our thrills beating to death every similar excitement inside every alternate existence that, again, we never lived because we just couldn’t see the excitement in it back when we had the chance to choose it.

And, just in case we might ever happen to be proven wrong for having not gone down those paths we didn’t take, we’ve taken it upon ourselves to take up some stones and get to throwing seeking to throw down on a bunch of birds who’ve done nothing to us other than asking if we’re really sure that what we’re doing is actually what’s best for us.

Jerks.

Thankfully that makes it easy to see why they need be unalived. It’s because, well, they’re always those things and theories that we’ve determined we don’t need in our lives as we’ve rather come upon this daily ability to always determine that whatever we’re already doing is both the best we could be doing and thus too everything we should keep doing for however long we can.

All while fiddling with a few stones still in our hands that we’re always at the ready to throw at anything else that dares come our way that we don’t want to know.

And indeed, I wonder now what all we’ve never known.

We’ve been walking through that wonder for a few days now in these daily posts but to be honest I’ve been drowning in it for years at this point. Because I again just can’t seem to shake this feeling that I’ve missed something amazing. I can’t convince this idea to leave me alone that instead continues asking me to reconsider what all I’ve won against the impossibility of all I don’t know I lost or missed because of it.

And there’s a truly impressive brutality to all of it!

Because, well, what’s more brutal than our having to wade through wonder wondering what wasn’t because of what was instead? What’s more harrowing than narrowing down what we’ve done alongside a list of lives we’ve never known because of decisions we made that basically threw the stones that took out two (or more) at a time? Indeed, how much time have we spent walking the paths we’ve chosen that only left us holding hearts all but frozen in either anger or agony over our realizing that they only left us both lost and entirely unaware of what all was lost because of it?

Truly, what all have we lost that were those birds that we left either unchosen in bushes thanks to the one we chose to hold in our hands or those many we’ve butchered thinking them only distractions that we needed to get out of our way so we could continue on our way?

To where?

To here, wherever your particular here may be. And that’s because, well, where we are is the only place we can be whenever we’re there wherever our here currently has us.

But my question is where all could we have gone had we not gone for so long down those paths that ended up proving paved in only regret, and too, what all would have gone far better than whatever it was that’s now left all of us holding and knowing all the regret that we do?

Regret being the bird that just keeps circling overhead, somewhat signifying that perhaps we too are just as dead as the many opportunities we’ve failed and forsaken along the way of a life spent chasing what’s sadly proven only a mirage rather than an oasis.

I mean, let’s face it, so much of what we’ve chosen to do does indeed hold no water. So much of what we’ve chosen to believe has only proven to be the hollowest of thing, an emptiness unlike any other. So many of our choices have become to us but resounding voices sounding the silence of so many alarms we didn’t hear back when we didn’t want to hear anything other than our own hearts telling us how great it would be to get where they wanted us to go and how we’d only get there even quicker should we just get going and worry not about the whether.

What whether?

All those no longer waiting for us to find out in what are now choices we didn’t even consider. The whether through which we didn’t wonder because we didn’t care. The whether we never stopped to measure as rather we were sure that the path we chose and the choices we’ve made ever since as we walked proud upon it were the best choices possible. The whether that we didn’t want to worry about because we were just sure that it would all work out.

Because surely we’re not powerful enough to ruin God’s plans for us.

Even though we’ve left so many of them either hidden in bushes or hurt in ditches thanks to our either ignoring them in preference of the idols that are so often our ideas that we either hold in our hands or can’t wait to get our hands on or just decided to throw a bunch of stones at trying to get them to leave us alone so that we never have to worry about our lack of willingness to wonder as to whether or not we should have chosen all the paths now frozen in a regret that never gives way or even if we should be doing whatever it is that we’re still doing now.

Which, given our tendency toward so doing, is probably still digging broken cisterns that have no concerns as to all the leaks and losses that we’re not willing to look for.

Instead we just keep plowing ahead leaving for dead every decision we don’t want to make or don’t think we need to make or think we’ve already made the very best we could and thus that, again, it’ll all work out jolly good and we needn’t then really waste any time stopping to wonder why it’s not really working out all that well as of yet.

Relax, we’ll get there!

Where?

Well, only wherever we determine to end up because, sadly, that seems just about the only place we’re ever really willing to go.

Meaning then that all we’ll ever know is whatever little we allow ourselves to learn along the way. Which, again just being honest, probably ain’t gonna be too awful much seeing as how most of us are still pretty convinced that we know what we’re doing and that eventually these cisterns that we’ve chosen to concern ourselves with will in fact start filling with the water that is our every want and wish and win.

And oh, we’ll have to throw a great big party then!

When?

Not sure yet as the water isn’t really adding up all that fast. But it will! Just you wait. It’ll fill so full that we’ll finally look and feel not the fools who’ve chosen to rely on our own tools and tantrums to try and turn a sieve into a pool.

The sieve being ourselves thanks to the souls we’ve sold trying to hold whatever it is that we have in fact held and that not in our hands but rather in our hearts that we still can’t even seem to start to see are in fact so stone-like that we know next to nothing of life, how to live it, what to live it for nor then why all we’ve chosen to store only continues to rot inside what is again a regret that never goes away.

Maybe it will someday.

Maybe someday we’ll finally find that kind of life in which we are able to do only everything we want to and never feel bad about it. Maybe we will accomplish the projects we’ve been working on and, yeah, perhaps they’ll prove unquestionably better than all the others that didn’t get so much, if any, of our time, attention, intention. Maybe we’ll even end up strolling up to Heaven with so much having been accomplished that God looks at us and is just blown away by all we did in all those years spent brushing Him off.

Maybe the birds we’ve left in the bushes really weren’t any better than the ones we’ve held in our hands. Maybe all the other birds we’ve killed by throwing the single stone that is our heart that has always known what it was doing and that we were doing well to follow its lead, maybe they weren’t anything we need. Maybe we’ve not made any mistakes. Maybe our cisterns don’t have any leaks.

Maybe our lives are going far better thanks to our living them without anyone or anything, God and His will included, getting in our way and slowing up progress on our pride pretending it can prove that we know better than He ever could.

Maybe we do.

But where’s the proof?

What have we inside the many varied outcomes we’ve found in our lives that proves unequivocally that we really did know better than He? I mean, truly, all of us have done all sorts of stuff clearly going against Him. All of us have turned a million times and chosen to run from Him. We’ve all played every part in the Bible from Moses doubting that we could do the job He’s asked us to do to Jonah just running away when he didn’t see any point in even trying to accomplish the task to even Elijah hiding in a cave because he was afraid that doing as God had called him to do would cost him his life.

We’ve played the prodigal son, the lost sheep, the role of Job convinced we were righteous and that too of all his friends who couldn’t prove that he wasn’t. We’ve even been both sides of David in that at times we’ve toed the line and stood up for what was right, throwing stones for a good purpose, and yet so too that time he sent Uriah to the frontlines to ensure he’d lose his life so that David could take Bathsheba as his wife.

All choices chosen as we all remain all but faithfully frozen to this idea that is this ideal that is an idol that has us convinced that we know what we’re doing and that, obviously even worse, we’re somehow always justified in doing it.

Friends, we’re losing it!

We’re missing it. We’re mistaking it. We’re forsaking it.

We’re forsaking Him!

Every single time that we turn aside to the right or the left or the past or the future or the plans we’ve made or the dreams we’ve had or the memories we love or the worries we want always only to run from, it’s all our choosing to continue ahead thinking that we know what we’re doing inside what have long been seen as only our lives in which it’s only our minds that never ever lie. That our hearts wouldn’t ever lead us astray. That everything we do and all of what we say is perfectly okay.

It isn’t.

In fact, truth is that one day we’re all going to look up from these holes we’ve dug both for and in ourselves and realize that we’re were both entirely wrong to have picked up the shovel that is our selfish stupidity and that we’re by then so very empty that we have not even any hope left.

All because we’ve become convinced that hope exists inside ourselves and all we want, all we do, all we hope to someday be.

Friends, hope has nothing to do with you and me as it only ever asks that we move on from where we are as who we’ve become thanks to doing all the dumb stuff we’ve come to do.

Hope is held everywhere that we aren’t.

And yet we all go on living as if all the stuff we’re holding is hope itself. Even the stones we throw trying to kill two birds at once, that’s a hope we have because, well, we just like life like that. We love the idea that has us believing that we can accomplish so many things with so little effort needed. But we can’t. All we can prove to accomplish in excess is making mistakes. Doing wrong. Messing stuff up. Saying things we shouldn’t, doing things we shouldn’t.

We are absolute masters at that!

But friends, that doesn’t mean anything that we seem still able to think it might. Because, instead, all that it’s ever going to accomplish in life is just each of us standing proud beside a broken cistern that fills not with water but only every missed opportunity and forsaken blessing we’ve ever been given.

That’s all we’re doing.

We’ve chosen for this approach to life in which we think that we’re all that matters, that we’re the only ones who know what’s best for us, that we alone can find our own way to those lives that are in fact for our best.

We can’t.

And that’s because we already don’t know how lost we are nor any fraction of how much we’ve lost because of it. We don’t know the life we’ve not lived. We don’t know the outcomes of the choices we didn’t make, the chances we didn’t take, the changes we refused to believe we might really need. All because all along we’ve all just gone along following only our own hearts toward whatever wants they’ve happened to want.

Never once stopping to wonder whether or not our hearts might be deceptive. Never once stopping to ask why our heads never seem to ever consider anything other than all that we want. Never stopping to look back over all the choices we’ve made and all the mistakes they became. Never stopping to reconsider if maybe we should be seeing our stories holding a little more water than they do.

Never stopping to worry about all the water we’ve come to lose inside the life that most still don’t seem to understand we’re all going to lose.

All because we don’t want to. We don’t want to wonder whether or not we’ve gotten anything wrong. We don’t want to worry about all the things we’ve missed. We don’t want to admit all the things we’ve lost, time perhaps the most grievous of all.

And why is that?

Because we can’t get it back!

Rather time will stand up to testify to all that we’ve willingly given it to.

And, well, the sad truth is that we’ve unfortunately given most to only what is digging out cisterns with no concerns as to much if anything that we’re doing, saying, thinking, buying, believing, becoming, not becoming, not finding, not following, only losing, only missing, only mistaking.

Only messing up.

Just like every other time before in which we could have chosen to follow God and yet chose instead to forsake that opportunity, in fact something we’ve all done so much that we’ve left them in stacks of two thanks to all the stones we’ve thrown along the way running away from all He created us to be.

Thankfully He’s given us an entire book outlining all the lies we’ve believed and all the mistakes we’ve made in life because of it. But sadly it seems that we’ve not much time to spend on reading seeing as how we’re all so busy still working on what is a way of life that will never hold water. A way of life that will never accomplish anything that matters. A way of life in which all we seek to flatter is only ourselves and that with cages and bars and cells that we just can’t see thanks to hearts that remain stone like and thus so blind that they can’t see anything we don’t want to admit is there.

Promise is that one day we will.

Question is will that day catch us by surprise as it comes while we’re still pouring our lives into our plans, our preferences, our priorities, our opinions?

Or will we have, by then, chosen in humility to chalk ‘our way’ up as a loss and opted from then on to walk not our own way but rather following behind He who is the Way?

The simple fact is that we’ve all already done the first. Seems then that the only hope that’s left for us is that we finally find that we’re dying of thirst thanks to our cisterns remaining worthless, a hope that would inspire in us a willingness to seek for He who is the Living Water.

Again, something inside keeps telling me that we’re missing something, and that it’s the same something that’s caused us to miss so much along the way.

And that’s something I want to change, even if it means that I have to change first.

For my broken cistern has proven a heart equally shattered. And, well, that’s just no way to live life.

Especially if we hope to be given a new one at the end of this one.

One that’s hopefully less empty then.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold