Day 4257 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Isaiah 14:13 NIV

A pride’s plans

Unto the end they know nothing of the same as, as far as ego is always to be concerned, there is nothing about which to be concerned. There is no harm coming, no danger to be found, no pain to be felt other than that of what’s come in the form of this world letting us down via the refusing to adhere to what is our way in which we want what we think are our lives to go. Indeed, if only everyone else could come to know what we think we do, we’d all be living perfect lives filled with so much power and opulence that nothing would be able to ever bring us down.

For it seems that ivory towers know only to grow higher and higher.

And indeed, this has been the very plan of every man ever since the devil got it in our heads that not only could we be more but that we deserved to be. That we were being shortchanged in those lives lived without need of change. That somehow we’d be better off were we to have the power that our prior perfection never knew we never needed. That there was more for us to see and thus more for us to have should we become the more said more would help us be.

Thus entered the tree which produced the plans in which our every pride still abides. Not that the tree itself sells the lies as rather it only opened our eyes to the seeing of a decidedly god-like ability to differentiate between that which is wrong and whatever it is that we think is right. But to have one’s eyes opened toward the knowing of what no life needed to know only invited every life to go the direction that no life needed to go:

Both upwards in terms of our opinions of ourselves and thus spiraling into a selfishness that’s perfectly fit for hell.

Why?

Because self knows no limitation. There is no basement in terms of our ability to believe only in ourselves. No line in this life that we’ll find in which we’ll find that we’re not the kind we thought we were as there comes no reason within our warped reality in which we really seek to understand just how out of hand things have gotten. Rather, thanks to all the things we’ve gotten, we continue to consider only that cancer that has us convinced, utterly certain that we know what we’re doing and are indeed doing it so very well that at some point even God will yell to grab our attention and that only to tell us how great we’re doing.

Yes, we live as if we can impress God simply because we think we impress people, and that only because we’re really impressed with ourselves.

And that book does rival the Bible in terms of sales.

What book?

The one we spend our lives writing about lives in which we do no wrong. The one filled with chapters as to our powers, pages plastered with all our prestige and popularity, words seething out telling all about how awesome we are as is always measured only according to how less awesome we were just yesterday. And that because we didn’t know then what we don’t know we don’t know now.

Wow, how weak we were to have agreed to the little we had, the little we were yesterday!

For we’re so much better now in what are now lives in which we’re now closer to our better and on our way to our best.

Pretty sure it’s somewhere west. Could be north. Suppose it might be east but either way I know we’ll see because indeed we’re the ones who know what we’re doing thanks to the fact that we’re the ones who drew the maps and made the plans and moved the lines to make it look as if our lives are always going the way we want them to go.

No, we know nothing of mistake, little of misunderstanding, plenty of where we’re standing and even more of how much we’re winning thanks to all we’re gaining in what is a world always ready to play the stage upon which we perform for the crowds that always gather around to watch us show them how to best live these lives.

Always only because it seems to sometimes actually go according to our pride’s plans.

And, man, when those days do come in which things do go our way, it says all there is to say in that if things would just agree to our greed and gluttony we’d be already living the perfect lives that our every pride thinks we deserve to live. Granted, we see not anything in terms of gluttony or greed as rather everything is something due unto us and that in whatever measure we might prove able to imagine we might enjoy.

But still, just as soon as life and this world bends to our will things will be going so very well that both God and everyone else will have to look unto us to learn from only us what the very meaning of life must be as they’ll then see that we’re living it so perfectly that we obviously know better than any what to do with one.

At least down here under the sun where most of us still live apart from the Son who came to show us that the only path home is a narrow one paved in humility and hope as opposed to the wide open roads of arrogance and decadence that we both know so well and think we deserve the same.

No, we deserve nothing of plain, nothing of pain, nothing of patience even. This is our life and we want to live it our way as is to be filled with all things that make us look good and feel even better. After all, that’s the point of this life, isn’t it? To feel good. To have fun. To make friends. To become rich, famous, loved by everyone. To gain unto ourselves so much pomp and circumstance that our fans fill the stands, God even leading them in to sit in awe of all we are.

Indeed, I remember being so impressed with myself. Remember well in fact. Why? Did it just yesterday. Do it all the time. In truth not a day goes by in which my pride doesn’t at least try to get the better of me usually by convincing me that I know best, far better than anyone else. And it’s a convincing not at all hard nor long in the making as it’s merely the very thoughts I long to be thinking. That I’m doing well. That I know better than everyone else. That I’m living a better life than everyone else.

That I’m the example that everyone else should follow so that they could finally crawl out of the shadows and know what it’s like to live like me.

I sure do like me sometimes.

Most of the time I find by the close of night that I’m not sure why. But during the day? No, out in the light that I often consider my life I’m always doing everything so right that I like to look at everyone else as if they’re at the foot of the mountain that I’ve not merely climbed but have indeed mounted as if a stallion upon which I ride through what is this life in which I so enjoy considering how much I get right and how little I do wrong.

Again, doesn’t ever last long as the dark of night brings me back to the reality of my life as is met with all of these pesky reminders that come from somewhere about the words I said that I shouldn’t have said or the things I didn’t do that I wish I’d have done or the prize I won in the game I feel ashamed of having played or how much time I gave away to doing so much of nothing at all.

As if I’ve all the time in the world to just give so freely away.

Thankfully my ego apparently knows where to always get more as there’s always been a refreshed store found here every morn.

Indeed, each new day brings with it the hope that things will go our way. That the plans we’ve made will work out this time. That this time we will find what is that better life that we’ve always known was always there waiting inside the people we want to be, think usually we already are.

It’s right up there on that mountain just ahead. That one rising inside of our head. That height reached by our feet, the summit that is ourselves and their ability to be all we’ve always thought we were already.

It’s so close we can taste it.

Yes, our perfect life is always so within reach that we think we can live it, if in fact we for whatever reason aren’t convinced we’re not as we speak.

For that is the plan we’ve been making! It’s the ideal of our every idea as to what all we should be doing in what we’re still certain are our lives. Our lives becoming the idol and us the blind servants seeking always to keep shined every lie that we tell ourselves every day about everything that is really our life and how we just don’t deserve the worst of it.

No, we’re gods, are we not? Kings and queens deserving of everything we could ever want? Such impressive exemplars of the very best of a life’s intentions as have always been intended to contend for our assumptions as are always for only our best and never ever anything less?

Rather we too say in our hearts that so too shall we ascend to the heights of every hope itself and there find only all that we always knew should be this life. That we’ll reach some point at some point and there finally prove that we knew always what best to do. That we can build ourselves up to the point in which even God has to look up to us and does so only to congratulate us on being the ones who managed to figure it out.

That life is some kind of lock in which all we love is what forms the key and thus everything we think we need is only found inside of us.

Maybe it is.

But why then are we still looking? For what more are we still trying? Why in fact are we all afraid of dying if this life is meant to bend to our will which is always for all this world has to offer?

Is this not where we’ve planned our thrones? Is this not where we’ve built our homes? Hasn’t this world formed always the backdrop to every belief we’ve ever believed?

Aren’t we the ones who always end up winning?

For to our ego there is no ability to know any version of this in which we don’t get everything we think we deserve. Be it life, love, mercy (if such a weakness is for any reason ever needed), they’re all things that we all think we’re owed because we all seem the ones who know what life is meant to be. And, seeing as how we’re the ones who thus know everything, as is considered in how we apparently know the best as compared to the rest, then yes, we should be living what are lives so utterly perfect that even God should look upon them and agree that well we’ve done.

And yet He dares decide that only those who give up their lives and take up their cross and agree thereupon to every one of all of our every losses of everything such as every opportunity that we’ve ever had to walk toward the hope that is only known inside of humility, that if we’ll not agree to hope in more than we think we already are that we’ll rather be turned away?

How dare He turn us down!

Just look at how well we’ve done! Just consider all the plans we’ve still in place within this place. Take into account all the things that we think count. And, yeah, pay equally no mind to those many that we don’t think matter.

Why?

Because we’re the ones who know what we doing.

Not really ever getting anywhere closer, but we have plans. We have expectations. We have these certain certainties defined inside of how we know always what we’re doing and that it will lead us one step closer to the closure our every perfect presumption as to our power, our ability, our divinity even.

Indeed, again we really do love to live as if we truly are gods.

That we can come up with a better way to do this than did even His Son Jesus. After all, Jesus died here and that at the hands of those who hated Him. We know rather how to be loved, how to be praised, how to be appreciated for the mere gift that is our being here in this place. And thus, thanks to our ability to find and feel all of the above, we think we’ve always the only best plans that will lead to only always the very best things.

But friends, we know nothing.

Better yet, we are nothing.

While we may sit enthroned in hearts of stone living as if we alone know what best to do with life, the truth is that the Truth had to come and us find because we’ve all gotten so lost in our lust for ourselves that we know not what we’re doing as every single day we’re down here only losing so many opportunities to know He who died to save us from ourselves. And that’s clearly something we can’t even begin to consider whenever we can’t consider that there’s anything wrong with ourselves.

No, if we are indeed sat upon thrones as those who know what best to do with life, then everything we’ll ever think, say and do will always be right. And if our lives always go right then we don’t need any help but rather everyone else should come to us for the same.

But, again, it just doesn’t work that way. And that’s because, well, our way isn’t a thing but rather a lie. In fact, these lives we’ve lived thinking always that we’ve always lived them so well, that’s perhaps the biggest lie of all as there are none who do what’s right, none who are good even.

And yet we think we’re great?

Give me a break!

Friends, how long do we really want to continue this charade? What are still convinced that we stand to gain inside of our continuing to live as if we know the way? Granted, we may know what sure seem plenty of ways to live some really great lives in this place. But is this place still the only place we plan to be? I mean it anymore seems as if we’ve even stopped building toward the stars and have instead settled for plastic versions we plaster on our bedrooms ceilings so that they seem closer and thus easier to imagine.

Indeed, we’re clearly losing our ability to believe in everything better than whatever we are.

Have we already arrived at the best we can be? Is this life and the way we live it truly the throne we expected? Is this place our reward, and thus do we really already have it?

I sure hope not!

And that’s not because I’m not grateful for this life or where we get to live it but simply because I can see what all we’ve done to it. Sure, we’ve got plenty of towers built with only our power but there is nothing here that can in any way prove to Heaven rival.

Why then do we continue to settle? And that for thinking that we deserve to?

What would we actually gain if we really could stand eye-to-eye with God?

What hope would we have if we didn’t need the hope of Heaven thanks to our having founded our own paradise?

What joy or peace or rest could we hope to find if we’ve already found the best a life can be?

I want personally to have the ability to have something to look forward to, as I imagine we all of us do. But I want to look forward to something that I can’t miss or mess up. I want the hope of something that I can’t hold as I then know that I can’t break it either. I want to look for something that I can’t lose.

Just so happens that I know that I’ve lost a lot in what’s been a life in which I’ve lived as it I always got everything right.

Most of all I lost my mind trying to find what I thought was best for my life. And I’m these days so tired from the searching that I don’t want to be the one to look anymore. Rather I’m finally willing to settle for the backseat and from there just let God take me to and through whatever He knows to be the only way to get me where I know I’ve never been.

I know I’ve not been to Heaven. I know I’ve made my own thrones trying to convince myself otherwise. I know I’ve all but ruined my life.

And while my pride still comes up will all of these plans to climb all of the mountains and mayhems that still lie in my way, I find myself less inclined to listen to them all the time. And why? Because none of them work out. None of them go right. Nothing has ever gone exactly as I planned.

Why then continue looking to me be the one somehow able to get where I know I’ve never gone?

It’s amazing to me that as kids we see the stars and believe that someday we could fly among them only to become adults that think we can rise above them. Only to then spend our lives trying to do just that and only falling always flat.

I miss the days of hoping to fly as it seems all I’ve found since losing my ability to believe I could was just a life that I thought was going so good that I didn’t need to anymore. And so, no, I don’t want to sit on the throne anymore.

I just want to know the One who does.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold