Day 4249 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Jeremiah 8:13 NIV

The crumble

In truth it’s something clearly already underway. It’s this reality in which God gives us our way, our say, an agreement to the kind of appeasement we seek, think we want, are sure we do. Indeed, even today He is letting loose upon we lost the cost of our continual refusal to at first comprehend all He is and from then appreciate all that means. Indeed, He is giving us exactly what we’ve all spent our lives asking for and will continue to do so until the very fabric of humanity and the fragility in which exists our existence simply cannot take anymore.

He will leave us alone until we’re so alone that we finally realize all that He is and all that He does and all that it means in regard to all that He’s promised us.

Unfortunately that realization will prove to come upon most too late I’m afraid. For these days to doubt and deny and disbelieve and that the sum of literally everything that even seems to ask or require anything has become our natural reaction to life itself. This world continues to sell this understanding of our being here that’s somehow built upon the premise that, since we seem to have always been the ones building everything we have and have then become, that we can then prove too those who continue holding it all together.

After all, if we are truly as powerful as our pride so loves to pretend, then yeah, we can continue managing just fine in what we all know are lives in which God’s all but absent.

At our request.

Indeed, ever since man was shown out of the Garden we’ve fallen for this arrogance that tells us that we didn’t need it nor He who created it anyway. No, the same devil sells the same lie and that is that this is our life and that as such we can do just fine all by ourselves. That we can provide, produce, thuswise prove that we are truly as if gods ourselves. And indeed, we have become our own gods and each of them now exists inside what are our stomachs that have clearly no calculation in regard to any necessary limit to all this world has and thus offers unto us.

No, we see daily this endless amount of stuff that, to us, seems so good, so fun, so exciting, expensive, evidentiary then of our success and our power and our prowess that, yeah, it seems as if we’ve had it proven to us that we got this.

And if it can be so proven to a people perfected in in the art and act of both doubt and delusion, then yeah, shouldn’t be that hard to prove it to anyone else either.

God included.

Indeed, we’re all down here as if all we’re doing is so wonderful to be done and thus too wonderfully done that, should there be a God (a fact the vast majority continue to deny), then surely He would be impressed with how well we’ve lived our lives. He should come back and look on all we’ve done and become and be nothing short of blown away.

No friends, we’re the ones who, on that day, will be blown away.

Why?

Because still a warped and crooked generation asks for a sign even on this side of His doubling-down on the sign of Jonah, three days in and then back out, a sign that clearly didn’t hit even the second time around.

And, well, if the sign He chose to offer didn’t work, except to those in Nineveh, well then it seems entirely reasonable that He will probably do something different this next time.

For He will prove unto everyone alive, and even to those who have by then already died, that He too is alive and that as the Life who is the Way that we too should live in a staunch accordance to the Truth which is His Word which is what He intended to at first command us, then correct us, then change us, then challenge us, then condemn us, then, yeah, crush us.

Not because He wanted that as the game plan as rather He is clearly a God of endless grace and goodness, a fact proven in Christ Jesus giving His life for us in our place on that cross, confessing there that we were just a people lost who knew not what we were doing, and all of it simply asking that we join Him in His dying to a sin-filled life so that we too could then be found by His side in a resurrection like His too.

But what did we do?

We stayed lost. We’re still lost. We lose more of us every single day unto the way in which the world all but insists we live our lives. Indeed, we’re all of such the same mind that, yeah, if our friends jumped off a bridge we’d most certainly do it too!

Why?

Because still we know not what we do!

And this is so easy to prove, again, just look around! Friends, I can understand that I’m rather grouchy these days, crotchety it seems, all but cynical in fact. I appreciate that I have a very different perspective on this place as I live what sure seems a much different life than most. And I can appreciate the difference in perspective probably being what continues to produce this almost despairing outlook I have on pretty much all of our existence here.

But can anyone truly look at what’s going on in this place, what’s becoming of this place and consider any of it as getting better?

I’m honestly curious as, well, most days I spend pretty much locked inside my head and so it would be interesting to me to see what others sure seem to. Because, well, it seems to me that most folks are still having fun, enjoying themselves, all but entirely unbothered by what’s becoming of the world around us. In fact, it honestly looks as if most are in full approval of it all.

I just don’t get that. Can’t understand it.

I literally just cannot see it.

Sure, I see some good still. Seems to take a lot more looking these days. But I try. I honestly do! I do my best every single day to find whatever good I can in this place.

But friends, it’s getting hard to find!

Why?

Because He’s doing what He promised He would. He’s literally done all He could, even dying on the cross, in order to help us see our lives as lost in order to turn us around and help us home. And, well, thus far all His attempts have fallen sadly short. Not because of His part but because of our pride. Indeed, still we live these lives as if we know what we’re doing, are then able to do it well and thus well capable of doing it alone.

And we’ve been asking Him to just leave us alone ever since Moses was chosen to lead us out of Egypt, a most frustrating job if ever there was one because, well, the people didn’t want to leave Egypt behind. At least they had food and water there, thus a life vastly improved over eating this strange manna every day and having to all but beg for a drop to drink in the middle of what sure seemed to be an all but endless desert with absolutely no sign of this “promised land” they were promised.

They again couldn’t stand waiting 40 days for Moses to come back down the mountain but instead demanded that Aaron make them a god they could see.

They picked a cow.

These days we pick cell phones and sports teams and celebrities. We pick comfort and chaos and confusion. We pick doubt and denial and delusion. We pick pride and pretense and preference and this popular opinion that somehow they matter.

That we matter.

And that because, again, things are still going just well enough that we can remain fairly easily convinced that, yeah, we got this. We don’t need help. We don’t need instruction. We definitely don’t need correction.

We definitely don’t need God!

As far as we’re seemingly concerned, we are gods.

Okay.

Let us then see how it plays.

That seems to be His final play in this game we’ve all all but insisted this life be. He is down to His final attempt to get through to us. And what is His last sign?

Leaving us alone.

Indeed, “The days are coming,” declares the Sovereign Lord, “when I will send a famine through the land—not a famine of food or a thirst for water, but a famine of hearing the words of the Lord. People will stagger from sea to sea and wander from north to east, searching for the word of the Lord, but they will not find it.” Amos 8:11-12

Why?

Because we are indeed those “who trample the needy and do away with the poor of the land, saying, ‘When will the New Moon be over that we may sell grain, and the Sabbath be ended that we may market wheat?’—skimping on the measure, boosting the price and cheating with dishonest scales, buying the poor with silver and the needy for a pair of sandals, selling even the sweepings with the wheat.” Amos 8:4-6

We’ve entirely lost the plot. Nobody loves God anymore. Nobody loves their neighbor as themselves. Nobody does unto others as they would have others do unto them. Nobody humbles themselves under God’s might hand in the hope of His proving to again fulfill His promise to lift us up in due time. Nobody takes us their cross and follows the Christ.

Rather we use His Name in vain and as something of an exclamation point to mark emphasis and surprise in jokes and such nonsense in life.

Indeed, He has begun to remove Himself from this world, mostly from the hearts of those that to whom much has been given but from whom nothing was given in return.

All because selfishness doesn’t understand sacrifice.

And thus, to those lost in the selfishness that run rife in this life, they can’t comprehend and just don’t care to even try to understand the message of the cross. Rather it remains foolishness to those who are perishing. And why? Because to most this is our life and, since we know well how to do with it as we please, then surely we can move that power out just a little further and do to it as we please.

Yeah, we think we can live forever if we so choose.

And God allows us to choose to believe whatever we want.

Why?

Because as He is just so too must there then be justice. And, well, there can be no justice if the people aren’t given the freedom to do as they please.

Thus He allows us to do this our way. To be whoever we want to be. To serve, honor, praise whomever and whatever we want to. He is allowing us to live our own lives according to our own plans and priorities, and yeah, all of our pride.

And, well, we’re starting to see signs of what it will be like when God’s not around anymore.

I say this because, to most, He’s never been there as far as they’re concerned. To most God is a foolish theory held only by losers who, for whatever reason, just want to miss out on enjoying their lives here. And so, to those, they live a version of life with no consideration given Him. They do everything without wondering if He would judge it as right or wrong. They don’t care as they don’t consider they need to.

And when enough people join together and agree that they don’t need to live as if God is, then yeah, we’re going to eventually come into a society in which there’s very little of God to see as next to nobody cares to show God anything.

It’s happening.

It’s clear.

And, yes, it will continue until such a time has come in which He’s just done and sends again the Son to come and gather those few who are His as He then too leaves all the rest who simply didn’t want to be.

It is all plain to see my friends. There is such the normalizing of sin anymore that it’s honestly getting hard to walk out the door. It truly breaks my heart to watch things continue to fall apart. Because I know it doesn’t have to be this way. There doesn’t have to be so much hate, so much harm, so much doubt and denial and disobedience.

And there shouldn’t be seemingly so little alarm in regard to all of the above.

And yet despite the decay so clearly underway, nobody seems in any hurry to change. Rather things just keep going along the way they’ve been going for centuries at this point.

For after all, if we can’t see Him then surely He isn’t there.

And if He isn’t, then why should live our lives as if we care that He could be?

That’s the world we see! It’s a place in which pride has replaced Him as the only god in every single life. Everyone is absolutely consumed and there being consumed by this deception that has us insisting that we can do this without Him.

He’s going to show us otherwise as He backs away from our lives in what is, again, His last sign.

He is showing us what life would be like without Him as, well, an increasing number of those around us sure seem to be without Him.

Not because He wants to leave them but because He’s loving enough to give them what they ask of Him.

We’ve been asking for a sign of His existence since, well, the start of our existence. And, again, since the sign of Jonah didn’t work, He’s going to try another way now.

He’s showing us what life is like without Him in what is a world that so continues to doubt Him that more and more are choosing to live as if He doesn’t.

It’s something of a reverse sign. He’s proving His existence by taking His presence away so that, as this world spirals into a veritable hellscape filled with darkness and hatred and violence and war and ruin and regret and shame and sin and selfishness with no end, we will see for ourselves what life will be like in that place that He isn’t.

He is taking away from us all that He’s given us and the hope that He offers us as things such as peace and joy and kindness disappear from the hearts and minds and lives of those around us.

And the world is drying up.

It’s all starting to decay. It’s rotting and falling into ruin. And, again, not that many seem to be doing or are even interested in considering anything any different so as to stop the crumble.

Most rather just laugh it off. No big deal. It’ll be okay.

No friends, no it won’t.

Because one day it’ll be too late to turn our lives out of this world and this world out of our lives. One day every eye will look up to find a God they either tried with everything they could to know or just the One they never knew agreeing that He never knew them either.

Again, He doesn’t want that for anyone. But the responsibility of repentance, of humility, of wanting Him to be there to save us from what’s becoming of life here, that falls on everyone.

He is showing us what it will be like to live a life without Him in a world that continues to push Him further and further away.

One day He will prove to be as far away as forever.

Let us then be careful what we ask for because, as even Jesus said, He will give it.

And we will get it.

But will it be too late to do anything about it?

#LeaveNoSoulUntold