Day 4140 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

2 Corinthians 5:1 NIV

delights in the dismantling

For there’s just this strange sort of something that begins to become what we come to believe was always there waiting for us to stop believing that seeing was the way to find it. Or that it was our efforts which would get us there to wherever it is that we’re going. Or that we’d find our power of some point or purpose along the way. Or that He needed us to have a say as to how the road goes and what does and doesn’t get to go along it with us. Or that it was even about us to begin with.

Because it isn’t.

And that’s perhaps the main thing that we need to have destroyed.

It’s this idea that has had all of us convinced that we’re more important than we are. This theory that we’ve such authority that we can both call and create, invent and that with intent, that our tents are our pride, our prize, our lives thus our own.

They’re not.

Alas we’ve fallen so in love with the idea that perhaps they could be that all we see are all these ways and worries in which we win these wars that are our wants that exist inside of things that only exist inside this world. We’ve given our faith, our fealty, our hope for fun and lust for friendship over to things that our own hands have made. We’ve become a people of such progress and production that daily we’re producing only everything that’s inducing what is a generalized stupor from which there’s no saving.

For when the delusion is designed by minds so deluded as to believe it has use, value, purpose, then said people who fashion said fractions will only find they fall for their own lies.

And we see this all the time.

Life here revolves around only our hands and hearts. We live our lives allowing wayward hearts to tell reaching hands whatever it is that we want them to reach for next. And there’s indeed always something else. There’s always another thing. Always some new invention with this express and explained intention of making our lives better, easier, more productive.

And whenever those things are there for the taking, we’ll take whatever chances we must in order to satiate our lasting lusts for the same.

For the overall understanding of life as we’ve all come to live it is that we should always be comfortable, feel safe, have fun and produce things that allow for the ongoing fulfillment of those things. And in short we’ve come to exist as mere production plants in which it’s every day only our own hands that we trust to hold what we’ve come to know as the life we want. And it’s one won within want.

That’s all we know.

It’s to want more. To desire something else. To gift our eyes to the ever-invading army of lies pouring from all of the lives that everyone else is living, each of them selling all these comforts and successes that we don’t have. Indeed, life here is nothing but comparison anymore, so much so that the rates of depression among the youth are skyrocketing as they’ve simply become convinced that their lives will never be as amazing as the lies they see constantly everyone else seemingly living.

It’s called social media and it’s become a cancer as it’s eating away at the heart of happiness and contentment.

We know so little of those things anymore. We’ve rather traded them for trips to the store to buy more of whatever it is that we’ve come to think we need so that we can get a little closer to living like someone else really isn’t. Indeed, we’ve crafted a delusion so demanding that daily we’re handing our every hope to only our always having what someone else already does.

Losing our lives in the lies of another has become our shared pursuit.

And it’s gone on so long that nobody really even seems to care anymore. We’ve just settled for whatever this is. Just last night I was talking to God about how much I miss a small life. A simple life I’ve chased now for years. Something so plain and ordinary that nothing of all that is is seen as anything welcome or wanted within it.

No, I want a life emptied of everything this world’s come to become because so too has it caused me to become someone I don’t ever want to be again.

And I have made great strides to unbecome what I had become.

Problem is that I can’t ever get close enough away from everything else that this world insists upon us every single day.

For every single day we’re all bombarded with things that we’re told we’re supposed to have or ought to want. We’re given morning by mourning these lists of lies and lives that we’re supposed to live and love. We’re endlessly offered the entire substance of something new, something fun, something exciting that would make the fact of our here existing a little more enjoyable.

But what if enjoyment were never the point or promise?

What if having fun the way we’ve come to insist we have it is but a violence committed against the kind He calls us to find?

What if the love we’ve learned as is always able to be lost is but lust in disguise designed inside lives that know not what love is nor what it’s for nor what He did?

Indeed, what if all we do is only ever done against He who is the Son who already did all we needed done?

One day we’re going to find out that such is so much the case that everything else that ever we did without Him being the reason why was only as grand a discounting of life that, if we’ve collected enough of them, we’ll be granted our desire to trade them in for a discontinuing of the same.

For anyone who doesn’t take up their cross and daily count all their life a loss upon the same is unworthy of Him who did the same for them.

His words, not mine.

His work, not ours.

His promise, not here.

His hope, not here either.

Rather His words and His work and His hope is the promise of a home that we’ve all had so little to do within regard to its being built that we still don’t have any idea as to where it is nor then how to find it. And I doubt very honestly that we’d try any harder even would we could. And I say that because we’ve become so comfortable here amidst all that we’ve amassed that the masses are somehow daily less amazed than ever before as to the basics of the Gospel’s basis.

In fact to most it remains only boring, offensive, foolish even.

For as discussed a bit yesterday, why would ever we want to leave everything we’ve come to want? Who in their right mind would opt for that life in which we lose what all we’ve learned to love? In truth, we don’t know how to live a life to lose. We don’t like to lose. We think that losing makes someone a loser and we don’t wish to be seen a loser in what remains a world still seemingly filled with both so much to want and thus the same to win.

Yes, this world has more to offer than any of us could ever see, feel, taste, accomplish, imagine.

And yet it’s still not endless.

Instead the truth is that everything either made by human hands or elsewise held inside the same, it’s all limited. It’s temporary, transient.

It’s transparent.

And yet we’ve endeavored to design ways in which to help us see it.

I think of time. Wind. Love even. All of these things are things which exist best, closest to their real meaning and purpose whenever they’re left sightless and unseen. And yet we’ve created watches and clocks that show us the number as to the measure of how far we are into a day, something that brings with it a fear of our always falling behind. We’ve invented all these flags and fans that show us the directions and power of the wind, blowing unto us a worry won within where we are and to whom we belong and what all is being blown away.

We’ve confined love to a matter made of material sold in jewelry stores and flower shops. It’s anymore nothing but chocolate and agreement.

Things settled for because we can see them.

Something we’ve chosen for in regard to everything because we feel safest whenever we can see first whatever it is that we’re trying to find as we know that should we see it then we shouldn’t fail to have it.

And Heaven doesn’t work like that.

The love of Him who is the Way there doesn’t work like that.

The wind in which He’s breathed His Word, the gentle whispers that follow along behind the storms and struggles of this life, it doesn’t work like that.

Rather they all work together to all but silently rip apart our every arrogance and ignorance. Slowly. Quietly. Calmly. Indeed, He’s been working on me for what’s now over 38 years. A work that’s taken so long because I’ve spent all but all of them working only against Him. Something all of us do inside of every day still as inside of every day still we seem to find something else to want in life. We seek endlessly for things to fill our eyes and flood our minds with mines to find and thus holes to dig.

And all of them in the only place we really can. And that inside of us who are inside this place in which we waste so much time, effort and interest upon only the seen substance of all that’s here beside us.

What of all that isn’t my friends?

What of all that we’ve not made? What of all that we’ve not yet then ruined? What of all we missed? What more might exist outside and high above every mess we’ve made and mistake we’ve found?

What more might we find if it weren’t still our hands and eyes getting always in the way within their asking to lead ours?

Indeed, why do we agree to let them lead the way anymore? Haven’t we already found and felt enough of the rough that they seek to assume is something we should want?

I know I have.

In fact I’ve had so much of what my eyes and hands have come to want that all I want anymore is just to leave. I want to go home. I want to be done with all we’ve done. I’m sick of seeing whatever this is that we’ve become. I’m heartbroken as to how badly we’ve broken what was a life that we were all given to live for everything better than everything that is. I just about can’t take it anymore.

Because more is all anyone wants. And yeah, that makes some sense I guess as, yeah, we are still alive and thus must be for a reason. But the problem is that the more most continue seeking is only made of things made by us. The more we want is the stuff we’ve made. It’s all a matter made of material and the money we have to make in order to afford our ability to have it.

How backwards have we become?

For we exist inside this constant struggle for material. We’re so fascinated by what we’ve made that we’re willing to give our bodies, our minds, our lives to working jobs we hate all so we can have the very things that another human has made or mined or cooked up inside of minds so cooked that we’re not merely burnt but we’re rapidly heading back to ash.

Why do we live this life like that?

Because the simple fact is that while our hands were made for holding, they’re attached to arms built for reaching. While our eyes are good at seeking, it’s our hearts that determine the finding. And while our minds are great at coming up with plenty of ideas that sound as if they’d make our lives better, it should always remain our souls that determine whether or not said ideas are worth the work and worry.

And yet anymore we’re all in such the hurry to have our best life just as fast as we can that we only see our hands for all they can hold, reaching only then for what we can see as it’s closest to us and too the most sure thing. We don’t reach for anything more anymore. We don’t seek for those things that we can’t see because we’ve become convinced they might be foolish as we might fail to find them. Our minds have even given up trying to come up with stuff for us to be.

Instead we just settle for what we think we can build.

And thus life’s become all about all of us just working daily away on what are our own little kingdoms made of mistakes we can’t see we’ve chosen to make and thus entire lives that we’ve determined to miss. All of them missed and mistaken simply because we couldn’t see any way to ever want anything other than whatever we’ve had, whoever we’ve been, wherever we’ve gone and how wrong it all went.

That’s why I’m done with it.

That’s why I’m content to live out the rest of my days writing these little posts, mowing a few yards, making my own meals, getting a bit of exercise and fresh air from time to time. I don’t care about anything else anymore as I’ve come to realize that everything else, everything that this world sells, it’s but a destruction in progress. It’s a lie invading the peace of all of us. It’s nothing but a distraction designed to ruin our lives by convincing us that something more than God and humility might matter.

And that couldn’t be further from the case as those two things accomplish everything that anyone could ever need.

Just God and humility.

A truth found in His Word telling us that godliness with contentment is great gain.

Proven in that it helps us see, feel, understand everything!

All by stripping away everything of the excess so as to help us come to terms with how all of this that we have made, it’s nothing but a barricade we’ve built to everything better.

Such as life, love, hope, a home above.

And I’m just tired of missing those things. I’m tired from worrying about all these other things. I am sick to my stomach, literally haven’t felt right in a really long time, and I’m convinced that it’s because I’ve allowed my life to be lived inside my hands and whatever they could hold or touch or convince me I want.

Yeah, I’m tired of wanting more things that some human has made.

I want to find what God created for us instead.

And maybe that makes me a fool. Maybe that’ll make my life here seem a failure. Maybe I’m a loser because I still live with my family and have a supremely tiny lawn mowing business that will never, ever earn enough money to buy a mansion as there’s no way I can make the millions cutting grass. Maybe I’m an idiot for determining to spend out the rest of my days trying every possible way to grow closer to Him whom I can’t see, hoping deeper by the day in the promise He gave of a place I can’t find on my own.

I don’t care.

Because Jesus and Heaven are the only hope I can seem to have anymore.

Nothing else makes any sense.

And so I delight in the dismantling of my life. I appreciate His tearing me down all the time. I marvel at the kind of mercy that’s willing to help me kill me!

Because I know that I don’t want to live the kind of life that I know for a fact that I had come to live. Because I know now, finally, that life doesn’t consist inside an abundance of possessions. Because I’ve had an abundance of possessions. I have now more than enough possessions.

And all I have despite all I have is just a longing to go home.

What does that say of everything I have here?

Look, it’s not that I’m not grateful for my life. It’s not that I don’t appreciate the opportunity to enjoy things. It’s not even that I don’t want anything else in this life as I do. It’s just that I’ve finally come to learn that everything we have, everything we make, everything we are in this place, it’s everything we will lose one day.

So let us then be impossibly careful as to just how important we allow anything here to become.

Because we should all know by now that we’ve a really bad habit of letting the things of this world become our only focus. And yeah, if we were, as many apparently believe still, only to ever live a life in this world, then sure, focusing so much on everything here and giving so much time and effort to everything we make or is made by another wouldn’t be such a bother.

Problem is that we don’t live here forever and thus everything we make is only everything we can’t take with us whenever we go toward wherever we aren’t yet.

So please stop allowing yourself to become so lost looking for life and all with which to fill one in what is a world that only promises to find all of them emptied.

We weren’t put here to build anything but rather to point to what He’s already built.

And we just can’t do that very well so long as our hands and hearts are full of or focused on only all that’s clearly breaking and already fading.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold