Day 4150 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Romans 3:13 NIV

gives up the grave

Only not that into which we’re all now called to come and down our lives lay but rather they amongst whom we walk who’ve always it seems something to say about the way in which we play what is this hand that we’ve made into this way in which we’ve now nothing to say unto He who is the One who went before and asks us to follow behind. Indeed, among this descent into madness in which He’s made me alive and makes me that still further every moment I find that I feel increasingly uninclined to listen to the thoughts and attitudes of various hearts which are clearly deceived and minds too then falling apart.

A disinterest which is so very deep already and yet somehow deepens only at each day’s start.

And that because this world hits us right in the face every single morning with what has become such a boring bearing of weights over which we should have never come unto this worry that we might really need to carry. Every hour we’re handed unto the power of such poison as popularity and politics and the pitiable pride upon which both and their like rely. By the minute we’re made to muddle through a huddle of horror and heartbreak streaming from every screen we’re shown and every soul which lives only within them.

And I hate it.

I hate it all. I loathe this life that we’ve all agreed to live. And that’s simply because I see increasingly less life within. Rather it’s all just drying out and disintegrating thanks to our various disagreements and divisions and overall dissatisfaction with the fact that we’re even living. Truly, anymore it honestly seems as if most folks would be far happier if one of us weren’t here. Now as to whether it’s the one or the other is a matter of probably plenty of debate.

But the fact seems not to change as most days seem to find us only getting in one another’s way as we each go our separate toward whatever it is that we seem to assume matters most. Which is itself a decision we enjoy determining all by ourselves. And that because we’ve become so selfish, all of us, that all of us feel it almost this obligation to always assume that all that we do is right and thus that any who live not our lives are then wrong.

And we feel it our duty to hold them personally accountable for what we feel are lives pathetic and pitiable.

Probably because so many planks remain in place that few if any can see they set above mouths which are empty graves which feed forth lies that speak not life unto those who hear it but rather unto the opposite. Yes, we’ve become these most unfortunate of misfits in that we live only to twist all that we say so as to always ensure that it either pleases they who hear, living to soothe itching ears, or rather to belittle the same as we’ve too come to believe that we’re here to half the time argue and bicker all the time.

Or at least that’s how we’ve chosen to live these lives.

Indeed, there are some, and I can think of many, who very rarely seem to have anything good to say. Few who have any honesty to share. Seldom will we hear of anyone who speaks in true happiness or genuine gratitude. Even more rarely will you see someone who just looks happy. Instead what we so often see and even more frequently hear is this frequency of the fallen who exist anymore so sullen and shameful that, having accepted that as the outcome of their very existence, exist now to simply insist it unto all the rest so that at least they’re not alone in their lives amess.

Yes, something is very clearly amiss amongst this maze of man, a fall so fully noticeable that it takes not eyes to see it nor even ears to hear.

Somedays we can all but feel these things in our bones as there’s just anymore this generalized angst and anger that leaves everyone a stranger who feels then ever the danger that is thus undesirable to even be around.

And so we continue to divide ourselves, our souls, our cities and societies asunder as we find, apparently, more to be gained in our collectively going under having all of us fallen under the greatest deception ever designed. And that is that we too could be as gods who then have not merely the power, not only the authority, but the (apparently) self-given duty to divulge the very direction in which we think everyone else should go as it seems that we know what’s best not only for us but for everyone else around us as well.

And, well, it just wouldn’t then be the loving thing to do should we not do what we feel at this point all but morally obligated to which is done in such things as sentences won which pronounce daily, hourly even the sentencing of those around us to lives of the hard labor of their hearing of all the things we think they’re doing wrong, what else they could do that would be better, why they’re idiots and we their savior.

Indeed, we all speak as if we house the every very point and purpose of life itself inside. Speaking always unto the disappointments and disqualifications found or felt in the lives of those whom we feel we’ve the need always to fix, always to guide, always to come alongside and help them to live their lives however we see fit. Yes, we feel as though we need everyone else to fit what we’ve come to make our lives of the mold to be.

Wanting everyone else to be like you, who I’ve wanted to be like me.

But you see, this cannot work like that because none of this does work like that.

And why is that?

Context my friends:

“There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands; there is no one who seeks God. All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one. Their throats are open graves; their tongues practice deceit. The poison of vipers is on their lips. Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood; ruin and misery mark their ways, and the way of peace they do not know. There is no fear of God before their eyes.”

It’s all been most helpfully supplied right there before our eyes in Romans 3. Granted, Romans 3 itself exists amongst the other 15 chapters of the book, which is itself but one of the total 66 which make up the Hebrew Bible that, well, very few ever read and even fewer seem at all interested in trying to understand. And I say that not as a condemnation, a judgement, a vengeful statement at all as I myself spent my entire life up until about the time that I was twenty something having never read it either.

But once you do, and once you then from there truly apply your heart to seeking for the understanding given us within, man, everything changes.

Everything.

But one of the most glaring is that it opens your eyes to see the sheer distance that measures what is this downfall of humanity and how it all only falls further all the time. Every single day something new is brought to mind that feels a literal crime against humanity as inside of every single day there’s anymore less and less humility, less and less morality, less and less modesty, less honesty, less, well, humanity.

Indeed, we are losing ourselves inside what is this life that sells us this idea that we’re each here to be but the shiniest of all shining examples of how best to live a life.

And we’re all increasingly willing to fight whenever another proves of the too increasing audacity to tell us otherwise.

Which is something we do all the time as even we fight over such pointless matters as to whether or not you should sharpen a new lawn mower blade in order to remove the edge’s layer of paint and what brand of sharpening rig is the best to buy.

Granted, that’s a very specific example taken from my own life as I have a lawn mowing business and I am trying to always learn how to do my very best at it.

But the point remains. And that is that we argue about everything. Truly, I don’t think that within this age of almost all things done virtually through lives lived through technology there exists a single comment section on any post, video, blog, article or product review that doesn’t bring into view our almost instinctual need to argue.

Everything is a fight in this way of life we’ve come to live. I mean we even argue about what is and is not love.

Basically missing the point then right from the start.

And why?

Because we’ve fallen apart in what are lives in which we each think that we’re the only ones who have it all together. That we’re each the only ones who have it all figured. We’re the ones who know what we’re doing, and even more often, what everyone else should be doing too. And this we prove via only either praise and applause offered unto those rare cases in which we find faces that look the way we want them to thanks to their living their lives like we think they should or anger and hatred given endlessly unto those we find living differently.

We basically hate everyone who doesn’t do whatever it is that we think they should, and because we see ourselves as gods, even now exist to tell them to.

And now you’d think that we’d be able to see the glaring issue within this approach to living as it can only ever prevent us from doing so decently as instead it only invites a furthered decay into every form of deception and insanity that we can so obviously learn to enjoy. But alas no, rather it seems as though we’re still able to see only the specks through our planks.

Using our sight to see all the things that we don’t like that we thus then feel the need to make right even it means treating one another so very wrong as to speak death unto the decisions, directions, dreams even of those around us.

Truly, it seems as if we mind not tearing apart everything and everyone in our seeking always to build everything and everyone into whatever it is that we want for all of it to be.

And yet all we seem to say is that we don’t like anything or anyone.

Even reaching the point in our pursuit of pride in which some are actually just coming right out and saying it.

Indeed, we’ve taken such the turn away from God that we spend most of our days learning how to hate those around us so much that, as Paul presents here, our throats are open graves. That’s always been one of the single most vivid images in all of Scripture. Just brings to mind this image of mouths all snarled and scary as they sit upon faces just seething and angry as they spew this hatred and disappointment and disapproval.

Just these lips launching weapons of war within words aimed at making someone else feel bad simply because of who they are being something other than whatever it is that we want them to be.

Yes, down here we seem to actually enjoy this way in which we exist only to crush dreams and denounce ideas and mock those who dare make believe in something better. We literally belittle those who are trying to improve as if they’re then only losers who aren’t already good enough.

And we never get enough.

We never find our fill of this thrill that is tearing one another apart. We never tire of trying to turn those around us into whatever it is that we think they should be. We never seem to reach the finish of our interest in fighting, in arguing, in using the both in a life spent thinking we’re here only to keep on proving why our way is better than that of everyone else. That we know more than they do, have more than they have, are capable of more than they are.

All lies believed because we’ve all given up on our own trying to be better and now exist only to pull every brother and sister back down to our level so that we needn’t feel as if we need to try anymore.

For to us it’s better if we can make everyone else as miserable as we’ve chosen to remain than seeking for the change that would allow us to not feel so miserable any longer.

And so rather than speaking life in words spoken in love, in truth, in the honesty of a true humility that wants only for the mutual upbuilding of those around us, no, no instead we speak death. We pour forth disapproval and are fluent in disappointment. We allow our lips to learn the language of lies and deception so that we can always happen to have something to give unto the honor of those we agree with or unto the horror and hurting of those who don’t agree with us.

Yes, we’ve taught our tongues to enjoy only the taste of torment and tragedy, seeking endlessly the animosity in which we’ve all but begun to breathe.

And thus we now exist as but a sea of swirling hatred and constant argument and they over matters so trivial that it would truly make saying nothing the best thing we could do. And in fact that used to be something we’d remind ourselves and one another of from time to time. For there was this adage that asked us to not saying anything if we hadn’t anything good to say.

Nowadays though within this vastly sadder version of life we’ve come to know we’ve instead come to think that if we haven’t anything good to say we should say it as loud as we can and that everywhere we might. Social media the stage we all seem to like as even getting on there to literally only post these daily writings leaves me fighting all over again as to why everyone just seems so intent to continue spreading their hate-based nonsense.

Honestly, how is it helping to always share something that brings not hope or healing but rather only reveals hatred and unhappiness?

I’d ask if we’d forgotten the part of the Bible which asks that we allow no unwholesome talk to escape from our mouths but rather only that which is useful for the mutual edification that we’ve apparently also forgotten that we’re all supposed to be seeking.

But I think it pretty obvious that you can’t really forget what you’ve clearly never known.

And, well, the sad reality is that we’ve all been speaking in filth and foulness for as long as we could talk. We’ve spoken against so many things and so many others thinking that we knew better. And maybe we did. Maybe we do. Indeed, there are things that we should speak out against and stand up for. But friends, speaking always against only those around us and standing only upon platforms of hatred and division and foul language and petty judgement, it ain’t helping nay a one of us!

It’s only making life here worse than it already is.

And why is it so bad here? Because of sin. Sin is death. Sin hates life. Sin inspires us all to waste our lives doing only what’s wrong whilst never caring to consider whether or not it’s right. And, well, the mouth speaks then what the heart is full of. And our having each desired to fill our hearts past full of filth and violence and every other darkness, such then is all we have to offer whenever we unfortunately feel the need to open our mouths to say something.

Which, in this again incredibly digital age in which we all carry in our pockets rockets that allow us to share every thought we have without having to slow down or think it out, it’s all the time. This world is so loud anymore. There’s this endless chorus of those choosing always to think they have to say everything they think. And sure, that would be great if even half of it were helpful.

It isn’t.

Rather it’s mostly only harmful, detrimental, derogatory or just plain dirty. Honestly, can’t even watch a guy mowing a yard on youtube without his having decided to include a song playing the background with foul language in it!

What’s happened to us?

Well, truth is that we’ve allowed in so much death and filth and foulness that the same are unfortunately then just about all we have to share.

And, well, we live in a world that offers us countless platforms upon which we exist to share everything we feel the need to say.

And thus we do exist as if but empty grave who both consume the news and then regurgitate only our every opinion about it.

As if all of it might actually matter!

Again, it doesn’t.

Because, if it doesn’t help us help someone, allow us to better something, inspire us to better ourselves and our surrounding somehow, then it’s simply not needed. In fact, it’s probably amazingly harmful. And again, you’d think we’d be able to see it inside a world growing increasingly violent and hateful. But somehow we can’t. Somehow we miss it.

Probably because we’re all always talking so much that we can’t hear anything but our every thought begging to be let out so that it can hopefully find some agreement.

Because that’s apparently why we’re here. To be both agreed with and to stand against everything and everyone that we ourselves don’t agree with.

Thus we exist as tombs of both appeasement and argument, offering always to everyone only one or the other as is determined by our pride’s opinions and preferences. Both of which can be helpful but never when they’re so used to condemn or vilify as they so often are anymore.

Friends, all I’m saying is that not only can we do better but it’s actually probably far easier than we’d ever imagine. How? Stop being a jerk. Stop letting your mouth do only the work of the devil. Stop picking the lazy words that inspire kids to learn how to cuss. Stop listening to songs that only fill your hearts with more darkness. Stop consuming content that keeps you from being content in and with only godliness. Stop doing, saying, thinking anything and everything that so clearly lacks holiness.

Rather seek and speak only that which helps, that which heals, that which holds some semblance of light and life as without the both we’ll never have the either.

Again, it shouldn’t be hard to both want better and then determine only to try and do always the same.

Seems we just need a channel change if anything else is ever to.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold