Day 4209 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Ecclesiastes 4:6 NIV

More is more

Just of nothing that we want and even less of all we need. For with more exists this opportunity of greed coming along and convincing us to keep going along what is the endless path that’s paved in desire and its ability to keep ever-lit this raging fire that lives this life through these eyes that see these lies not for the lies they are but rather for the lives we want. And indeed, within this world we are surrounded by so many things that can become unto us the seeds which grow this greed as every single day spent here we see something else that someone else says we need.

All of it for no reason other than making our lives better.

Apparently.

And, well, whenever better is something that’s widely considered available, and as easy as it is to find, supposedly, then you’d have to be a fool to refuse it. After all, better is better is it not? And indeed down here the commonest of all pursuits is that aimed at living our best lives and, well, best is made up of but a bunch of betters isn’t it? And thus anything that is considered better, anything that makes us feel better, anything that sounds better, seems better, looks better must thus be then better.

And all that is better than whatever we have already is but that next step taken toward whatever our best may be.

Problem is that there is no best in the opinion of greed. There is end point to the journey of want and wish. There’s no finish line within that life in which all you know is to desire something more, something else. There can be no rest whenever our heads continue listening to our hearts repeat the lies seen through our eyes of these apparently perfect lives that we could be living so very easily as simply our doing whatever it is that someone else may say we need to do so that we’ll not lose what is that best life for which we’re all here looking.

My question has now long been why it is that we’re looking for the best of life in what is the one place in which every life will die.

That seems quite asinine to me.

Quite backwards if you will. Rather elementary and entirely obtuse. For to seek the best of life in the place in which life you’ll lose is only trying to find that which you’ll perhaps come to eventually consider the best your life can be (though that finish line is too an impossibility) only to eventually see such best as that which is left.

And, well, what might we stand to gain whenever we’ve already found but since been forced to leave behind whatever it was that we thought our life’s best to be?

Don’t you see how little sense that makes?

So many are doing still what all of us have in what’s always been a way of life in which we’ve lived to love what all we’ll inevitably leave. And while that promised loss of all that’s here is indeed quite the sorrowful gravity, what’s in many ways even worse is all the worry and work that we waste upon all that we’ll come to have of all the more our greed will always know to want. For all of that effort, all of that intention, all of that attention, it could have been given to the one thing that will come with us whenever we go wherever we will.

And what is that you probably didn’t ask?

Our faith.

Or, well, the relationship that our faith is really meant to be as is had between us and He who came to save us by taking our grave for us before us so as to show us the way for us to share in a resurrection like His may indeed demand we get there via a suffering like His. And indeed, during His time here Christ, who lived a perfect life, He thus wasn’t given to greed. In fact He came to give everything away rather than gather anything to Himself.

Literally proven visually in His suffering so horrendously upon our place upon our cross whereupon He died so as to atone for our loss of our minds unto our living of those lives that demanded such a punishment be rendered.

Yes, Jesus Christ came to this world and surrendered unto the will of the Father.

Why?

Because we never have.

Rather for all of our lives our lives have been lived according to our will which is mostly written only in our wants of all that is only found within this world.

Have you ever really thought about that?

How everything we’ve ever known to want is only here? Our every want has always been for only something that we can see or feel or hear or hold and have or hope to before long because we just can’t stand the thought that we’re going without something that someone else somewhere else living some entirely different life has managed to talk our eyes into telling our minds to convince our hearts that we need to have or hold or feel or see or be if ever we’re to be the best we can be, if ever our lives are to become the best we’re all still trying to ensure they become.

A best thus defined, designed by all that’s only here.

Thus meaning that our understanding of the very best that a life can be is only to be ever proven within an abundance of all that is here where all the self-perceived seeds of that which is best is apparently supposed to be.

But friends, how can that be?

How can we truly expect to find that which is best whilst still within a world in which so much is so wrong? Have we really become so accustomed to the concessions demanded in all begging, bartering, even believing (apparently) that we’re willing to wager our hope of our life’s best upon the best being found amongst the worst? Are we seriously that willing to compromise that we’re willing to imagine that which is best is hidden somewhere among all that is its opposite?

What fellowship has light with darkness? What agreement is there between good and evil but to leave one another alone?

What then might best have to do with worst and why do we seek still for the one, which we never manage to actually find, whilst in the place in which we continue to find the one we’re never looking for? I mean, as I mention all the time, any time that I’ve to drive into town these days, me heart breaks. It’s become physically painful and even more mentally, emotionally, spiritually so.

Why?

Because where did all the care go? Where did all the class go? When did we all just decide to give up and let ourselves go? I’ve never in my life seen so many people and so many things that are just retired from trying to be anything better. It’s all collapsing. It’s all corrupted. It’s all covered in either graffiti or tattoos (which are arguably the same thing just scratched on skin as opposed to sprayed on trains and buildings and overpasses).

It seriously bothers me deeply what all our society has become.

And what confuses the ever-loving life out of me is how we managed to get here this far down from anything decent even though everyone is out there seeking for their best life.

Indeed, we have now more than anyone has ever had access to or the ability to in fact do or see or be than anyone else has ever had in the entirety of human history. And yet the best we can offer is ai making all of our commercials and music as we apparently haven’t the time to make anything anymore as we’re all busy getting more metal punched through our faces and spending another couple of days having one more tattoo drawn in a place that nobody will ever see? (hopefully)

Seriously, is this the best that we can be? Just a people who have so very much and yet do so very little? And it’s not even the doing that bothers me as, honestly, rest is a really big part of God’s command for our lives. He talks all the time about remembering His Sabbath which was intended to be for us a day of solemn rest from all of our workings, an ongoing reminder that no matter what we do nor how hard we try, these very lives are not ours to create nor thus to make into anything other than only whatever He created them to be.

Yet the more we’ve worked, the more we’ve tried, the more we’ve invented and the more we’ve lied, it’s only led us further away unto this place in which everyone’s again just given up.

Our society exists now in this way of life of perpetual want. Every day we’re so surrounded by so much stuff that, honestly, no one really need. And yet the problem is that we simply don’t know the difference between want and need anymore. And that’s because greed simply doesn’t care! Greed just wants to have and then have some more.

Why?

Because there’s more to have!

There’s always more to have. There’s always something new. There’s always some novel idea as to what might make our lives better or at least make us feel better about living them however we’ve chosen to. This world is constantly coming up with more stuff that many of us are more than ready to be convinced we want, perhaps even need.

But friends, when does it end? When will it stop? When will we ever come to drop our devotion to desire in exchange to change our fire for that which leads us to Heaven rather than that which only loves to see us holding something else of all that we can’t take with us whenever we go to find out that Heaven isn’t going to be our home as we never sent our deposit through?

What deposit?

Broken hearts and torn clothes and eyes stained from all the tears we’ve cried over all the things we’ve tried to gain all the things we’ve so come to love that the love for the Father was never seen as anything that mattered.

That’s what we need: A reverent fear of God. A desire to please Him alone. A willingness to allow His will to lead us, to define us!

An agreement that life does not consist inside an abundance of possessions but rather of a flesh crucified and then lain in a grave and there left forever behind so that it cannot possibly get in our way ever again.

We don’t know anything about that though, do we?

How often do we so deny ourselves as Christ so clearly did? And thankfully we don’t even have to literally, physically do it as He did what with a legitimate cross stood in place for us to actually hang on. No, rather He simply asks that we repent from our lives spent seeking for everything that wasn’t Him and rather spend out however many days we’ve left getting away from it all and spending more and more time with Him in those same solitary places that He’d go.

Jesus broke away from the world all the time to go and pray in some place where He wouldn’t be distracted from what obviously mattered so much that He literally left everything else behind so that He could go and spend some time with His Father.

Again, how often do we do that?

Well, not very often if we’re honest because, well, we’re too busy. We have too many things to get done. We have too many more things that we want that ask us to work overtime to afford them, to take out and then work to pay back loans to buy bigger houses to house them, to give more of our time and effort to doing whatever we have to do in order to have them. And we’re all so easily lost within this lust for all this world says we need that we honestly don’t even seem to care what it is or what it does or how it’s supposed to make our lives better.

Someone somewhere said it’s good and, well, that’s good enough for us!

Except that even the idea of good enough, one which society is clearly going for as actually getting better and working to improve things is clearly not much of a priority anymore, even it’s become a lie.

Because, again, good enough is a finish line. It’s something considered acceptable.

We don’t accept anything as good enough as rather we always want.

We know nothing in life more than what it is to want more.

And we know nothing of peace or tranquility or even hope because of it. For again, who hopes for what they already have? Who can experience peace when they’re trapped inside this pace this place insists we run if we’re have all the fun found in the sum of what someone else somewhere else says will make our lives better once we buy it? What can we ever know of tranquility whenever our minds are working overtime, probably keeping us up at night, trying to find some way to afford whatever it is that someone else somewhere else has managed to convince us will make us happier or feel better or live longer?

Why do we want to live longer in a world falling apart?

If not simply because we’ve come to become so deeply convinced that the very best of life exists only inside our having more of all there is inside this world where we are for now?

Our understanding of life and why we live and how best to live and how best we can prove it is all accomplished within all we’ve amassed. We are absolutely amazed with our ability to have more and want always the same. And indeed, want gives us something to do. It provides us something that keeps us going.

But friends, that’s the point and the problem!

It’s that in this life in this world filled with all this want and so many who continue agreeing to it, we never stop doing. We never stop working. We never stop trying and striving and scrimping and saving and hoping only that we can someday soon afford that next thing we want that we’ve worked for for so long now, so hard too, that we feel as if we deserve it almost?

Friends, all we deserve in light of how we’ve lived our lives wanting everything but a simple, quiet, boring, unimpressive, humble and thus humiliating relationship with Christ is only then the opposite of Him that we’ve not wanted much if anything from nor to do with.

And, well, since He is the Life we all thus deserve the death that we’ve earned in treating Him as if He’s not worth as much as a bigger house or louder truck.

My point is that we’ve come to embrace this way of life that seeks to find our hands always full of all that’s here. And we work ourselves weary and ragged trying to find ourselves able to afford everything we’ve both already come to want and will learn to want in the coming days. But when our hands are filled with this place or the things of this place then with what are we supposed to reach out for the hem of Him who came to lead us home?

Indeed, what can we know of that hope that Heaven is our home when we’re all still here trying to make ourselves feel at home in a place that the grave promises we’re all going to leave someday?

The issue is that we can literally never know peace unless and until we know Jesus. And we can’t know Jesus so long as we continue living the kind of life that caused Him to die. And we will continue living that life that demanded His death, again taken in our stead, so long as we continue to love the things of this world so very much that we give unto them any measure of time, effort, focus or faith that we could give to Him instead.

Friends, this world is clearly convinced that there exists here somewhere some kind of life that is so amazing that our coming to live it and have within it all we could ever imagine to want or come to crave that we’ll somehow manage to forget all that’s wrong in this place.

But the point of faith is to help us see that there are things that this world can’t offer, things that we’ve tried anyway thinking otherwise. Peace is a perfect example that comes to mind. This world doesn’t know peace. This world can’t offer peace. Most days it seems as if this world doesn’t want peace!

My question is why don’t we?

Why are we all so willing to work, to want, to worry for things so very worldly that they, like all the other worldly things we’ve ever had or ever seen or ever tried, only leave us feeling again empty and dry?

No matter what we’ve held here nor how much of here we’ve had, what can any of it be worth, how can any of it be best whenever we’ve not felt peace nor found hope nor come upon the confidence that we’re heading for the best part of forever?

I don’t care anymore as to what anyone says may or may not be best for me here. My only concern is doing whatever I can to ensure that both I and those around me are found worthy of being welcomed into Heaven whenever we’ve left here. And I know that we can only be so should we be found having chosen to know Christ so every deeply, so very closely, so very intimately that He too says He knows us.

But friends, again, if our hands are full of everything here and our hearts and minds and lives still more focused on having here even more, then what is it that Heaven can offer?

If our peace, if our joy, if our happiness and every other hope is all had here, then Heaven has nothing for us.

And I simply can’t imagine being of the mindset that would agree with that.

Why?

Because, despite all this world has, look at all it doesn’t! Again, peace is a perfect example as none of us know much of it having experienced little if any of it in what have long been lives lived looking always for more and always agreeing to do more to have it.

This is why godliness with contentment is such great gain! It’s because, once we’ve gained godliness and contentment, well, there is nothing else to gain!! We can then stop looking for anything else, stop wanting anything more, let go of the belief that there is anything better. No, there is simply nothing better here for our to find than godliness and being content with that.

Because only that can give us peace, offer us rest, show us unto a tranquility of heart that is finally able to help us just sit quietly with God and talk about all the things that we hope Heaven will be and how we hope, yes, hope that the day is closer that we get to leave here for there.

Many here will never come upon the ability to say that because there’s always something more here that most will want before they leave.

And many here feel that way because they continue to believe that more is more.

And it is.

Just that more of this world is nothing we need and the last thing we’ll all want someday. And that because if we’re found then with more love for the things of this world still in hearts than is found any love for Him who will determine if into Heaven we make it in, well, He’s told us we’ll be turned away unto everlasting torment. And there’s clearly nothing that sounds peaceful or tranquil about that!

Friends, those who don’t seek nor then ever agree to peace in this place won’t find it where we go next. All of this endless striving for all these things that we’re all leaving, it’s keeping us from focusing on finding something better somewhere better. And while the choice is ours as to what we focus on, and it’s clear the world’s choice, the amount of displeasure and unrest found and felt inside this place should be more than enough to inspire us to head the other way.

For indeed, looking around, I don’t want anything more from this world. Because more of this world is only less of Him who they still ignore and refuse and reject.

But in Him alone is found our peace, our hope, our life.

Sure, we can all give our lives to finding more of all that’s here, filling our hands and hearts with more of the same. But friends, He who came will come again and if our hands have by then lost their interest, their ability to reach for Him, don’t be surprised when He rejects us.

That’s what nobody will want as it’s the last thing we all need.

Guess my point is that we may never be able to give up our greed but maybe we shift what it is that we’re greedy for more of. Let us want more of Him rather than more that only turns us away from Him.

Because one day we seriously won’t want Him to do the same.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold