Day 4144 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

1 John 2:15 NIV

amends adoration

All because all along all we’ve learned is that all we need, all we should then want, it’s all apparently only right here. And indeed, in some sort of strange entirely unseen way it is because so too is He who is all we need. He is here. He is now. He is so close in fact that we hold what He sold His flesh, His very life, to call His home. For the Scripture tells us that He died to go before us so as to, once having reached that place where He came and preached we may now come, He sent back the Holy Spirit that would guide our lives into living in the light of that Way that loved us so much as to come down here and die for us.

Ridding Himself of the sinful flesh so that our sinful flesh might wonder what it might be like to live that life in which we wanted more than merely whatever pleased the surface and thus superficial.

Alas, the surface and superficial has literally been all we’ve known to care about for however long we’ve walked about the same. And indeed, this world is filled with things, and daily filling further, that ignite this signature fervor that has folks feeling as if they’re failing should they go forward not holding what this world tells us we should have if we’re to live lives that don’t look bad, feel bad, seem bad to the rest of those who’ve too been led to know what is that life in which this world is all we like.

So much of it liked so much that we love now only the same.

Yes, we’ve all made a way that is now entirely stained by the strain we’ve trained seeking to win what this world says we both can have and thus should want.

Want then becoming our main focus anymore.

And I know this to be true because I literally still daily peruse all that another’s determined that it’s okay for them to lose upon such places as ebay and marketplace. I actually login and check them every single day looking always for new things that I may want that another may only want to rid themselves and their lives of. And I manage to find something that catches my eye all the time.

Seemingly agreeing with the world telling me that empty, unfulfilled, unenjoyable remains my life.

But is it though?

Well, sadly yeah, that is the life that we know. It’s this journey spent mostly jaded as to the jaunting and juggling of what have become millions of priorities and pursuits and passions and possessions and opinions and even more options as, again, the world just continues making them. We are truly lost within this endless love for progression and production, always working away at the making of something that someone will come to want more than anything they have already.

Why do we do this? How do we continue to discount so easily all that is whatever it is that we already have in light of something else, even but one single thing, that we have not? What is this lust we’ve learned in this life we’ve lost to living it only to earn the wage that affords the cost of our coming to hold but one more thing that will mean nothing just as soon as we have it?

How can so much mean so much and so little all at once?

Again, it’s because we’re lost. Or rather that we’ve lost and that what is this war of worries as is waged in this world daily upon the substance of such things as wealth, health, happiness and hardship. These are the things that encompass nearly the entirety of our now all but normalized cognitive dissonance. And that is nothing but this unquietness, this unsettledness that we all have inside what are these minds in which we find only this everlasting desire to have more, to know more, to be more, see more, show more even.

Yes, we’ve created this mess out of life in which our lives are being lived as but showcases of worldly assumptions as to what all matters and what little doesn’t.

But friends, this question has been sneaking around my head unseen and unconsidered for I think perhaps longer than I know:

How can so much matter so little?

Because honestly, we’ve all seemingly bought into this belief in which almost everything means something, matters somehow, is worth at least a moment of our consideration if not years of our craving. I mean the list of things that we’ve learned to like and come to love, it only grows all the time. But how is that possible? Do we not know that we’ve but so much affection, appreciation, awe even to spread around? That we can’t actually enjoy everything? That there ought to be something or some things that we don’t like, don’t want, perhaps even hate the mere thought of?

Alas no, it seems that that this world doesn’t know. Rather every day we see everyone chasing everything as if their lives might actually depend upon their having it and holding it near. Daily we witness what is this fear of people failing to have all they’ve come to want so very bad that they willingly remain sad, mad until this thing they have. Truly, there is this general angst that it seems so many have because they’ve become convinced that their lives are bad simply because their lives do not have all they’ve come to believe will make them happy.

We’ve literally tied our happiness, our enjoyment of life, perhaps even the entire purpose of our having one with the ability to be happy built perfectly into it unto this endless list of stuff we want.

Daily then seeing only the empty places and hollow spaces in which we could probably fit what is but one more want.

And when sewn to our amazing level of impatience, well, what we’re all then left to fill said emptiness with is whatever happens to be close enough.

That’s what we’ve come to want. That’s what we’ve learned to love.

Only anything that’s close enough for our to have it.

Leaving then our every passion and thus pursuit to be taken through a world filled with more than plenty of things we can have, things that others do have, things that said others tell us will render our lives empty, meaningless, every other form of bad and sad until have them we’ve had.

Alas there’s a part that others don’t ever tell us. Sure, they always make a big deal out of this great deal they got on this great thing that makes their lives feel great. But they never have nearly as much to say as to the brevity of such enjoyment. They don’t talk quite so much about just how fast the fun manages to fade. Don’t really mention the amount of attention they once gave to getting whatever it is that they have that they now may not even remember they do.

All of us have those things. Again, as we talked about a while back, that’s why storage units exist.

It’s because we’ve come to exist in what is the endless pursuit of stuff. And it’s a pursuit taken in love and for the same as we all of us do only everything because we think there’s some kind of nearly divine payoff in the doing thereof. That there’s something in it for us. What you ask, (which we actually don’t)? Doesn’t matter! Because something else given us is something that we didn’t have around us before.

Indeed, to us, more is more.

And we can’t manage to see how lazy that is.

Probably because, if we did, then so too might we see just how foolish it is to seek a life lived fancily in luxury as is loved by all of humanity. Yes, our shared goal has always been to always know a kind of life that only goes so very well that we could maybe know nothing of want someday. That we could eventually find the way to have everything we’ve ever wanted and that when we did, well, we could just enjoy ourselves forever then on.

At least until we die and it all gets left behind.

But until then? Yeah, until then we could sure live it up if only we were finally surrounded by all we love.

But what then? What if we did manage to have all we’ve come to want, all we’ve thus come to love? For is not love the wanting of? Is it not a passionate pursuit of something that we thus deem worthy of such dire wanting? Isn’t it the dream of desire to hold near all we hold dear? Is not love the emotion we claim we know the most of?

And thus if we did come to have all we could love then wouldn’t we then lose love as we’d need want for nothing more?

Sadly all the time you’ll hear someone say that they love some thing. They love that new show that everyone’s talking about. They love the actress who plays the main part in it. They love the band that sings that song that plays in the opening scene it shows. They love listening to the radio on that station that plays that song and a bunch of others that they love too. Some people love watching the news or sharing the same. Some love eating food and certain restaurants more than others.

Some still dare to love others, albeit perhaps passively as there’s always that’s chance that they voted for that party that we don’t like or believe that idea that we don’t believe or love cheering for that sports team that we hate simply because they’re apparently the archrivals and thus most bitter of nemesis unto the team we love enough to spend our money to buy their stuff even though they know nothing of us.

Indeed, that’s what love’s become to us. It’s nothing more than this one-sided adoration of, well, pretty much everything and anything. Doesn’t honestly even seem to matter as all that means anything to anyone anymore is this most basic sense of belonging found apparently easily enough in logos and taglines.

Yeah, I spent a couple years of my life loving professional football so much that I said stuff like “Who Dat?”

Think I even had a sticker on my truck of that line and the logo of the team whose fans cheered it at every game.

Games I actually paid good money, or at least convinced my parents to, all so that I too could watch every game they played, having to pay because they weren’t our local team and thus sometimes wouldn’t be shown on local tv.

I tell you, the hoops they make you jump through to enjoy the things that they’ve convinced you to enjoy!

But that’s the ploy. That’s the play. That’s the lay of this life that we’ve all lain down at the foot of the alter of everything this world has to offer. It’s all about the attention and affluence. It’s the endless suggestions as to what all we’re missing that we’d probably love watching or reading or listening to. Yes, this world sells love behind paywalls and subscriptions and 4-day sales on the most popular site on the internet that sells things at cheaper prices if you’ll pay for a membership.

All of which we buy because we think we need it in our lives not knowing that in our lives we’ll probably eventually come to not want it anymore at which time it goes back online on shops like ebay and marketplace so that we can both get rid of what we don’t like anymore and too make some money to buy whatever it is that we’ve learned to love instead.

It’s a truly vicious cycle.

And oddly enough it’s our own stupidity that continues inspiring us to keep turning the pedals.

All because we live in a world that peddles enjoyment, excitement, meaning even as if it’s held inside of everything.

But again I ask, how can so much mean something?

How can more be more when more only takes away something from something else?

Why do we pay for storage units to store the junk we no longer want?

It’s because love doesn’t give up. Love doesn’t walk away. Love doesn’t sell what it loves on ebay. And, well, we’ve become convinced that we love our stuff. We love having stuff. We love wanting stuff. We love watching stuff, even if we don’t know why. Again, being completely honest and confessionary this fine Sunday morning, I spend every single night with my eyes glued to a screen watching endlessly a whole host of random videos on youtube.

Every

Single

Night

Because I’ve become convinced that it adds something to my life, and that simply because long ago I loved the opportunity we were given to have a computer that let us get online and on there find all these things that we’ve since learned to love.

Even things that rewired how we think of love into what is sadly lust.

Yes, we’ve lost the real meaning of love as it’s been replaced by lust, by want, by desire not to need but simply to have. And indeed, we anymore only love either whatever we already have or the idea of how much happier we’ll be once we have whatever more we still want.

And there you have it yet again!

Love is more. And more is love. And this is simply because we’ve learned to love more as there’s always more that we want. And that simply because this world offers us more every single day. Again, there’s always some new thing that someone else has come to want, will eventually come to have, and, once they do, they’ll then spend hours, days maybe telling everyone they know how much they love this new prize they’ve won in this life we live as if love is a prize to find hidden inside everything.

It isn’t.

Because we can’t love everything. It’s just not possible. No, in fact we have to hate. We need to hate. Love in fact cannot exist without hate!

Never think about that do we?

That we have to hate ourselves if we’re to love ourselves enough to change the parts of us that we don’t like. That we have to hate those things that risk the safety or happiness of those we love. That we have to hate those we love to spend so much time in the very same room and pay them no attention as we rather give our every second to scrolling through everything that isn’t them.

That we have to hate Him to continue assuming that there’s something to love within this world that so clearly hates Him.

So clearly in fact that this world killed Him.

How then can we love this world?

And no, I’m not talking about those in this world. For in fact we’re called to love others as He loves us. But even in this hate must exist as He hated our sinfulness so very much that He came unto us and called all of us unto repentance. He told us what we were doing wrong, how we were messing up in the hope that we’d change and stop doing the things He hates.

But anymore we hate nothing so much as to refuse it. Rather we remain entirely open to welcoming just about anything and everything into our lives should it be sold as something we need.

Lies all sold from the very same world that still sells their souls to doing the devil’s work.

How can that be possible? For us to both dance with the devil and yet claim we walk with Christ? How can we allow any desire for anything inside of our lives that exists inside of the place that insists still that He doesn’t exist at all? How can we love a world that hates even the mention of God, of truth, of morality, of even mere responsibility?

How can we even claim we love these lives we get to live when within them we’ve filled with so many contradictions and confusions and chaos and catastrophes?

I think the problem is that we’ve become convinced that since we’re here in a world in which there’s so much always around us that so too is it probably fairly harmless to enjoy at least some of it. And yeah, maybe some of it is fairly harmless. Maybe there is still good in this world. Perhaps there are things in this place that we should want, should enjoy, should be thankful that we’ve the ability and opportunity to have and to appreciate.

But the problem is that it seems as though our desire for enjoyment, for entertainment, for the amassing of material and the maintenance of the same, it’s all taken His place. Everything in and of this world has been allowed to become of more importance than God, of more interest than His Word, of even more joy than His will and more hope than His promise.

All because we’ve become convinced that more is more and thus, being always surrounded by more, we’ve also shifted our focus to this world and its more and our learning to love all that we can have here.

But again, love doesn’t exist without hate. And we know this in as simple an example of how God is love but He hates sin.

And, well, this world loves sin and still clearly hates Him.

How then do we think we can manage to make some kind of balance between loving the things of this world and not end up hating the One this world hates?

And no, maybe we don’t see it that way. Maybe we don’t see any problems in our many pursuits. Maybe we don’t see any harm in watching the stuff that they pour out in front of us. Maybe we don’t hear any issues within the songs we listen to. Maybe we don’t see any sin in our having so much of this world around us, within us.

But friends, there was that time in which we didn’t see other things as being as wrong as we hopefully see them now.

What are the chances we can’t be wrong again?

Look, all I’m saying is that maybe the line isn’t so fine as we’ve come to insist it drawn. Maybe there isn’t this widely perceived safety in our loving things that don’t add anything to our lives. Maybe we need to have more limits, more things that we don’t like, more things that we stand against.

Maybe we don’t know yet what love is.

And maybe that’s because we still seem to see love as mere infatuation. And sure, maybe it is.

Just can’t make that make sense seeing as how He who loved us and gave Himself for us did so to the worldly end of an empty grave.

Indeed, how is it that He who came to save us because He loves us did so by leaving everything this world has behind?

And why then would He call us to follow Him and do the same if the point or purpose of this life were to love the things in and of this world?

Again, it just doesn’t seem to work.

Leaves no room for hate.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold