Day 4179 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

1 Peter 1:13 NIV

takes ready’s call

For after all, it’s been ringing within the halls of our hearts since long before our lives here got their start or then us our start at living them however we have since then. And it just makes sense then that the same voice sending the same message via the same quiet undertones across what are phones that ring in only a tone that is only known to only our soul must then have something to say that so too hasn’t changed despite all the times we’ve tried to or felt we had to or simply didn’t even realize that we’d begun to.

The last being the most common of them all.

And that’s all because we’ve all become so entirely affixed to the fixing of our lives in what is a world that sells us both all the lies that tell us all about all the problems, failures, flaws and follies that they think we have and, oddly enough, all the tools and trophies with which to fix them. And, being the hopeless romantics that we are anymore, we’ve all become entirely willing to trust literally everything we are to the hope that everyone around us is truly looking out for our best interest.

An idea that seems continually justified within this life in which we find that the antidote to our common loss of hope is found in such vast supply as having fun or feeling good or making friends or shaking hands in what’s been a pledge to scratch another’s back so long as they promise they’ll be there whenever ours starts itching next. And for the most part they are. This world does indeed offer unto all this seemingly rather reliable retinue of what seem some fairly reliable things.

Even people will prove themselves pretty trustworthy.

So long as we entrust basically everything to them that is.

And this is something that we’ve all done. We’ve all of us spent a lot if not all of our lives thus far looking to the world around us and the people within it to help us determine what to do, where to go, who to be. All of us have learned quite impressively to go with the flow so as to stay in the know in regard to things this world thinks we should think as, well, it’s blatantly obvious that everyone here is seeking to live their very best life and so, yeah, since we are too it seems reasonable that we could rely on one another to seek for each other’s best.

For doing so would only help us all to know the best for which we’re all still looking.

But doesn’t the fact that we are all still looking kind of make you at least sort of interested in asking some questions?

Perhaps something like ‘why has nobody found it yet’? Or maybe ‘shouldn’t we try looking somewhere else since nobody has found it yet’? Or how about ‘since nobody has found it yet despite all of society looking endlessly for centuries to the same goals of gold, glory, material, money, relationships and bigger ships, could our best just not be where we’ve been looking’?

‘Could it just not be here?’

Because, if it were, then considering how billions of people have sought the very best of all that they’ve all wanted or believed or assumed their lives could be only to have each left this world still feeling somewhat empty, then there is either nothing best that a life can be (which seems a really sad thing to believe) or we’re just not looking to the right things nor then perhaps in the right place.

For the truth is that throughout time mankind has tried basically the entirety of the full sum of everything there is to find, feel, do, say, think, believe and/or become under the sun trying to see within themselves and the lives they’ve lived the reasons and rewards for enduring what remains such an enduring mystery.

Indeed, all of humanity has grappled with that wonder as to why we’re here.

Perhaps the most commonly asked question that’s been thought about by probably everyone is that asked regarding the meaning of life.

Why are we here? What are we supposed to be doing? What might be the best use of our time and talents? How could we perhaps make things better, leave a mark that’s something other than bitter? Sure, we’re all but one out of billions and thus exist as but a single star flickering faintly in the furthest corner of eternity that nobody really ever seems to see, that honestly we sometimes even wonder as to whether even those around us would be able to understand us should they ever come to know the real us.

Who even is the real us?

Who am I?

Why am I here?

What does anything I do really matter whenever it seems that nobody knows anything about it?

Who can I be, what mark can I leace whenever nobody seems to know me and every day they all seem even less interested in trying to?

Indeed, of all the issues faced within this life lived within this place I think that perhaps the most usual of all is our feeling all alone. For it’s a feeling we feel even amongst friends as we know all the lies we told to make them think they could like having us around. It’s something we notice while surrounded by all the things we have that we’ve come to enjoy, realizing that some of our greatest joys in this world have become things that hang on walls or sit in garages. It’s found in finding that we’re always lying, always buying, always trying because we keep on believing that our best lies somewhere within someone else or something more.

This is the life we know!

It’s always more. And, again, that’s the very prescription that the world around us continues to tell us will help us the most whenever we’re feeling alone or tired or afraid or ashamed or weak or awkward or overlooked. Go buy something else and enjoy the joy you’ll feel. Go to the bar and meet somebody that will be your best friend for the price of a drink. Go sit in some self-help seminar where you’ll be, at least for a while, surrounded by others who feel the same way you are. Read a book to escape the reality that you don’t feel like dealing with. Don’t read that one Book that explains the collapse of your reality and gives you the verified hope of there being hope that exists beyond it.

Because that Book’s really mean.

No, we want to hear good things. We wish to feel good always. We want our lives to be the very best that they can be and yet sadly we know nothing of such things as humility, contentment, patience or prayer. In fact the closest we really ever come to any one of them is within those moments in which we want for someone else to join us in feeling sorry for us.

Something else this world will happily do so long as we give them any semblance of a reason to.

And, in truth, we’ve all become so lonely down here amongst fake friends and expensive frames that we’re often willing to do just about anything to feel some sense of love, mercy, compassion. We just want someone to look at us and agree that our lives suck so that we can feel justified to eat more ice cream or scream at our phone’s screen as we read the breakup message for the 45th time.

To us it almost seems as if our understanding of our life’s purpose is somehow to be proven somewhere between our being heartbroken and having a bunch of stuff sitting around us that helps us forget about it for a second or two.

And I say this because, well, basically the sum of all we’ve all come to do is only done trying to be whoever it is that we know another might walk away from if we weren’t trying so hard to be whatever it is that we assume they need us to try and pretend we are and buying stuff that we usually only want to help better look the part that this world wants us to play if they’re to ever agree to come out and play.

This is why brands and logos are still so important to so many.

We’re all lost in a life lived in endless vanity trying to show the rest of society how impressive or important we are so that they’ll want something to do with us. It’s like we’ve all agreed that we’re the ugly child that’s so miserable to be around that even our parents have had to tie a bone around our waists just to get the dogs to play with us. But the problem then becomes that at some point the dog’s going to have finished gnawing on his bone and look up to realize we’re once again better left alone.

Because when we don’t know the score of last night’s game or the name of the song that the popular girls’ favorite singer sings, then we’re not important to the world as we’ve nothing to bring to the table that they want us eating from.

Yes, this life as we’ve all for whatever reason agreed to live it is something of a potluck dinner in which we keep bringing the fruitcake.

And nobody likes fruitcake for some reason.

But we never change anything. Except that we change everything.

And therein lies the confusion that Christ came to set us free from within His asking that we sober up from all this pleasing of society stuff and start learning how to give this life to seeking for our treasure no longer inside but somewhere else entirely.

Yes, He calls us plainly to store our treasures (such as hope and joy and peace and even purpose) in Heaven where none of the thieves and make believes amongst whom we walk and before whom we’ve groveled can break in and steal what they then should have never been offered here either. And He asks us to learn to do this so that we can stop losing ourselves in this culture of trying to find some way to make ourselves into whatever it is that someone else may want.

Jesus has never once asked to be anything other than everything He created us to be.

Problem there is that we’ve long since become everything but everything He created us to be and so now we’ve an entire lifetime to all but completely undo if we’re ever to come anywhere close to doing even accidentally what little He’s asked us to.

And what has He asked us to do?

To love God and love our neighbor. And to accomplish at least half of that within the loving of one another as we love ourselves.

Problem here is that within this world we’ve all learned of this version of love that loves to lie and knows to judge and hates so many parts or aspects of us that we think it then somehow loving to love others via pointing out all that we don’t like about them in order to then change them so that they’ll be whatever it is that we want them to.

Thus gathering around ourselves those weak enough within themselves to find in there too a willingness to do whatever it is that another asks them to in order to fit in where none of us have ever belonged.

For while God created this world to be a Garden in which does exist the sum of all we need, He didn’t create this world to become the cesspool we’ve insisted it be.

No, He’s said all through eternity that such things as sin and darkness and depravity were never things that He had so in mind as so many of us seem to have settled for welcoming within our own. And this fall is proven in just how many lies we’ve fallen for seeking for fun or friendships or purpose or meaning that have led to only our having so many varied priorities and passions that among them God and faith may exist as but one and it likely a distant worry as, well, the world’s not worried about it, about Him and so they pretty much always ask that we not worry about it, Him either.

Just go buy something that most folks think you need. Or here, try this new drink that’s all but guaranteed to make you forget your guilt, and probably most of the last couple of days. Or maybe work overtime so that you can climb the line that is a ladder that we all call a ladder so that we can remain convinced that it matters as upon all ladders we climb higher and higher and thus become more and more important.

It’s absolutely amazing the hogwash we’ve come to find our hope within!

My friends, we’ve all become so very drunk on doubt and despair and denial and darkness and division and debauchery and disdain and disinterest and just this general lack of discernment that, yeah, His call here to sober up and wait at what’s basically the very edge of everything we’ve ever known with our backs turned boldly to the same as we turn our attentions and intentions toward the sum of everything that we can’t see and thus is not yet, it’s just about the hardest thing that we could ever do.

Meaning that we’re going to fail. That we will mess it up. That we will get it wrong. That we will look bad, feel silly, perhaps even come to agree with the rest of the world that maybe we’re fools as they spend out the rest of their time within this life telling us all about how we’re all wasting ours not living them for all that they are that is only here and only now.

But what else are we supposed to do?

Where more are we supposed to look for the reason as to why we’re alive that someone on this earth hasn’t at some point tried?

What more might we possibly come to have that might possibly prove to have the very purpose for why we’re here?

Or, as Peter so eloquently put in over in John 6:68, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.”

Indeed, where here is there anything even remotely equal to the sum of life eternal? How many friends would it take for us to have to know that we have the promise of peace found and felt forever to look forward to? How much money might one need to make in order for their to ensure that their eternity is one spent in rest and joy?

Or, as Jesus so eloquently put it over in Mark 8:36, “What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul?”

A question He asked having been offered that very deal by the devil himself. You see, how easily we forget that it was said of Christ that He too endured a life in which He was tempted by all the things we’ve all been tempted by.

Only difference is that He didn’t give into them.

And so when the devil took Him up that mountain and showed Him all of this world’s kingdoms, offering Him the entirety of all the riches and renown that could found upon this ground, Jesus did what we didn’t and turned Him down.

Why?

Because Jesus knew that there was something far bigger and much better to be found later on. He knew that there was more to life than just this one that we’ve all lived within this world.

The Man literally had 12 main followers, one of which handed Him over to the crowd to be put to death eventually.

Can you imagine the horror we’d feel if we only had 12 people around us?

And why did He choose so few?

Because Jesus isn’t a numbers guy. He’s not lost in this same fascination with quantity that we all are. He’s rather focused on quality. He wants us to have quality a life, to live good lives, even calls us to live such good lives among the pagans that they even agree that we did our best to please only Him instead of them while we were here.

When?

On the day He visits again.

And that day is coming.

Problem is that we’re all still running around this world trying to make sure that we’ve found and felt the best of everything that this world has to offer.

All while His Word still asks that we come apart from this place and stop touching all their unclean things as we instead finally turn our time and trying back toward Heaven as if all we care to have and hope to be is only there.

Can we say that?

Can we say that drying out from all this trying out to win a spot on the team of this world? Can we say that we’re walking away from everything that nearly everyone else is still running toward? Can we say that we know for sure that there is less of this world within us today than there was yesterday?

And if we can’t then how dare we say we’re ready?

For if we’re to be found amongst the wise who are welcomed unto life whenever this life ends then we’ve been told that at first we’ve to become fools to this world. That we’ve to agree to know nothing more of everything here. To leave every other rock found here and wanted thus by most forever unturned as if we’ve finally come to learn that there’s nothing here to find. To, as Christ did, lay down this life and spend the rest of the time that we’ve left here to live it working out in fear and trembling our salvation as we sit cold, tired, afraid, ashamed, alone on the shores of this world waiting in eager anticipation of clouds parting and our peace finally starting.

What I’m getting at is that the problem is that we’ve all sought for our peace, our place, our prize, our lives within this place.

Again, ‘why has nobody found it yet?’

It’s because it’s not here to find my friends. If it was, well, Jesus wouldn’t have asked of us to take up our crosses and leave this world behind.

But He did.

Only question now is is that something that we’re learning how to do? Are we sobering up from what have been lives lived drunk upon all this world drinks deep still?

Are we waiting for our best to come back and get us and take us to it or are we instead still living to find it or feel it in what is the place in which we’ll then leave it whenever He does come back and end all that is?

In short, are we ready to leave or is the call of the cross still waiting for us to accept the promise that we will?

#LeaveNoSoulUntold