Day 4146 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Psalm 120:6 NIV

breaks with belonging

Here at least. And indeed, this, to me it seems, is perhaps the scene I’ve seen become something of a show that continues to go on and on inspiring me to do the same but only in the opposite direction. And this is because I daily become more and more aware as to the thoughts and attitudes of where we are. I see every day more than plenty of things that I honestly do not think are as they ought to be, aren’t what they ought to be, things said and done then by people who care not to be what they ought to want to be.

No, daily in this world I see only less reason to continue thinking that I’m supposed to belong here.

And as of 38, well, I’ve all but run out of reasons to ever still think I might even like to someday try again. Rather I’ve found myself thinking more and more as to the elsewhere that we’ve all been called to come and should honestly hope to be. Every single day I have at least one moment in which I find myself longing to just go home. To be done with all this. To leave everything behind and head off into the sky where I’m told that one day my Savior will hold me and me Him and from then we’ll move on to wherever everything better has always been.

What’s hard is that I used to think it could be here. Maybe not fully as this world’s ending and so too then every life lived within and there’s just then nothing that can truly prove all that perfect in what’s promised a place so impermanent. But still, I always reached for that hope that in this world was something to know of whatever better is. That there could come a day in which at least a little more of everything was at least kind of close to not coming up so short or falling so fully apart.

Yeah, I used to be pretty convinced that we could find our way out of this mess that we’ve gotten ourselves into.

But then I realized the ridiculousness of that idea.

For how can those who’ve unwittingly created the problem be then the same as they who willingly work to fix it? I mean, if we’re still so clearly a people who know not what we’re doing, a fact we keep proving in our doing some new and exciting version of nothing every single day, then how are we ever supposed to be the ones that we’re ever supposed to trust to overcome all we’ve undermined?

And by undermined I mean under-mind(ed).

Because the simple truth as to just about everything that we do is that we do it without thinking about it. Maybe that’s partly because we’ve become quite convinced that we do know what we’re doing despite all the hope and joy and peace that we somehow manage to keep on losing. Could be because we’ve a sea of what is a society that is amazingly willing to always come alongside us and convince us that we’re doing well in regard to whatever we’re doing, a lie they may honestly not know they’re telling seeing as how, again, none of us know what we’re doing.

Or perhaps it’s simply because we’ve all but basically given up in regard to even such natural inclinations as thought, thinking and reason as is so easily proven in the sheer number of people who show no fear whatever in regard to all this ai nonsense.

Indeed, we’ve opted to allow computers and algorithms to do our thinking, our choosing, our growing, our deciding. They’re doing our everything!

Even telling us what to do.

And daily we watch a world just elate to play along.

And that’s why I can’t go along anymore. That’s why I long for home anymore. That’s why I literally feel every morning almost sick to my stomach when I open my eyes and realize that I’m still here. It’s because life here’s become something of this burden that’s borne inside walking beside what is such a swelling disbelief in what seems anymore just about the sum of everything. Truly, it’s as if everyone has just decided that they’re done trying, done thinking, honestly all but done living.

Rather most folks seem entirely content to just exist. To be whatever it is they’ve already become. To stay wherever it is that they’ve already reached. To reach for nothing of everything better as it’s widely considered that there’s still a best life to live here.

And yeah, I know that I lampoon that idiocy all the time. But friends, that’s simply because I believe it one of the biggest lies ever told unto mankind. I honestly consider it to be a cancer that is keeping us centered in what is the very center of sin. It’s a consideration that causes us only to contemplate within what are these thoughts of things we like and those we don’t. It keeps us leaning on us, looking to us, learning from those who buy this nonsense to help us make sense of it.

And what scares me is that it sure seems as if more and more of those around me are making it make sense!

How is that?

How are people so in love with this idea that there’s some best version of life for them to live in what is the one place that we’ll all live life the least?

If not because most still don’t understand that?

And indeed, I believe that that’s exactly where the problem lies. It’s in this lie that has had us all believing that this is life. Granted, it is a life. But what I’ve come to find that I don’t understand about that take on this journey is that life is supposed to live. And yet here we all die! And yet there are even those who are alive who are working overtime and spending millions, billions perhaps on trying to override that trap and prove of an ability to overrule the grave’s inevitability.

Yet as of today there’ve been but three who the inside of a tomb they did not see.

3!

Just for comparison’s sake, the current world population is estimated at roughly 8.3 billion. Written out that’s 8,300,000,000. And 3 is 3.61445783 x 10^-8% of 8.3 billion. And no, I don’t even have any foggy idea as to how to even say that let alone understand it. And yet that 8.3 billion, that’s just now, it doesn’t include the billions, the trillions who’ve already left.

Three are all who’ve not died.

Friends, those aren’t odds that anyone should like. And yet nearly everyone today seems to enjoy this approach to life in which they spend all their time allowing whatever’s left of their mind to determine how best to live their life in an accordance with only everything that everyone else is doing, wanting, winning. Never seemingly realizing that looking to a world and all that’s held within to form the outermost expectation of all that we can hope for in regard to a life only then enslaves our lives to being lived on this side of what is a grave that, unless we manage to somehow prove worthy of being the 4th, we’re not going to miss our impending appointment with.

Granted, there is that chance and it sure does seem as if most folks in it do believe.

I just can’t anymore.

In fact, every day I seem to love more and more the promise that I will die. In truth, there are a growing number of days in which, as I said a couple paragraphs ago, I’m legitimately disappointed that I haven’t yet. And no, it’s not because I’m suicidal. Just not happy. Just unsettled. Just angry and upset and heartbroken because of what we’ve allowed to become of this world and thus too our lives being lived within it. I can’t take seeing it, hearing it anymore.

It’s all utterly without reason and rhyme.

And yet every day I walk beside all these people who seem to have managed to figure out some way to make it make sense to keep on living this way. And that way is according to this idea that this world is the best place to make ourselves at home. That we both can feel as if we belong here but so too that since we can thus we should. It’s like that line from Jurassic Park. “Yeah, but your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should.”

Rather they, we, just decided that since we thought we could then we may as well try everything we can think of to prove that we can.

Never once stopping to reconsider what sense it makes to so confine our lives to the place in which the one promise that we all have left is just death.

And taxes. But it’s not April and we’re past that for the year and nobody ever feels the need to think, let alone talk, about taxes until at least January 31st when they start sending out the paperwork that we need to fill out the forms and file the return hoping we get something back.

Still waiting on mine in fact and, well, call me impatient but I’d really like by $17 thank you very much!

Anyway, the point is that we are promised to expire. And sadly what we’ve all chosen to experience along the way but a life in which we live for everything we can’t take with us whenever we go wherever we will. And yeah, that is a whole ‘nother topic of rather contentious debate as there are folks who believe in all kinds of things that may or may not happen when we die.

Alas, sadly it seems as though most who are still alive are plenty content to spend said lives living in what is this sort of unrest that I again just cannot understand.

I am starting to believe that there may be very little legitimacy, authenticity, actuality to the reality that we’re shown. In fact I think we’re being shown so much of what we are because the powers that be want only for you and me to be locked inside this sort of hatred and animosity from which it’s starting to seem there may be no returning. Yes, I am becoming convinced that everything from mainstream media to the social media I despise even more, it may all be nothing more than some twisted psychological testing aimed to keep us so utterly distracted and indifferent to anything and everyone that all we do is just stare at screens and never once see that life’s passing us by.

Problem is that it’s not passing me by anymore. Rather in recent years God’s helped me to realize that life is worth living. That I have a purpose for being here. That I’ve work to do, something worth being done. And yet that it’s nothing that has anything to do with everything that it seems nearly everyone else is worried about. Truly, when I first started this journey of writing these posts every day, I, like everyone else would be and probably still is, I was so affixed to the social media setup that I thought in terms of likes and followers.

Thankfully the Lord helped me to move on from that pitiable measure of importance as, well, if I hadn’t then my still seeing but one or two comments and pretty much the same number of likes on every single one of these would probably still have me rethinking the sheer amount of time and effort and hope that I pour unto these pages.

Yeah, if I still thought like the world, I’d have probably quit this a long time ago, gotten to sleep in instead of getting up at 6:30 so that I can spend 2+ hours working on this deal.

But I’d have also missed all the things He’s helped me to realize within all these thoughts that I get to share with however few ever care to care. I’d have never realized that there’s another approach to life. I’d have never realized that the version of life that most folks are living is as empty as it seems to be to me. I’d have never realized all the things that I was doing, am sadly doing still that are in fact as empty and worthless as so much of what I seeing going on in the world around me.

Yes, if I still thought like the world and wanted to belong within the same, well then I’d have missed so many amazing opportunities to change that I have instead taken quite full advantage of unto what has become a life so much better than whatever that was that I used to live back when I did all that I cannot tolerate the idea of doing again.

I hate who I used to be, hate him so much in fact that I’ve gone to some rather precarious extremes to make sure that he doesn’t bother me anymore.

But what does bother is seeing a world continue to refuse the same healing. That continues turning away from the same hope. That manages still to make every single day continue to go as the day just prior went. And, well, it wasn’t good. Definitely wasn’t best. Rather every day anymore is one in which there’s some horror or heartbreak. There’s always some headline that makes us angry or a post on facechat that leaves us seething until we take to the comment section and make sure our opinion is heard.

Because that’s all that seems to matter to most anymore. It’s all opinions and preferences and posting them for all the world to see and hopefully agree with so that we can feel better justified, validated in our chosen stance upon some social concern that has literally no bearing nor offers any feasible benefit to life nor the fact that we’re at present actually living it.

Sadly I think it could be argued that what most folks are living isn’t life at all.

For if it were, well then where’s the peace? Where’s the hope? Where’s the joy, the purpose, the meaning?

Indeed, what does anything even mean anymore? We’ve opted for this outlook spent toward this outcome in which we’re all so divided and dumb that we live through our thumbs as they type angrily away at some virtual war being fought over who’s to blame for gas prices being so high and literacy rates plummeting so low.

Friends, do we honestly not yet know?

We’re to blame!

We’re the ones who chose this way. It was our hearts that plotted our course, a path we’ve willingly followed never apparently stopping long enough to realize that our hearts are liars and they’ve led us only to nowhere we should so want to be. Indeed, we are the ones who chose to discount such things as peace in preference of our hope to placate our pride continuing to believe that it knows best how to live a life. A life that I am amazed so many people are still living trying to find their best life.

Again, we can, at best, live a good life. A decent life. A life full of hope and happiness and joy and generosity and honesty and humility and morality and modesty and meaning.

But friends, ain’t nobody even trying for those anymore.

Rather everybody just seems to actually want to be unhappy. Seems like everyone wants to be at war. Seems like we literally cannot tolerate the boredom that is peace because in this place we’ve been taught that life is better fought over such trivial matters as popularity and politics than it ever could be for peace, for hope, for joy, for reason.

And we see this all the time.

Every single day within this life within this world is nothing but a fight. Someone’s always angry. Someone else stays upset. Our neighbor’s dogs won’t shut up at 3 in the morning and our bosses will be highly disappointed in us if we’re not there bright and early anyway.

What is this that we’ve come up with?

Honestly, please do spend some time at some point and really take a good look at your life and ask yourself if it’s anything that you ever wanted it to be. Is it even anything you want for it to be now? Does the life you live offer you anything in the way of peace, of hope, of the rest found in coming to know that no matter what happens here nor how bad society allows it all to become, we’ve somewhere else to be?

Is that something that you do believe or are you, like most, still lost inside of that lie that has so many so convinced that here there is some best life that you can live?

Friends, what can ever be best about a life lived within a world in which nobody wants peace anymore? What can be best about a life in which most folks live for only fun and fame? What can be best about this mess that we’ve made in which we’ve made God out to be nothing more than some imaginary friend believed in by they who most see as but a few freaks who are missing out on their best life because they don’t do whatever it is that everyone else has determined to?

Looking around at the sheer amount of unhappiness and unrest alive in this world, why would anyone want anything to do with everything that everyone has determined to?

Again, maybe it’s not so bad as so much of what we see sure seems to make it seem. But friends, while things may not be quite so bad as it so often seems, I don’t really see how anyone could make the argument that things are getting obviously better either.

In the end that argument isn’t for me to make nor then decide the winner of. I’m just a tired guy who didn’t get much sleep again and has another long day spent out in the hot sun ahead.

And yet what does it say that sweating my body dry and getting sunburnt and unreasonably dirty whilst walking 5-10 miles pushing a lawn mower through weeds sometimes up to my waist with plenty of dog waste lying hidden underneath is just about one of the only places that I manage to find any peace in this place?

All because it’s as far from the world as I can get while still being here within it.

No, I can’t take the way of life that so many have opted to live. Don’t understand the things that so many have come to love. Can’t make any sense out of society’s fascination with violence and unrest.

Just like this psalmist says, I think I too have lived too long among those who hate peace.

And maybe they don’t. But I sure don’t see all that many trying to find it anymore.

I am. But it doesn’t seem to be waiting to be found here other than in the hope that here I won’t be much longer because He is coming hopefully sooner rather than later as I just about can’t take much more of the madness!

#LeaveNoSoulUntold