Day 4228 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Matthew 25:33 NIV

The separation

It’s a matter which most of mankind clearly cannot see coming, much less as soon as it is. Rather we all so typically fall into this estimation as to this vacation from righteousness and the reality in which it exists as the only trait that will prove to matter will last perhaps for all of forever. Indeed, we all live this life as if this life has left within it plenty of years within which we’re supposed to avoid the tears and fears of failing friends and being forgotten by those we thought were the same. But still comes the Day upon which all will say only the Name of Christ.

And that unto very different outcomes in terms of life.

And that because for many that Day will prove the first time His Name they’ll say in what is a humbled manner as most will be gathered to meet Him as not a Savior but as rather a sentencer. A silencer. A Shepherd who will do as He’s promised to as, well, that’s simply what shepherds do. They shepherd. They lead those who are humble enough to prove willing enough to be led and yet protects those whom He leads from those who seek only to steal from the flock that’s under His care.

Make no mistake, He cares.

We see this clear within the image of the cross and the way His life was lost as He endured such suffering for all to see just how far He’d go to both save us from what this world’s made us and then to lead us home. He’s proven that He’d go to the grave and back just to get us back and then get us where life awaits. And He will.

Some of us.

The confusion prepared upon that Day will come in waves as He stands to say that it’s time we separate as is done during every kind of harvest in which the harvester(s) undertake the taxing task of differentiating the different parts of that which has been gathered and gleaned. For as with any harvest there are parts pulled in or up that are pointless, worthless, just needless. Think of the shuck on a cob of corn or the peel of a banana, the husk of a coconut or maybe even a rose’s thorns.

All of these things and all those like them, whilst serving a purpose for a time, when it comes time to harvest the beauty that is the fruit for which one endured the task of planning and preparing and planting and protecting, the fruit is always removed from that which is, at that point, no longer needed.

Such as with a banana or the coconut, it’s the fruit inside as was born in secret that proves the entire point of its being.

Same will be proven of us.

Soon.

Because I can’t much imagine that He who is in Heaven has much patience left for such a people as us as even I, what with all my blinded eyes and my unable mind, even I am entirely too able to find so much that’s so wrong within this world. A harvest itself that sells only everything that few if any want to buy or believe anymore. Sadness is that so many will continue ahead doing just that. In fact it’s been promised that the vaster majority of us will do just that. They’ll go from this which is already bad to that which is said to be still somehow worse.

All thanks to their being deceived whilst themselves deceiving others.

How?

By pretending that all that happens here okay. That everything in this life is fair game. That the very best use of our God-given freedom as is borne only in truth is for us to it use upon ourselves alone. That it’s even commendable for us to alter the truth in order to better ensure it suits what are still seen as our lives. Yes, this world will continue for a while more within this grandest of all deceptions in which most of us will continue contending that this is a life we’re living.

No friends, this is but the life we’re losing.

All that’s really left for us all to find or feel is but how and when, and perhaps ever more important than them, to what.

Indeed, to what outcome are we to come out of this world? What forever awaits us each just beyond the finish line of all we do here? Where will we go? What will we see? What might we hear?

What shall He say?

You see, what scares me is that we’ve become a society which seeks seemingly intently, intensely, almost violently to so muddy His mercy and confuse His compassion as the both continue only asking that we cease all doing of basically all we’ve done as all we do is often only done against Him. Indeed, we’re all still living what are lives in which sin isn’t absent. Now it may be decreasing in frequency, hopefully. We might be meeting with changes that are changing us from the inside out.

We may be among those few who do seek to do too something new.

And that as is to only ever be even passively accomplished upon what are crosses lain beside each of us.

Yes, it’s as if He sent a thousand angels into the night one night and they each crept into the houses that are our hearts and left for us a gift of whatever it is to lay down a life.

Alas, it’s again clear to see that the very vast majority have either never noticed the crosses laying there beside them or they’ve simply chosen to leave them lay. Either way they’re there and one day, the Day, we’ll all answer when asked what it was that we did with them or didn’t.

And it just doesn’t make any sense for any of us to truly assume that He who did what He did with His will look with acceptance, applause, approval, affirmation upon our choosing to do nothing with ours.

If anything that would only say that we disagree with all He did.

As if it wasn’t needed. As if He shouldn’t have done it. As if He needn’t have done it.

As if we’re not sinners who thus need not salvation from He who then we need not to be our Shepherd Savior as, well, if we’re not sinners who need not salvation but are instead innocent children leading what are as most still believe indeed decent lives, maybe even good lives, perhaps even our best lives, then we need not His leading either.

And that anywhere that He might lead.

And indeed, it seems clear to see that so very many are still lost in the belief that they’re those best fit to lead what they still assume are their lives in what is a world in which we all fall for that lie that this is life and that we’re living it, perhaps even well, and that we’ll be given plenty more time to that continue doing out of what we consider a kindness due thanks to all the good and great we’ve done.

As if but goats.

That’s what we talked about a bit yesterday. The differences between sheep and goats are quite dramatic when you stop and think about it. Just the mannerisms alone are enough to differentiate between the two. And indeed, we’re promised right here that such is what He fully intends to do. To differentiate. To divide. To separate.

Why?

Because that’s what you do with a harvest.

And in truth, though we’ve come to consider ourselves humans despite a clear and growing lack of humanity to be seen among us, a loss of humility found within all of us, a misplacing of honesty somewhere around us and this swelling hostility blazing inside of us, we’re thanks to all the above but dust. We’re ashes in progress left over from all the fights and fires we’ve started or will. We’re chaff who laugh at the days to come as we consider them to be nothing but more of those through which we’ve already lived, those in which we think we’ve already won.

Yes, we think that life as we know it, which is only life as we’ve assumed it, will continue onward in perpetuity, changing presumably only slightly and that to hopefully always a better outcome for us here.

And maybe it will.

Maybe all of this Scripture I share is made up by a bunch of people. Maybe the entirety of my faith’s a fabrication invented unto the intention of scaring the weak-minded into submission unto what are lives in which only the meek are promised to find life after the grand finale of the same as is considered by many.

Yes, maybe nothing happens to us after we die and thus we would be better live and lose these lives to the grandest goal of our coming to know whatever it is that our best life is, one so filled with fun and friends that we reach then our end having met and made as much in this place as we possibly could.

Indeed, maybe there’s a life here that we could live that is so good, us too so very good at living it that none would ever dare prove so unkind as to take it away.

In a strange irony there is but unfortunately Biblical history remembers only three who’ve made it out of here alive. Not very good odds when considering that demographers have estimated that there’ve been roughly 108,000,000,000 people or so to have lived a life upon this earth.

That’s 108 billion, with a b.

And of that 108 billion, only three.

And yet we all live as if we’re the fourth. As if we deserve to so denounce the severity of our existence as to assume it something we’ve earned the right to continue having should we so desire. Yes, we all know of that life in which it’s only our minds that we allow to decide that which we think is wrong and all the more we hope is right.

We ourselves always being the latter.

Indeed, all of humanity is lost at sea inside this assumption that all that we’re doing is okay to be done. We toss around words that to some sound a curse but to others invoke a laugh. We create shows that show scenes filled with things that aren’t fit for human eyes. We make songs that sing notes that carry votes as to what we think matters most, some of which aren’t needed to be heard by human ears. We give our bodies over to greed and gluttony, falling back upon bank accounts fat to help us afford chemicals that we inject into ourselves whenever we grow tired of being the same.

We treat one another as if the other is a villain. We perform for even children plays of pride and protest. We light our cities on fire and burn inside with the hatred that thinks it okay. We shake our fists at Heaven and condemn God for not helping as our Bibles remain closed and we contend He’s even stopped talking.

We go to church buildings thinking that the point of our faith and yet leave all of the hope met within it behind us as we spill back into the streets upon which we’ll meet those who may have not met Christ.

And we pass them by because we’re afraid they’ll think us strange should we dare speak up and say that we know of a way to make things better both here and forever.

Yes, most consider it childish to contend that eternity exists.

To that I say good. Indeed to every such difference I say wonderful! Why? Because there should be differences seen inside of our lives as realized from what most consider the common, the normal, the successful way of life. Yes, there should exist in us an inflammation thanks to the information that He came and left us with. We should be increasingly incensed by the sights and sounds we hear and see. We should find in us a growing interest, even an adamancy to be as different from the world as we can be.

Why?

Is it not easy to see? Can’t you yet feel it? Don’t you recognize the sound of death yet? We’re surrounded by those who speak it! We’re bombarded with messages and mayhems designed and delivered by those who’ve agreed to it. We’re daily flooded with so much filth and falsity and fornication that it’s heartbreaking even venturing outside your house. As I’ve mentioned so many times here lately, I personally cannot bear going to town anymore.

For all I see are dead people, and they remind me I’m too much like them still.

And that’s not a condemnation. It’s just a consideration as to the prevalence of the world in so many around us and a realization as to the promised destination of this world that we’ve all let in.

This world is passing away because so much has been done that’s so very wrong within it that He who designed it, created it, made it has determined to erase it.

Why?

Because He doesn’t want to see it anymore. Because He’s tired of witnessing His children live as if they’re not. Because He’s heard enough of our shouting “NO! LEAVE US ALONE!”

So He will. Because He is kind. He is caring. He’s so very compassionate that He will indeed give unto us each that which we’ve asked.

Which means that many will be left and only some will He place on the right.

What I’ll never understand is how hard we’ve made this to understand. And that’s because I know isn’t hard to understand. It in fact couldn’t have been made more simple, more clear, more elementary than it is. Love God and love others. Store up our treasures on the other side of forever. Live as if we’re dying because both we are and we shouldn’t want to.

Why then do we agree to if not because we live amongst so many who’ve already agreed to?

Friends, this world’s filled with those who’ve given up and settled for the existence of a goat which roams ever about grazing to and through whatever it wants to only consume. And we all do it alone if for no other reason than that we insist upon being the ones who first find and feel the benefits.

What benefits?

Indeed, what will it benefit a man to have gained the whole world, lost his soul in doing so, and then end up losing the world too when it’s time that proves that we won’t be here forever?

Rather forever will be decided for each of us upon that Day which comes for all of us. And sure, again, maybe nothing much will happen. Maybe there is no Heaven. Maybe then our every hope is only to be known while we’re here. Personally I’d rather show up at the outcome of my eternity expecting to be excited about all that may be waiting for me than to reach only a grave and that with a belief that I’ll there leave all that was ever my best.

Because only one can be right.

Everything else will only leave everyone else as those left.

And if He’s right about both this life and the promise of the next, then our being found on the left will be the very worst that could ever happen.

With no time left to do anything to make it right.

Risk that if you will. I’ll rather begin seeking unto the separation now.

Just in case I’m not really the one who knows what best to do with a life in what is the place in which I’m still promised to lose one.

It’s just that I want to do so unto the hope of still finding another left.

And that hope is only found in what He says is right.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold