I want to be free

Last night I had a dream about slavery. There were slaves, bounty hunters trying to grab the slaves and return them to slavery, abolitionists trying to free the slaves and help them escape the bounty hunters. It was quite exciting. I woke up and meditated.

St. Paul said we are slaves to sin. We might want to be free of sin, but there are a lot of former slave owners and their bounty hunters trying to return us to slavery. Who are we slaves to? Perhaps better to ask who we aren’t slaves to? Your cellphone? Your job? The government that wants you back in lockdown for two weeks that is turning into two years? These days the medical experts, that want to keep you frightened and tell you anyone who disagrees with them is spreading misinformation? Censorship, tyranny is all around us. Think this way or else. Even your friends that try to convince you to turn your back on God. To give up on your dreams because they aren’t working out. Your dreams aren’t practical. We all know the stories.

As Mel Gibson said in Braveheart, “Freedom!”. I want to be free. A slave no longer! I am tired of anyone else telling me what to think, what to do, what to be. God made me in His image. Can I be free to be that person? I can declare that and shout it from the roof top, but will that stop the former slave owners and bounty hunters from coming after me and returning me to the plantation? No it won’t.

I need to be vigilant. I need to be on the watch towers waiting for them to approach in the darkness. They do not like the light.

I say that and yet today we have them walking around in the middle of the day. Perhaps surrounded as they are by their fellow slave owners and bounty hunters they feel safe in the day. It is I that have to escape during the night. To find others that want to escape, to be free, to do His will, to be in His image. Perhaps then we can free others like us.

Let freedom ring! Break the chains of sin and sorrow that they want so desperately to keep us in.

Freedom! Freedom that comes from being in Him and Him in me. He and He alone made me in His image. No church, no wise man, no priest or mystic can tell me what to think, do or be. But be careful not to throw out the baby with the bath water.

There are two true things the Bible and the creation story do tell us. We are made in God’s image. We have truth, beauty, wonder inside of us. But as Adam and Eve in the garden, we can make mistakes. We can lie, be lied to, can be deluded, fantasize.

How do we balance these two things? Be careful. Check for the truth. Trust but verify. Look at the results. Does it work? Are you doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results? Just do the same thing better? How is that working out? Do the research so you aren’t tricked and put in chains!

Find one thing each day that is true. Know that God is! Try to experience God in your quiet place. And throw off the chains that people, governments, scientists, activists, friends throw on you to think this way, live like this, be like this. Be like Him. Have faith that you are made in His image.

Peace.