Day 4196 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Ecclesiastes 3:19 NIV

A dominion divided

And that due to such things as division, darkness, disinterest, distraction. All of which have befallen only us who somehow still consider ourselves the pinnacle of God’s creation. And indeed, perhaps we are but I contend that what we are is but the remnants of what was once intended to be lightyears ahead of where we’ve ended and will end because of it. For where we’ve arrived is as a people who are living always this life as if we’ve some sort of supremacy or superiority over everything from everything to everyone.

Indeed, we all live, or have lived I pray, in what is that commonest of all common ways in which we’ve seen ourselves as the very top of the crop.

A prayer I pray because I hope we’ve found/find the day in which we can look upon our way and see just how confused and misused we’ve all but demanded it be.

Alas, I can’t really say that we’ve really found that day nor then that we feel that way as rather we seem still tied to the tether that is our wonder as to how amazing we both are already and how much better we plan still to be in days we love to assume are still to come. This is in truth one of our favorite ways to this life lose! We love looking ahead, making our plans, dreaming our dreams, touting ahead of time of all the things we’ll find and how great we’ll feel when we have.

Don’t spend quite so much time thinking or talking about all we’ll have to do to get them, to get there to where we have them or are them.

Because, to us, the prize has become the purpose and the path paved toward it only the burden.

What if we’ve gotten that one backwards too?

What if it’s the path we spend these lives upon that holds the meaning as opposed to the money, the fame, the praise and applause we all find cause to continue to chase along the way to wherever it is that we seem less and less inclined to worry about our ending up? For do we not still find meaning in those things? Are we not still at least somewhat awed by how awesome we think we are? Is there not purpose promised us within the path of least accomplishment?

What all are we trying to accomplish that is actually worth doing?

And, perhaps best of all, how could we ever possibly know when we both know not what we’re doing and yet too do so very much within every day of these lives?

Indeed, what are we so busy for? For what are we working always so hard? What’s the reason for all this rushing about? Why are we all in such a hurry all the time? Why are peace and quiet both so hard to find and yet always awkward when we do? What all do we do that we might not need to? Do we really even need to do anything that we do or do we just do as we’re all but expected to by those who too do things they don’t need to do simply because the world expects them to too?

What are expectations? What is frustration? Why all the confusion, delusion, dilution of dominion demanded in all that we’re doing that the animals don’t do?

How is it that we can still assume that we’re better off than they considering they don’t do any of all we do and yet still reach the same outcome that we will?

Are they wrong to live life without houses made of wood in exchange for houses in the woods? Are we truly better than they simply because we have cars that get us stuck in traffic at lights that tell us what to do and when to go? Do animals have to wait at special signs made for people to cross the road? Do they have mortgages to pay or groceries that are becoming harder and harder to afford? Do the deer get angry whenever a rabbit cuts them off? Do lions have to worry about sharks they don’t know exist?

Do the animals have worries? Do they have arguments? When’s the next koala war? Do the koalas even know what war is for? Do animals feel fear? Do they get sad? Are they afraid to be alone? Can they get sick with all the diseases with which we do?

Are we really better off than they simply because we have more stuff but have to do more to stuff to have it?

Again, we sure seem as if we really believe that to be the truth of it.

But maybe it isn’t. Maybe we’re not better than them. Maybe they’re far better than us. After all, just look at all they don’t have to do or feel as if they need to. I’ve never once seen a billy goat carrying a shopping list. Never witnessed a badger fill up a hummer. Pretty sure I’ve not heard of birds standing in line to get into a football game. Owls don’t need airplanes. Dolphins do just fine without boats. A ladder doesn’t matter to an otter.

Camels don’t have to cut their grass as they rather just eat it. Cardinals don’t have to play hard to sign more lucrative contracts as they don’t play on baseball teams but rather just do things that they were made to do, none of which has anything to do with 162 games they hope to win but some of which they’ll lose. Pretty sure tigers don’t lose sleep over schedules they have to keep.

And yeah, we all may enjoy getting to mock the sheep as they blindly fall in line within their herd which is then driven wherever the dog behind them wants them to go while we sit in cars being funneled into lines driven through drive-thrus so quick that we feel guilty for looking at the menu as the dodge behind us gets impatient because they’ve only 30 minutes for a lunch break and if they’re not back in five their boss is gonna freak.

Yeah, we’ve got it all figured out far better than those loser animals who don’t have houses they have to clean or cars they can’t afford to fix until they get their next paycheck.

No, we’re better off than they because we’re the ones who break our backs to have a pantry full of snacks that make us fat as we watch tv filled with lust and lies.

That’s the difference in our lives and it’s also why we’ve lost the dominion we were at first given to have. For in the beginning, back when God created everything and actually did so unto the ability to say that all of it was good, even us, He’d then created us to be the top of the ladder in regard to all that matters. He gave us dominion over the birds of the air and the fish in the sea. He gave us some of the same and all the other game as food for which to eat. He gave us the ability to breathe, to wonder, to work.

And that only in and about and on what was a Garden that didn’t ask or expect us to do anything other than enjoy and appreciate the bounty spread daily before us.

Problem is that we wanted more.

We had access to everything we could have ever needed and all He asked was that we stay away from the tree which bore the fruit that we’d have all been far better off without.

Why?

Do eagles know the difference between good and evil? Does the rhinoceros bear the responsibility of living life reasonably? Can an elephant understand the weight of worry or want? Do bears bear the burden of being broke or bored? Has a hippo ever felt heartbreak? Does a swan get sad? Can a turtle turn into a tyrant? Do penguins have presidents or parliaments? Did the lion have to spend millions on his campaign to become king of the animals?

Do giraffes know they weren’t picked for the job?

Or rather do all of these and every other animal and bird and fish and reptile just like them just do things that they were created to do in what are lives that they get to live without the fear of their life their having to lose?

Indeed, do donkeys dread death?

Are we not the bigger jack(behinds) because we do?

Friends, the point I’m hopefully managing to get across is that someday soon we’re finally going to realize all we’ve learned to lose. And that’s because there comes a day upon which God has promised to pronounce judgement on all our works and all the fruits borne therein, thereof, therefrom. And it’s not hard then for us to at least be of the ability, the opportunity to understand that there must be then some rubric by which or rather against which our lives will be compared.

There must exist, somewhere, this layout, this script if you will of how it is that our lives were supposed to go as that would give God something against which to measure just how wrong they’ve/we’ve gone.

And, well, considering how we’ve managed to all trade His Garden for our grave, yeah, pretty sure it’s safe to say that we’ve not really handled this life all that well. Because, well, as I’ve said many times before I’m pretty sure He didn’t create life just to watch it die. Granted, everything now does. Everything that breathes breath here will one day breathe their last, and that goes for both people and animals. And, in this, we can see that we do indeed have no advantage over the animals as all of us are now destined to die.

Sure, the animals seem to get there far faster than we do.

Does that mean they sin more than we do and/or may prove of the ability, the fallen desire to?

Or is it maybe more something having to do with what Isaiah says in Isaiah 57:1? That, “the righteous perish, and no one takes it to heart; the devout are taken away, and no one understands that the righteous are taken away to be spared from evil.”

Do we mourn the death of animals, other than when we’re kids who still have hearts and innocence? Do we worry that animals perish? Do we pay any mind, pay for any funerals for the furry animals we find smashed on the shoulder of the road because they dared trying to get in our way of going to work as we broke the law speeding to a job we hate along roads we’ve paved only in their way of living their life?

No, no we don’t. We don’t take it to heart. We don’t understand. We don’t seem as if we care to. We’re all here busy living our lives doing nothing but fighting and working and worrying all the time. And yet we consider those who die young or leave early, such as all the animals whose lifespans are measured often in years rather than our decades, as those who don’t deserve to live as they’ve apparently not quite so much to live for.

What if God agrees that they don’t deserve to live anymore, at least amongst us humans who continue to so misuse and confuse what this life was meant to be?

For sure, both humans and animals die, but the question is do we all live the same life? The answer is clearly no. But what I want to know is why it is that we think we’re better at this living of a life than those who don’t know how to tell time and thus never know if they’re running behind because they neither do they have any cars they have to pay for nor then garages attached to houses to keep them in in which they also keep three extra sets of sheets just in case something horrible happens to the first, second and third.

Indeed, as even the Bible reads, “look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them.” God takes care of them. Again, just a minute ago I made the argument that animals have shorter lifespans because they don’t deserve to have spend any longer living amongst us sinful losers. And indeed, that passage goes on to read, “are you not much more valuable than they?”

Are we?

At one time I think that argument could have been made as we were at first created in God’s image. Alas, looking around at what humanity has come and the insanity so much of it is, can we say that we still see much if any of Him in us?

Or have we not all lost His image because we spend so much time worrying about everything that only drags us away from Him, distracts us from a simple devotion to Him, live these lives then without any real care or concern for Him?

Indeed, among all of our worries where is He?

“Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?”

No, but we’re sure adamant to try!

And I say that because, well, just look at how we live our lives! We’ve all got so much going on all the time from bills we have to pay to deadlines we have to meet, soccer practice to pick the kids up from and homework we have to do so that we don’t get dumb. But friends, dumb is what we are! And I don’t say that to be mean but let’s be real! God created us to be the pinnacle of His creation and all we all managed to do with such authority is challenge His to the point in which He, way back in Genesis, decided that He’s not contend with us forever.

Rather, thanks to our fall, we’ve all got at best 120 years to live this life before we die.

We who were made in the image of the Endless One have now the great fearful finale that we all live our lives afraid of.

He who is the Life created us to be like Him and we did such a bad job at it that He had to come be like us so as to die for us that we might, in Him only, live again.

And that still only after we die in this life!

Friends, we couldn’t have messed this up any worse if we tried! And yet, still we try!!

And all the while we do so acting always as if we’re all so much more important than those who don’t. As if we’re better off than the birds in the sky just because we live our lives filling them with things we’ll probably be at least somewhat sad to leave behind whereas they don’t. Indeed, toucans don’t file tax returns and yet we act if we’re better off then they because we worry about being audited and they don’t.

What I’m saying is that we’ve missed the boat. We’ve lost the plot. We’ve completely misunderstood the meaning, the purpose, the very value of our existence because we’ve all of us spent it as if it’s only worth whatever we can spend it on. And we then daily give away all the simplicity all of this was supposed to be for what has become a life so utterly confused and complicated that we reach the end and our death is met upon a deathbed as we’re so worn and weary that our leaving finally feels something like mercy.

All because we’ve by then lived our lives trapped inside so much worry and hurry and want and fury that we’ve nothing left to give. We break ourselves trying to prove ourselves to a world that we’re just passing through. How are we better at it than the animals who don’t do so much of all we wish we didn’t have to? What if we didn’t agree to continuing to see this life and its reason through the lens of a fallen creation?

What if we didn’t try to keep up with the Joneses? What if looking out for number One meant sitting quietly in a field searching the sky for Jesus? What if putting ourselves first, as all of us have and most of us still do, what if it was so off-putting that it became something we didn’t do? Within what ways might life be better if we let go of greed and agreed that godliness with contentment is the greatest gain of all?

For are not the animals the best at contentment?

Are they not far holier than we considering how to be holy is to be set apart?

What could be more set apart than all the animals which don’t have clothes or phones or homes?

All things that we all worry about so much that we often are found living as if our lives depend on us having them.

What if they don’t? What if those things don’t really matter? What if they have no meaning? What if all we think means something is only meaningless and that simply because we’re the ones who’ve given it whatever meaning we think it has? Again, at life we’re really, really bad!

Why then continue to trust ourselves so much as we do?

Friends, all any of us really have is but a life to lose. My question is what all are we losing it to and what all do we continue to refuse to lose or let go along the way?

Again, one day we’re all going to see just how immeasurably simple all of this was always supposed to be. My hope is that we all agree to stop making it all so hard before we get there.

Because it’s pretty clear we’ve already lost our authority and advantage over the animals.

What else do we stand to lose should we refuse to lose the version of life we’ve lived that’s now promised to cost us our ability to go on living it?

#LeaveNoSoulUntold