Day 4217 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

1 Timothy 6:18 NIV

Those who have

Truth is that we’re all them as we’ve all something either in us or around us or perhaps even about us that allows us what is an affluence in opportunity to be unto humanity, no matter how many, those who dare offer change, inspire hope, encourage a lost and hurting soul. Each of us has here, even if nothing else, a certain amount of time that we can use for literally whatever we like. Problem is that it’s clearly seen that what we all like the very most is thinking about only ourselves. For this world sells this approach to life in which we’re the ones who win.

No my friends, we’re here to be the ones who lose.

Why?

Because that’s what love does.

It gives. It cares. It tries. It fights. It shares. It welcomes poverty so that another may have plenty. It wonders as to the chance of a life lived without worry, only for once not for ourselves. It does a little of what Jesus did so perfectly well in that it does, sometimes at least, lay down its life that another’s might be found or fixed or elsewise made more hopeful.

Yes, love hopes. Love heals. Love begs and borrows and steals whatever it has to in order to give to those who may be in need whatever it is that they may need.

And what does this cold, heartless, lost and fallen world need more than anything?

A people who are willing to do anything and everything to show forth the mercy met in our Savior and the kindness and generosity we’ve seen witnessed within what remains a day of such utter darkness that the earth stood still as the heavens were shaken.

The day that from us Christ was taken as from Him so too was His life.

Or, that’s the version that most of us still imagine. For the reality is that He went willingly unto that goodbye for now. He chose that path that meant He’d leave us behind in this place. He stormed into that grave with every ounce of humility that humanity seems of an impressive inability to merely understand, let along mimic. No, we know nothing of humility and that’s why we see the sights we do amongst our hope-drained humanity.

It’s because there’s no love here. There’s no kindness anymore. There’s nobody who stands frozen holding the door for other to go in first. There’s none who offer a glass of water to those dying of thirst. There’s none who seek to share warmth where there’s want, a few canned goods where there’s need, a message of redemption unto those so desperate to be freed that they’re starting to think of more extreme ways to get there.

Why?

Because we don’t care.

We just don’t care.

Again, all we do care about is usually only ourselves. We’ve all become so engrained unto this way of life in which looking out for number one is our main priority that we sadly treat everyone else like number two, and yeah, I mean as in that childish understanding as to what you think I mean. But it’s true. Everyone anymore is so stinking rude. Everyone treats everyone else as if they’re only in their way. Everybody goes through every day seeing everyone else as either an obstacle to avoid, an enemy to argue with or just a stranger that may as well not even exist as we’ve within us nothing of any interest of anyone else.

We don’t care what others may or may not be going through as we’re focused firmly on wherever it is we’re going to. We don’t want to know the troubles another may have seen as we’ve plenty we’re worried about in our own lives. We don’t need someone else to ask us to help them fix their lives as we’re entirely too busy trying always to fancy ours up even more than they already are.

All because want knows no satisfaction. Desire never douses its own fire. Lust is able to forever keep one lost. And those whose hearts have grown cold hold only a bitter opinion about everyone and everything. Indeed, unto those who see everything as bad or hopeless or elsewise burdensome, so too then shall they see everyone.

And in some ways I’m guilty of this myself. Anymore I absolutely loathe having to go into town as I’m personally just heartbroken, disgusted as to the state of humanity. And the jading nature of mankind all joining together and just giving up in terms of everything from modesty to mercy is just a sight I don’t care to see anymore. And so yeah, I too have found myself somewhat distant at times. I’ve stood in lines irritated by those around me. I’ve come to focus on myself so completely that even someone asking me a question seems to bother me.

How did we get here?

And why do we seem so willing to stay?

I contend that it’s because the enemy sells this version of life in which everything revolves around us. It’s this lie that tells us that we’re the very center of everything and thus, to ensure everything continues working properly, we need to be the first placated and pacified. That it’s our lives that need to be made perfect first so that everything else going on around us will finally have the chance to work itself out. That so long as our lives are going well and we’re feeling well, eating well, sleeping well, then all is well and everyone else should be able to say the same.

Problem is that our outcomes are just that, they’re ours. Our lives are our lives. Our wins are our wins. Our comforts find us comforted. Our successes achieve for us those victories that accomplish for us something that we’d set out to accomplish because we believed they would indeed make our lives better.

And in all honesty, our lives are vastly better than our constant anger would inspire someone else to believe they were.

Indeed, all of society wears always this frown. Everyone speaks so often in only this growl. It seems even that everyone around thinks only in this prowl that inspires them to seek that which they desire and to do so unto the denial of anything and everyone who may dare even accidentally get in the way.

This is the way we’ve come to live our lives!

We treat everyone else as if they’re in our way of getting wherever it is that we want to be or poses a risk to our getting to have whatever it is that we think we need or would only waste our time telling us some story that we don’t care to hear about something that doesn’t matter to us anyway.

Yes, everyone around us is only in our way, slowing us down, taking our time, even standing on the side of the street daring to ask us for money.

Go get a job loser!

Right?

After all, we’ve got one so they could get one too.

Because, again, we’ve become so focused on ourselves that we seem to believe that everyone else should be living our lives too. We live this mindset that expects us in everyone else. We believe that everybody around us should think as we do, should do as we do, should agree with those few things we agree to. And, in truth, we only ever seem willing to agree to anything that matches up with our impressively firm opinions.

Opinions we have about everything because, well, we think the world may need to know what we think and so we spend our time consuming as much of the world and it’s worldliness as we can possibly ingest all so that we can suggest the best possible decisions in regard to whatever may be the topic of discussion unto those who, oddly enough, never ask for our opinions. Because they don’t care about us either. Because, well, nobody cares about anybody anymore.

No, down here life has long been all about me.

And so we refuse ourselves nothing. We ask ourselves no questions. We deny ourselves no comforts. We actively seek for things that will bring unto our lives the enjoyment and entertainment that we desire. We gorge ourselves upon the greed and gluttony offered us endlessly in every grocery store, fast food drive thru, online outlet mall and social media algorithm. We’ve figured out ways to use the system to such our own personal benefit that we’ve managed to completely forget the utterly sad reality that we ourselves have become a part of it.

We’re all just gluttonous gears chewing on the bones of those worse off than we.

For “the weak will seek the weaker until they’ve broken them”. That’s a line from the song Simon by Lifehouse and it’s one that stays perpetually in my mind as I look at how we’ve all come to live this life. For there’s nobody we won’t step on, make fun of, talk bad about, overlook, ignore, literally agree to hate simply because we believe that doing so will somehow make our lives look or feel better. We are so greedy for power and profit and popularity that we’ll do literally anything to have it.

Even if our having of said more comes only at the expense of another having less.

Because it doesn’t matter as they too could do as we’ve all chosen to in what we all know to be a dog-eat-dog world.

That’s how we see everyone. That they too could be like us if they just tried hard enough. They could find their needs better satisfied if they went out and got a job. They could have a cool car if they only got up and worked for it. They could eat anything they wanted if they too didn’t care about such trivialities as their health and the chance of living past their 60’s. They could have plenty more fun if they’d follow us to the bar every Friday night. They could be having the time of their life if they wanted to.

So if they’re not then that’s on them and we can’t help those who won’t help themselves because we’ve so vastly become a people so amazingly dumb that we actually buy into the whole idea of self-help.

Yes, we think we can help ourselves simply because this life we’ve chosen to live finds us daily helping ourselves to anything and everything we may want.

Treating everything around us as if a buffet of things meant for our to have and everyone as if they’re the waiter meant to cater to us, carry for us our every want and wish. Yes, we live as if we’re all kings and queens who deserve to have everything we could ever desire simply brought to us on a silver platter. And as we experience day after day of our being always fed as we grow ever fatter, so too does our comfort and pleasure come to become all that matters and all we seek to protect.

And that from anything and everyone who may pose a risk to it.

And, if left unchecked, that kind of arrogance and vanity can drag us happily into a kind of insanity that comes to see everyone around us as that risk that we have to protect ourselves against.

A mindset utterly opposite of that seen on Calvary.

For upon that hill there hung dying a Man who, though rich in ways we cannot for now possibly understand seeing as He’d come from the One who created everything and everyone and thus to whom everyone and everything then belonged, chose to empty Himself of everything for everyone. Indeed, in that one act Jesus managed to prove to us that there is a greater love than even the laying down of one’s life for one’s friends.

Because He laid down His life for we who’d lived, sadly often still do, as only His enemies.

Because, well, He too was, sadly often still is, seen as our enemy as He asks us to take up our cross daily which means exactly what we think it means. A clarity given us elsewhere in that He told us bluntly that we’re to die to ourselves, meaning that we’re to come unto this mindset in which we ourselves don’t matter. A mindset that puts others before ourselves. A heart that wants to go and sell all we have so that we might have something more to give to those who may have nothing.

Yes, He calls us to consider all things here as loss, everything here as nothing when compared to the surpassing glory of knowing Him as our Lord and Savior.

Ourselves included.

But the sad truth is that we’re all so deluded that everything we do is always done for us first. We take care of our needs first. We even take care of our wants before we worry over the needs of another. And why? Because we’re not living their lives and so why should we care how brutal or miserable or lonely or lost they may be? That’s on them! They can figure it out just like we have.

Only maybe they can’t and perhaps we’ve haven’t because maybe life isn’t something we can figure out and perhaps those who have here less have then more of what matters most.

Because maybe such things as comfort and pleasure and power don’t really mean anything. Maybe wealth had here is only poverty stored up for later. Maybe living our best lives now, even if at the express expense of another, maybe that means we’ll not have anything left of all that could be considered best anywhere else.

A mistake we all make because we’ve all become so selfish that when we hear that we’re here to look out for number one, we somehow manage to think that we’re number one.

But no friends, we’re nothing but the one that the One left the 99 behind to come and find.

He is the One we should be looking out for. His Word tells us this plainly. That we should come unto a faith that implores us daily to look unto the clouds in what ought to be an eager anticipation of their parting marking the joy of His coming. But sadly we’ve instead all got so much going on as we’re all always going after more for only ourselves that we’ll probably be among those who won’t be able to tell what’s happening when He does come back around.

For we’re all entirely too busy building our little cardboard kingdoms to worry about the coming near of the version that He’s promised only a few will fit through the eye of the needle to.

A path so narrow so that nothing we have nor think that we are is able to fit.

All because the point all along has been to do as He chose to so as to show Him that we trust Him to lead us in the way we should go. And, well what do we know as to what way He chose?

He laid down His life. He gave away everything He had to give. He opted for the path of misery, of loneliness, of literally being hated to the very point in which He was brutally beaten, and even betrayed by one of those closest to Him, all so that He could achieve salvation for a bunch of people who still sometimes struggle to see that we need it.

Because we usually can’t bring ourselves to want it as we know it’s only had in our letting go of everything else so that we can finally take hold of crosses which we continue to see as holding here no hope.

Because crosses still carry death and, well, we’re pretty much convinced that we’re entirely too good at living life to let that happen.

No, we’ve got to keep looking out for ourselves, putting ourselves first, storing up for ourselves treasures found here and now and trampling on, turning on, forgetting about or fighting with those who continue to dare pose a risk of our not having whatever else it may be that we still want within this place. All because this world and these lives we live within it, they’ve become our treasure.

We and our lives are all that seem to matter.

And thus greed has replaced generosity. Hostility is more common than honesty. Immorality swells daily as modesty lies dying in the streets. Compassion is seen as weakness by those who wear crowns they think they’ve found in lives they consider rich. And, well, we all consider ourselves rich simply because our needs have been so fully taken care of that we’ve indeed forgotten the One who provides them in time rather given to fighting with His other children over such miserable matters as politics and who the greatest basketball player ever is.

We couldn’t be more lost if we tried.

And we have no idea what all we’re losing because of it.

Namely every chance we have left to share some of what we’ve found in Jesus with a world that desperately needs it.

Why?

Because there is absolutely nothing that a little bit of kindness or mercy or generosity or other such humility can’t make better instantly. And yet we’re all so lost inside ourselves that we now spend our days recording our thoughts because we think that everyone else needs to always know what we think as we think that we think best.

Yeah, all we ever seem willing to give is only everyone else a piece of our minds. And yet we seem still able to be surprised to find that world around us grows only colder all the time.

Strange that.

And while He came to help us fix that, problem is that we don’t see our own lives as broken yet and so then we neither see any need to fix anything.

Hopefully someday we will.

Because someday we will.

And on that day we will give away everything we have. And that unto a question that’s asked as will be answered only in whether such giving is something new to us or if we’ve, as He’s asked us to, been practicing. These lives are ours to spend practicing losing them.

Because, again, promise is someday we will.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold