Way before Eugene Peterson wrote
the beautiful paraphrase of scripture, The
Message, he wrote the following in Traveling
Light:
Every
Christian’s story is a freedom story.
Each tells how a person has been set free from the confines of small
ideas, from the chains of what other people think, from the emotional cages of
guilt and regret, from the prisons of self. . . . We are free to change. The process of that change is always a good
story, but it is never a neat formula.
We’ll be celebrating freedom next
week. Freedom to live within the rights
and privileges of being a United States citizen, freedom to worship, freedom to
choose representatives, freedom from tyrannies. Those freedoms are gifts that we often take
for granted. I’m grateful for them.
I take Christian freedoms for
granted too, however. Not only do I take
them for granted, I often wrap the gifts back up and stick them high on a
shelf, out of sight. Even worse, I pick
up the chains of tyranny, by imprisoning myself in small ideas; concern with
what others might think if I am myself; and I put on sweaters of guilt and
regret—and swelter in them before I realize that I have the ability to take an
honest inventory of my sinfulness and work to make amends, which will release
me. God
supplies and I fail to apply! It’s a
constant challenge, this bent to the sin of forgetting these gifts of
forgiveness that are as close as the beating of my heart.
It’s my prayer for us this week
that we all free ourselves from at least one piece, if not all, of our baggage that
ties us down, by picking up the gifts of mercy and grace, freely offered by God
to us all this very second. Then leap
for joy and do a little dance. Who cares
what anyone thinks? God will love it,
and I promise you will too. After all, it's our Christian story, and I'm grateful for it.
At least that’s the joyful view
from my desk!
Grace and joy,
Julie
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