Day 4234 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

2 Thessalonians 1:9 NIV

Forever away

But just how far is forever? How long is an eternity, not in terms of time, but rather in lay and line? How many miles make up a mystery? How many steps must one take to break away from that which doesn’t end? How might we make the trip from a place we didn’t send ourselves but found all on our own? Can one truly exchange a home held in the heart and mind for another life of another kind in another place outside of time? How much time would it take to scale the fence that separates that which is everlasting from that that’s only unending?

Doesn’t one sound better than the other?

Everlasting and unending.

Sadly I would venture to guess that they for now sound the same to us. For where we are is lost in this lack of novelty thanks to all the nuance and noise and nonsense that sings daily around us that same song it’s sung for all those who’ve too walked the way we have in what are lives that we’ve lived the way they did. And that it what it so sadly is because there’s still nothing new under the sun despite all of us now being aware of the Son.

Doesn’t seem to have mattered all that much all that He did, all that He is as still we do more often than don’t only whatever we want and that whenever too. For that’s just the way we’ve known as has been both passed down and impressed upon we who’re impressed with the suggest that we’re somehow not passing away despite the way we live as is lived for what is life left within this world every single night as we lay down and close our eyes always expecting it and us to be still here tomorrow.

One day we won’t be.

But we might be forever.

I reckon that only time will tell when it stands to tell the tale of what all we tried and what more we failed, of what all we found and what little of it mattered, of who we were and why we weren’t everything else, anything more. All of these indictments coming upon our personalized Day of Judgment within which we’ll all hear where it is that we’re to spend forever.

A sentence itself as unchanging as He who will render it.

Problem is that we’ve proven entirely willing to change, able to want to do so only should the doing thereof bring unto us something that we want as close as now and as soon as yesterday. For again, this is simply the way we’ve all come to live these lives. It’s quite the impatient sight, this scene shown of we patients of impatience wanting always for all we want as soon and close and in as large a quantity as possible. We are indeed a people of plenty as we’ve already the same and yet seek always the same.

Forgetting then always who we are, what we have, what it means and why it means so little.

All because we’ve all become quite convinced that what we have is what matters most. And sure, one day it just might prove so. Indeed, this life, though I shudder at the sentiment, it may well prove then to be the best life that most ever live. And I suppose then that those who live to seek for such will have thus found success in the end.

It’s just that the end of a life spent seeking our best here is only the start of realizing we spent no such time, effort, interest in seeking for the same elsewhere in that later on upon which we’ll have by then arrived and that without the luxury of time offering to let us continue to try to hopefully find more of whatever best might be. And that because upon that Day, once God’s had His final say, we’ll all be found forever inside whatever forever we’ve lived to choose.

Yes, choose.

And now I know that there’s this quite deep debate as to the concept of the chosen being those who God’s foreknown to be His, the same being the ones to whom He would then become a clarity as opposed to the many more from whom He remains a mystery. And indeed, I know that God knows those who are His and that, as His kids, He won’t let us fail to realize who we are and why it has nothing to do with all that’s here where all that is is only all that won’t be soon.

But the point for this post is that in many ways faith is a choice. And this is because all of us have heard the Name of Jesus. All of us have considered the concept of forgiveness. All of us have daily within us the ability to witness what is goodness as is measured against all that goodness isn’t, a badness unequally present in what is this place in which so many so waste their every opportunity to be whatever of better they might be.

All because they’ve too been raised to agree that better is whatever we make it.

Problem is that that mindset won’t help us make it to the better part of forever as it’ll only rather inspire this weather that is our wonder about whether or not we need to surrender our status, satisfaction and success unto the futile foolishness that so many around us are so convinced that all of faith is. Indeed, we all live still amongst those who still say that, “it is futile to serve God. What do we gain by carrying out his requirements and going about like mourners before the Lord Almighty?” Malachi 3:14

A rejection that gains us acceptance from those many around us who too agree that it be only foolish to spend these lives lost inside that which is self-control, self-denial, self-condemnation even.

All because to this world the very best of life as we could ever here know it is to live for all that’s here.

On this side of forever.

But how far away is forever? Well, I personally contend that it’s not far now as it grows closer every day. And this I say because of the way in which we live this life in what is this world that’s getting no better but rather only closer to the coming apart and going asunder that He promised so long ago. Yes, things are going from bad to worse almost daily as so too are so many lost in love with this way of life spent deceiving and being themselves deceived.

And that by mostly being themselves convinced that there is no forever coming and that when it then doesn’t get here all that will happen is that we’ll die here and thus we should live here to find our best life here.

All because they all believe this all only ends and then the widely assumed nothingness begins.

I can’t imagine having that hope that so many seem to hold inside the grand finale of our being here being nothing at all. Just a hole filled with a box holding our bones. No more home. No more family. No more friends. No more fun. Nothing more to find or feel or see or be. Just us dead.

And indeed, truth will be that that would be a by far better forever than what it’s said many will find. And that because, when all this ends, the rest of forever does then begin and it will play out but one way:

His.

And the outcome then will be determined by how we’d lived our lives in regard to the simple measure of whether or not there was faith in Christ in them or not. That’s really it. That’s what it’ll all come down to, just whether we knew Him or not as He’s promised that He will agree with whatever our answer might be. That if we didn’t seek to know Him while we were here then He won’t claim to know us when we’re not here no more but rather broken on the floor having found out that forever does exist.

And that unending death is a going to be a really miserable to spend it.

Because it’s unending. Thus making the grand expectation of just ending this vacation in a pile of wood buried in dirt a far better belief than what I fear most here will see. Because thankfully everything here ends. Even death should we so agree to live agreeing to its necessity, at least in terms of sin and stupidity. But whenever forever begins, well, nothing then will end but rather whatever we find, or rather wherever we’re found, we’ll be there with it, in it for, well forever.

And yet a strange thing has happened to us in that we at best consider forever in terms of length in regard to time. And we have this thought, this wonder in mind as what are but children who so love to fathom the unsearchable. We love the opportunity to imagine, to dream, to let our curiosity devise impossibility.

And indeed, there is a time aspect to eternity as it has none as it needs none as it will be forever whatever it’s already forever been.

Again, it doesn’t change.

But how long then is forever away when it’s promised to be spent forever apart from He who’s good we see at literally each day’s start? How far is forever in terms of distance from He who is forgiveness? How far is forever when it’s to be spent separated from He who died to save us from the same? How miserable might it be, will it be, to be found in the flames of failure and folly and fear knowing that where we are is where we chose to be as from there we can see the distance to where He was all along?

And that alongside the sadness in knowing that He never moved.

Rather He stayed always who He is. For He is salvation. He is mercy. He is love. He is kindness and compassion and caring and thus not willing that any should perish but demands that all first come to repentance as there simply must be a penance unto a life lost in seeking the foolishness of this world’s impermanence. There has to a price paid for our sinfulness. And, knowing that He who is the Christ paid it and how, well, the price we pay is that in lives changed.

A currency currently lost on many who continue only living the way they always have, the way they may well intend to live forever. Forever there thought of in terms of this life and how long it is and how full it seems and how so many around us continue to agree that there is here some kind of best upon which we should place our bets.

Yes, so many are seeking for the better part of here and now, focused so intensely on the trying that they think never of their dying nor then what forever they’ll be then finding when they have. Rather they just stay lost in these days we live for now in this place that tells us all that all we should do is always only whatever we want. And this idea, this ideal, it’s so perfect because it allows us to be the ones who choose.

Which is again the problem.

Because, again, we all know of Christ or at least of faith and that in something or someone good. We all know the difference between right and wrong, though many don’t really seem to care all that much about doing all that much about it. But still, we all know that there’s something more to all of this. Maybe it is only the more we can find while we’re here. Maybe it is only the more that we hope to feel in terms of better or have in regard to whatever it is that we ourselves think best might be.

But what if it isn’t? What if the emptiness we feel is rather a phone call from forever asking us to look both farther from here and that then closer to wherever our forever might be?

Where will it be?

It seems to me that we all agree that it will be in what are basically three different places:

1. A dirt nap followed by nothing

2. A destination defined as either Heaven or hell

3. A mystery altogether

That’s what we’ve come up with. And yet it seems that the vast majority live somewhere in the middle of them all, not really worried or concerned nor then able to wonder or work toward or away from any of the above. Rather we all just continue to live day by day in what is this place in which we’ve all only so many days before we will find out all about whatever our forever might be. And yet that way of life holds so much hope for there being nothing more to all of this as we make so many mistakes and get so very much wrong that it stands to reason why so many assume that it all ends in nothing.

Because doing the same while we’re here is far easier than trying to live as if we truly believe in there being a verdict to be reached whenever we’ve reached the end of here. And so too is nothing far better of a hope than knowing that hell might really be real and, that if it is, we might really deserve to end up there.

Nobody wants to think about that. In fact most laugh it off as if it’s just some scary ghost story cooked up to make folks live in fear of having fun or seeking fame and enjoying the fortunes that come with both. Maybe it is.

Wouldn’t it really suck to reach this life’s end only to find out then that it wasn’t and that alongside a realizing that you’d done nothing outside of the assumption that hell wasn’t coming?

It is my friends, and that for more of us than we could imagine. Is that because God’s not good? No. It’s because we’re not and too because more often than not we don’t care to be. It’s because we often don’t care to change. We don’t want to repent. We want rather to just remain intent and content with the content of the current and our easy found in considering it unchangeable thanks to it having yet to have changed.

But all will be changed. All will be replaced. All will be made new and that new will never wear off. No, whatever we find waiting for us in forever, it will be ours forever.

But just how far is forever away from all the goodness of God and all the mercy and love and healing and hope that His goodness gives us?

Truth is that it’s so far that we can’t cross it. It’s a distance too great to overcome. And that because the difference is only overcome by death, and, well, in hell the death never ends and so we can’t complete that which we’d need to be made right and then allowed home. No, hell will be the home of all of those who refused Christ and rather lived their lives as if both all that was best was only here and thus that whatever forever might be hadn’t much if anything of anything for them to seek.

That is the easier way. But friends, that which is easy only ever leads to that which is empty.

Please don’t take the easy way out. Take rather the narrow one.

Why?

Because, again, all things here will be replaced. Easy with hard. Narrow with wide. Empty with full. Hope with fulfillment. Fun with punishment. Fame with being forgotten. Fortune with being forsaken.

And that by He who’ll agree to do unto us as we live these lives doing unto Him.

Let us then not continue agreeing unto any distance or separation between us and the Son because, once forever’s finally begun, we’ll definitely not want to spend it away from Him as He is the only One who is good. And thus being shut out from His presence would mean spending forever too far from His goodness.

And forever is both entirely too far and eternally too long when it’s goodness that you’re far from.

Please don’t risk finding that out the hard way.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold