Day 4278 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Proverbs 23:5 NIV

A fading fortune

For the most part such is what every fortune found upon this ground really is. It’s ours for but a moment. It’s a treasured pleasure felt for a second or maybe two. It’s a comfort which asks that we continue chasing after it. It’s a convenience that demands we keep doing something inconvenient to keep it. It’s an assurance that’s about as sure as time itself, which, granted, seems entirely reassuring seeing as how we’ve been given so much time that time’s always proven to keep on coming.

But one day it won’t come anymore.

And, well, what will it matter what we have or don’t when we don’t have any more time with which to spend it, see it, watch it, hold it, have it or wish we had?

Such a strange thing has befallen we fallen inside this way of life wasted upon that which is lifeless and honestly already ruined. It’s that we can’t see the collapse, the rust, the surrender sold inside all we seek to buy. We don’t care to consider what all is it to which we’ve given our lives because I think we all know that there’s no way to make it seem alright. I think we all know we’ve wasted so much effort and hope and time upon what was merely material we could hide behind.

And that from the truth of what’s coming.

Which is the fact that we’re all leaving. Indeed, I think that so much of what we do within this life we love to lose to those things we never think we’ll have to leave is only done to keep us from thinking about the fact that we’re going to leave. It’s as if we think that the more roots we sink into those things we seek then maybe we’ll manage to become so much a part of this place and this place then too a part of us then all that we’ve learned to love, all that we’ve come to trust will remain forever a part of us.

And yeah, the Bible warns that may well be the case.

For indeed, the Bible says that there are but two paths running through this place. One is wide and the other isn’t. The one that isn’t is thus the one seldom traveled by they who are those who seem to see this endless need for all the things that this world measures as having meaning as is made within only money. And the wide is then that which is chosen far more often and that by so very many more thanks to the ease with which it offers accommodation unto those many ideas, ideals we’re chasing.

Yes, the wide ride through this life is that one most often taken simply because the way of life lived within it is something like a vacation in which nothing really ever matters other than having fun and making sure you pick up plenty of souvenirs to show anyone who may ever ask that we were really here. Just look at the t-shirt we picked up at that one place we went that one time. Or how about this little coffee cup that we got to buy thanks to standing in line that morning back in July. Check out the tattoo we had some dude do that day we just wanted to go wild and do something crazy.

Look at all the stuff we’ve got from what sure seems a life amazing.

And it is. This world is amazing and the sheer amount of things we can find or buy or think about or taste and try out is mind-blowing. But friends, if we’re not seriously careful so too can it all become life-owning. And that’s because, as I feel this very moment, it can slowly begin to consume our thoughts. All this world’s wealth of worry and want can become all we care to consider or chase after. This world always being there to offer us everything that is here, when combined with the fact that we too are here and can see all that there is here that thus here has to offer, it can become our lives.

And it has.

All of us have spent so much time and effort and interest and attention and intention and intensity even chasing after so much that this world had thinking that it’s worth something. And it is. Everything this world offers us is indeed worth something. It means something. And that’s because it all asks something. It all requires something. It all seeks something from us in exchange for it coming to us and, at least perhaps, becoming a part of our lives.

But that’s the part that we never seem to see as the biggest part of the problem.

It’s not that we have things or even that we sometimes want more, though the wanting is what opens the door to the problem becoming the problem that it’s for all of us already become. No, the problem is that it’s all temporary. It’s that we’re all of us in this endless hurry to have and hold what will all be one day gone. It’s that life as we’ve either willingly or unwittingly accepted it is defined by what we have in hands we one day won’t.

Because we don’t think about that side of life.

Because this place where we live it for now, which again is something we all do for a really long time, it’s so full that we too then find reason in seeking our fill of all that’s here where there exists literally everything we can think might possibly matter.

Truly, this world lacks nothing that we need to make a life worth living.

After all, that’s exactly what it sure seems we’re all down here doing. For indeed, all of us are alive. All of us are such in what seem to be pretty good lives. All of us have all of this stuff stacked up still around us that we at one time tried to find and found success in doing so. And when you add all of that up what you’ll find is that we’re all living really good lives as in fact there are even days that go really good.

Not all of them but more than enough to inspire in us such a lack of change that never we do.

Which is kind of the problem.

It’s that these lives we’re living aren’t meant to be so lived amassing the wealth of a world that every graveyard says we’re leaving but rather to practice leaving so that we’re ready whenever we do. And again, no, I know that that’s no fun to think about and seems even less enjoyable when compared to all the enjoyment and excitement and entertainment we’re surrounded by.

But none of those things have ever changed the fact that we’re all going to die.

They, if anything, only offer to kindly keep us distracted until we do. But friends, as kind and caring as that may seem to us who wish not to see even any hint of that Day upon which we’ll leave this world and all we’ve had or have hoped to have within it, it’s only a lie. It’s a deception deceived by our adversary in order to accomplish his desire to steal and kill and destroy.

Because he wants to steal and kill and destroy and, well, sometimes the best way to accomplish something is through reverse-psychology in which you convince someone else to do what you want them to do by at first convincing them that they shouldn’t. What I mean is that the devil steals and kills and destroys via enticing us toward that life in which he says we can have all this world and even build kingdoms of our own within it within which we’ll find and feel so much power and importance that surely, as he even told Adam and Eve, we’ll not die.

Yes, the devil tempts us with all that’s here around us knowing that we’ve such a lust for just such stuff that we’ll agree to seek it all inside that lie that says we’ll never lose it.

And he does this all along knowing that not only will we eventually lose all that’s here because one day we’ll all be gone from here but so too that should we spend just long enough seeking after only all we’ll one day lose that so too shall we have lost any hope of enjoying for eternity what he himself has fallen from.

The devil fell from Heaven and wants as many of us as possible to join him.

And we live in a world that’s playing into his hand every single time that we allow our eyes, our minds, our lives to become worried about, focused on, craving of, longing for anything in this world. And we do it all the time because we’ve bought that lie that tells us that we can have things and that we’ll have them forever once we do.

But no we won’t.

As I sit here this morning I can’t even begin to remember all the things I’ve already had that I don’t have anymore. And that’s because I’ve already lost or sold or thrown away more than I have at the moment. Life is indeed this endless conveyor belt upon which new things come into our lives all the time, every day in fact, only to just keep moving on down the line as we just sort of stand here frozen in the amazement of it all watching it all go by.

And there are so many things to see and treasures to buy that we never really notice the ones that are starting to fade or are already gone. Because our eyes and hearts don’t care about what we already have as that’s a sure thing. What we have is what we know we have and if we have it then we don’t need to worry about trying to find it or afford it because we already have it. It’s finished. We did it.

Yay us!

And yet no, no woe to us as what we have is not what we have to keep but rather only ours to lose. And no, we again can’t ever see that as our eyes know only to focus on whatever it is that we’re still trying to find, but friends, that’s where the real problem lies. It’s in the fact that we’re living our lives always trying only to find all those things that are only here. And we do that because everything that is here has built within it this assurance that we can find it.

And we love such guarantees!

But what we don’t seem to understand is that nothing is guaranteed here. Other than our dying someday. That is the only promise have in this life; that we will die. And yet we live as if we won’t simply because we don’t want to and that simply because we don’t want to leave all we’ve come to love and learned to assume as our worth.

Indeed, we’ve all come to measure our value by the volume of things found in our lives.

Clearly then missing the message of the Christ who emptied Himself on that cross.

Every life lived here will be lost and yet we live them all for all we can find before we do. And we become so focused on it, so fixated by it, so faithful to our hope of finding it, feeling it and it never then failing us that our every hope and all our trust is only placed in all that rusts.

We’re living our lives for everything that’s passing away, again, some of which already has as, again, I’ve already forgotten so many of the things I’ve had over the years. And I can suddenly see the devil working against me in his showing me some of them again as if out of nowhere alongside the promise that I can probably find them on ebay and have them once more.

But why?

Why go back down that road of that which was already gone? Why retrace those steps of a life I’ve not lived in so long that I didn’t remember I’d forgotten it? Why not let it go? Why not move on?

Because we don’t want to.

We like it here. All that we like is here. All that we want is here. And, yeah, none of it ever really seems to truly go away as there are such sites as ebay where we can buy that toy we had growing up or we can drive back by that place where we had our first date or we can clean out the attic and find a new fascination with an old attachment.

Life here offers us an almost endless opportunity to do nothing but only everything we’ve already done, and, seeing as how it’s all gone pretty well, that makes a lot of sense.

For now.

But friends, the promise is again that everything here is passing away and again I know we all know this already as we’ve all of us had those things that at one time were important that simply aren’t anymore. All of us have had treasures we’ve forgotten about or sold in garage sales. All of us have had plans that we just walked away from as their excitement waned. We’ve all had friends that faded away into their becoming strangers that we’ve not talked to in forty years.

All of us have lived a past that’s already, at least in parts, been forgotten.

What then makes us think that anything of all we’re doing, saying, thinking, chasing, feeling won’t do the same?

Odds are it will and that because, well, one day everything here will be gone. One day all this world’s wealth will vanish. One day everything we have around us will not be around us as we’ll not be here anymore.

Why spend so much time and attention upon it all then?

Can’t we see that our all having had those things that we’ve forgotten or sold or stopped caring about only proves that we’re probably going to forget, get rid of or stop caring about plenty of things that we clearly don’t think we will? Again, I can’t even begin to remember all the things that I once cared about that I can’t even remember now. Sure, some have stayed a while longer than others but my friends I know that doesn’t change the fact that I’m leaving it all behind.

In fact it’s only in that fact that I find we’ve any hope to find.

Why?

Because until this world comes to be seen no longer as our home we can’t possibly hope for another home. Until we lose our lust for glitter and rust we can’t place our trust in He who came here to build a kingdom on a cross. Until we allow ourselves to agree that everything here is supposed to fade we’ll simply keep living for everything that will be one day taken away.

I don’t want Him to have to rip this world out of my arms.

I rather wish to be found upon His coming back holding on so loosely to everything around me that I’ll not feel it slip away.

Yes, I want to hold this life and all we so often live to find within it so loose that I won’t know when it’s gone as I’ll simply be so overcome to have gotten to go where I’ve come to know our only life really is.

For this is all just practice. And sure, practice is important but friends, that’s the point. Practice IS important and yet we’re not any of us practicing for leaving. Instead we’re all still pretending that we’re staying in what is a world of plans and prizes and priorities already faded and fading.

Let them.

Stop holding onto everything so tightly. Stop spending so much time and effort trying to make money that we all use to buy things that we’ll probably forget about shortly after we get them. Stop giving your life to a world that doesn’t have life to give in return. For everything here is but death in waiting.

So stop living for all that’s fading and live instead for the faith that not only isn’t fading but is in fact only becoming more important by the day as clearly the Day is getting closer.

Yes, live to be ready to leave this world behind, and do so by understanding that everything you’ve ever had that has only faded in meaning, it’s only proof that everything here will do just that. For this world is passing away and it’s already sprouted the wings.

Let it all go my friends.

Because one day it’ll all be gone anyway. And there’s just nothing to gain in making that goodbye a hard one.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold