Day 4204 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

James 4:9 NIV

The Wonderful World of Woe

It’s, as far as we might ever know, the only house of humility and thus the very home of hope. Alas it’s the last place that people know to go as this world says it knows that should we venture near we’ll only stand to lose everything dear. And indeed, in this they’re true, finally close to right as within this house of humility we shall lose our lives. But there seems but one slight discrepancy that I believe should be discussed and that is that as much as woe helps us know what it is to lose out on the life we’d all rather love, it’s all that can help us learn of a love sent unto us from up above unto where we’re all called to go.

But through the wonderful world of woe.

For woe explains the narrow in what are ways that no other things ever possibly can. Woe helps us learn to let go what we have within our hand and question all that we’ve in our hearts. It asks we ask those questions that, having likely long known the answers to, we’ve instead sought long and hard to avoid such truth. Yes, woe reminds us that we know the life low, cold, alone.

Only difference is that the humility housed deep within this wonderful world is the kind that seeks no longer to avoid such things in life as struggle and strife but rather finds its delight within the welcoming of such stuff into our lives.

Proving then that most people know not of this weirdly wonderful world.

Because, when you look at the world I know we all know, well, it’s one in which it’s a common crime to cry, to hurt, to beg and befriend such gifts as doubt, betrayal, fear and being there seen a fool. Yes, this world, within all its wisdom, it finds the world of woe the only place not fit to go. Not fit for man nor beat, much less then for men who are but beasts. Indeed, this world we know knows not the world we should, something I would hope that all of us would by now know quite good.

But no. No it seems anymore that we all know increasingly little of good as rather we know increasingly much of such stuff as sin and self. We know not that we need help as rather we live now to only help ourselves and that to only the buffet of every blasted blaspheme that this decrepit place may set before us upon the tables of our enemies who we still seem to see and assume as friends.

Only because we’ve for so long ate and drank and talked and slept and crept into this dream for things of this earth along with those who too shall leave them all in the dirt upon the day when we all begin our decay back to the same.

Yes, such is what we’ve all became, just a people afraid to admit what we are and that we deserve not much in light of the little from which we are.

Perhaps only because we’ve forgotten how much we were back before we began to believe that woe to us was always beneath and the grave then saved for those who knew not how to best live a life.

Amazes me both day and night that still we think that we know anything of all we’re doing seeing as how we’ve all never done anything this long before. I know I’ve never lived the entirety of the 27th day of August in the year 2026 before having just this morn been awakened unto the inset. Alas the outlook looks much the same and thus I assume the outcome shall be too. And that means that within this day we shall see what are human beings still being but human.

What with all of our famous flaws and friendly failures and foolish of all fallen behaviors.

All of them having become our friends because we’ve all chosen to go toward what it is to know the other world in which we don’t know no.

Because we all love yes!

Yes, do whatever you want! Yes, be whoever you wish to be! Yes, taste that thing, buy that belief, see this life that way that someone else says you should! Yes, sit quietly, sleepily in a pew and have some stranger to you drove on for an hour or so about some book you seek not personally to know about some hope you probably then can’t know you don’t have as you don’t have any idea what it says other than whatever the suited stranger shares.

Yes, lay all day upon your bed. Yes, make sure always that you’re first to be well-fed. Yes, put your hand to the bowl of all this world says you should know and allow it there linger until you lose feeling in your thoughts and fingers and find them reaching for anything that could ever be anything of some sign of life to you. A life you don’t know you will come to lose because it’s a life we’ve all come to love and that so very much that we think it weird whenever we wonder too near to the worrisome world of woe.

Indeed, woe is the last place we go, the last thing we seek to know. It’s a feeling felt of ours so low that for us to it know would be to go where none other wishes to be. And we don’t wish to be alone. Not in a world so filled with friends ready and waiting to be ours. We don’t want to go without within a world handing always out all of its samples and sins for us to sit and shiver within. We don’t delight in doing anything other than everything that everyone else around us is doing.

But do we see them doing?

Everything here’s a party, is it not? Everything here is a game being played by those who’ve determined to make up their own rules as they all go their own way. Everything here is but each of us insisting our say upon every single day up until this time in which we’ve all so lost our minds that we think it better to tattoo our heads and pierce our faces rather than lift our hands and rend our hearts.

All because we all despise all those things which ask we come apart.

And, well, His Word asks such verbatim! That we “come out from them and be separate, says the Lord. Touch no unclean thing, and I will receive you.” And again that we “come out of her, my people! Run for your lives! Run from the fierce anger of the LORD.” And still more that we “come out of her, my people, so that you will not share in her sins, so that you will not receive any of her plagues;” 2 Corinthians 6:17, Jeremiah 51:45 and Revelation 18:4 respectively.

And why?

“For her sins are piled up to heaven, and God has remembered her crimes.” Revelation 18:5

Indeed, tis a crime all we’ve done to life seeking always to live it so far from the wonderful world of woe, living rather assuming such as but a worrisome world instead. Yes, we all think that to know of woe is to die of death, the loss of life, the letting go of all we love. And indeed, again, in this we’re right! For humility does ask that we do lay down our lives. It does ask we touch no more the many unclean things that those unclean thus don’t know aren’t different than those toward which we are asked to know.

No, this world has long since forgotten, forsaken thus the very difference found in between what’s right and wrong as, again, for years we’ve all gone along with this idea that in this life it’s our delight that we should chase and that for them no time, no chance should we waste as there is no reason to deny ourselves anything as we all believe that we always deserve everything in which we might delight.

Problem is that we delight in death as such is the wage that all sin wins. And, again, we’ve all won so much wealth that we know not of woe. Rather our sins are piled up to Heavn and God’s there seen all of our crimes. He’s heard every wrong word we’ve ever said. He’s witnessed the very worst of us. Literally endured the brutality of watching us treat His Son so brutally simply for asking that we stop living as if God’s but a lie.

Yes, we once demanded He die and cheered as He did!

Something that still we do whenever we do something that our soul tells us not to!!

Problem there is that we’ve gotten so good at not listening to reason and righteousness that we can all but instantly become convinced that the thousands of other voices we hear know far better than the gentle whisper coming quietly behind asking that we walk within the way that the Way came here to make.

The path narrow, the way difficult, the weight heavy but with Him finally not only shared but daily removed.

But only in the wonderful world of woe.

Why?

Because He can only take off of us whatever we’re willing to admit we’ve been carrying, cherishing, choosing. He can only heal whatever humility helps us to see is broken and bleeding and filled with betrayal. He can only forgive whatever we can both agree needs forgiven and then, from then onward, agree needs be forgotten, forsaken then.

Yes, He does ask that we all but forsake and forget all we’ve ever come to know!

Why?

Because He knows that the death of sin is no way to live a life!

Friends, Jesus literally came to die for our debt!! He knows better than we ever can, sadly far better than many here ever will, what all awaits should we walk always away from the wonderful world of woe. No, rather He walked toward that world. He walked in that world. He spoke of that world within His words that asked, ask that we get rid of all that is in us of this world and then come and follow He who has no home here as rather His home is humility, His promise for us Heaven, His gift to us the joy of leaving all we’ve long thought we loved for what is a love that knows better than all we’ve thought to always want.

All because we can know nothing of life until we bear the very gravity thereof.

And, well, what better way, what better place than our taking up our cross and carrying it in our arms to and through that most wonderful world of woe?

What is woe?

Oh, do we really not know!

Friends, woe is wonderful! Woe is fantastical! Woe is terrific and amazing and more joyous than we could ever imagine!

Woe is the “expression of grief, regret, or distress.” It’s “a condition of deep suffering from misfortune, affliction, or grief.” It’s a close cousin of calamity and best-friend to misery. It’s the audacity of only humility that helps us to see finally all that we’ve never seen within what have been lives in which we’ve lost our everything-loving minds seeking always only to find all that feels good and seems fun. Yes, woe doesn’t know fun or have many friends. Again, its best friend is misery.

And how many of us go there?

No, around here we all steer clear of misery, of shame, of regret, of sorrow, of remorse. We want nothing of agony or pain or anguish of heart. We wish not to admit that we’ve all but torn our lives, ourselves apart trying, from the very start, to avoid any sign or show of humility or its ability to know that there are things, places, people and prizes toward which and along with we should not go. No, rather Adam became for us the pattern as he willfully went willingly along with Eve when she took that fruit from that tree, agreeing then to eat what he too knew the Father had asked the both not to.

And ever since then we’ve treated that Garden as the worrisome world of woe as from it I know that we all know just how far, just how low we’ve since come to go.

Yes, I know we all know that we’re not what we ought to be.

Alas it’s also plain to see that nor are we willing, able to agree that we should be something better. For we know not the woes which would help us to go toward that only house of humility built deep within the wonderful world of woe.

No, none of us know much anymore of such things as shame or guilt or regret. Rather we’ve all lived striving to gut those things out of life itself. We toss them aside as if they’re but lies trying so hard to always ruin our lives.

No my friends! No, woe is there to help us better our lives by helping us see, making us feel all that is within them that simply should not be.

For nothing inspires, encourages us to seek healing rather than the harm we feel, the pains we know, the fear we face. But sadly in this life in this place we all take such great strides to avoid those things, seeking always in their place only fun and comfort and pleasure.

Indeed, we’ve come to believe that such things are this life’s treasure.

And thus we worry of woe. We walk daily away from woe. We mock and laugh at those few who determine to know more of woe than this world says we need to.

And, well, when the world continues to show us how much fun there is to be had, how many friends there are to be made, how much enjoyment and success and satisfaction there is to be found within the way they live their lives seeing woe as only everything so worrisome that it’s everything that everyone delights to avoid, our having learned to just blindly go along causes us too to leave the wonderful world of woe behind.

All because we find now nothing wonderful about it. We don’t even allow ourselves to wonder about it! No, such feelings as guilt and shame are anymore considered only beneath us. We believe them saved for the victims of weakness and doubt. We wish them upon those who wound us or don’t reward us with whatever it is that of this world we want.

And we want nothing to do with woe. We clearly know increasingly little of shame. We can’t really remember the last time we talked with regret.

No, rather we consider that we do nothing so bad as rather all that we say, all that we do, all that we are is only everything that we think is right and good simply because to us it feels great.

And we all avoid woe because it don’t.

Rather woe hurts. Woe wounds. Woe walks right up to us and smacks us upside the face for having said and done all that we have within this place in which the humility it holds sadly knows just how much little time we’ve left.

Yes, instead of learning to number our days we’ve rather lived to number the ways that we can avoid woe. And now sadly we know far more of want, for more of wish, far less of worry and thus nothing of life. And that’s because life isn’t meant to be a party here. This life is not the game we’ve all sought to make it seem. No, this life’s a grinder meant to inspire us to give up our sinful ways and turn instead to walk humbly behind He who came to choose the grave as the place to save those few who dare enter in.

Problem is that then the very gift of salvation is found only in the world of woe. And, well, that’s what makes it so wonderful! It’s not how we feel but rather what we find because of how we feel. And that’s because His point for us was never to spend these lives seeking whatever felt best but rather for our to within them become better.

Woe makes us better by helping us see all the places and ways in which we fall so woefully short.

Thus we cannot grow to become anything better than whatever we are should we continue to flee so far away from the wonderful world of woe.

Is it a place this world will ever choose to go? No. Is it a place that sounds like a vacation most would want to take? No. Is it comfortable and cozy and all nice and rosy like these glasses the world’s handed us to wear?

Not at all.

But friends, within the sheer brutality that is humility we can find a kind of hope that is not known anywhere else. And in that hope there exists a beauty that is the promise of everything better and that so very good that we get to experience it for all of eternity.

But the only way to come upon the ability to believe in so much being made so much better is for our to weather the weight of the wonderful world of woe.

Yes, God calls us into deserts and unto decisions which likely seem utterly disastrous. He literally asks us to lay down our lives and spend the rest of our time denying ourselves.

But the promise He gives in exchange for our enduring here such the loss of the life we’ve learned to love is something entirely too amazing to even begin to imagine.

Thankfully we’ve been given the ability to want to imagine it, to wonder about it, to even learn about it as we can literally read about it. Sad truth is that many here won’t because much of the same Book talks about how great we’re not and how pitiful and pitiable we are. And, well, most here just don’t want to hear that as they don’t know how to feel that. For here we’re inspired to stay away from the practicing of the losing of these lives.

Jesus came to show us that we might should consider at least thinking about trying it out in the event that every promise He gave us comes out to be true.

For if they are then one day some will win but most will lose.

What you ask.

Life itself.

Why you wonder?

Because they lived their lives unwilling to enter the wonderful world of woe.

But friends, nowhere else is salvation found. And in no other Name either.

And indeed, He was, is considered a man afflicted, forsaken, forgotten as He hung in the shame and misery and agony that we all spend all our lives trying all we can to avoid.

He it did all to open the door and left the tomb to ask we both enter in and then follow through what is that most Wonderful World of Woe.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold