FREEEDOM!
***
As the children and I waited for Kelli to bridge the horizon that was the airport escalator leading up to baggage claim, I felt a bit like William Wallace restraining his spear-bearing men as England's calvary came bearing upon them....
holllld....
hhooollllld...
hhoOoOOOOlllD......
HHOOOOLLLD.....
Then Kelli's beautiful, smiling face appeared.
NOW!
My three small children broke across the "Do not pass" line and lunged at Kelli like her they were miniature Scottish warriors and her legs were twin Englishmen, soon to be subdued by vice-like hugs of love and longing. The mass of travellers standing between them and Kelli didn't stand a chance.
By allowing them to charge, I had dropped the invisible barrier keeping them from accomplishing the only thing that mattered to them. They, like Wallace's marauders, were free to pursue the desires of their heart to fulfill the very purpose for which they were created. Wallace's army's purpose was to radically and violently express their love for their country. My children's only purpose was to radically and joyfully express the love they had been holding a week to the one who loved them first.
You could almost hear the bagpipes playing over the airport PA system.
Oh, that we would learn from children.
Ask one hundred people what freedom means, and ninety-nine of them will tell you something that looks like, sounds like, or maybe even feels like freedom, but really isn't. And if there is anything that has mastered the ability to deceive the "duck test," it's the wolf of carnal bondage wearing the lambskin of freedom.
Contrary to popular opinion, freedom isn't being unfettered from responsibility. It isn't release from consequence or accountability. It isn't entitlement, license, or absolution. People all over show their total incomprehension of freedom by their perpetual abuse of it, as well as for settling for a myriad of experiences and states-of-being that are freedom-ish, but in and of themselves not genuine freedom.
I submit that one will never...ever...experience freedom until and unless they have been unshackled from that which holds them in bondage expressly so that they may be free to pursue the very reason they were created. If the person who has been unshackled instead chases a different quarry, they unfortunately will capture only another oppressor, another enslaver.
So to understand freedom, one must understand why he has been created. If I mistakenly believe that I was created to enjoy the sensuous pleasures of life, I will pursue them. Subsequently, I will be enslaved by that which I think makes me free, causing me to a prison of sensous torture. If I believe I was created to fulfill the consuming appetite of vanity, then I will be shackled poolside, wasting away my life gazing in Narcissisine puddles that appear much deeper than they actually be. As a humble fool once said, "I gave my heart to know knowledge and madness and folly. I now perceive that I was grasping at the wind."
Freedom is not defined simply by what you have been freed from, but also what you have been freed for. And just like my own children, I have been created to love the one who loved me first. If (and when) If I chase my loving Creator, only then am I free. If I chase any other purpose in life, then no matter how free I may feel, I'm really living under bondage.
Here's the fun...and funky...part of being set free by loving your Creator. We experience and express this freedom by...you gotta be kidding me...being in bondage to Him. The only way to experience true freedom, is by doing what the Creator has called you to do, exactly as He called you to do it, for as long as He called you to do it.
And nothing else.
Now we're beginning to see a paradox isn't a set of MD twins, no?
Compounding the simplicity of it all is that you do not earn God's love by what you do, you are empowered, enabled, equipped to do God's will because of His love. You do not "do" because of who you hope to be, you "do" because of who He promised that you already are. "Doing" is the expression of your freedom. By refusing to "do" as freedom's manifestation, you demonstrate only an ongoing bondage of self-incarceration.
Do not fear, the yoke of the Master is light. Much lighter, in fact, than the one from which you have previously been freed.
Man's joy is complete only when he is free to accomplish that for which he was created. Man is only free when he is worshipping God with every breath, every thought, every step, every deed of his life.
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