May 29, 2012

I've been set free...

Today and yesterday have me thinking about freedom. Yesterday being Memorial Day, a day whose very purpose is to honor, to recognize, and to pay tribute to all those who have given their life for our freedom. And then today, I had the right to exercise my freedom by voting.

Freedom. I can conjure up many other images when I think of that word.  Freedom as the last day of school rolls around and the arrival of summer becomes official.  Freedom when the final car payment check has been put in the mail.  Freedom when the to do list has no more “to dos” (still waiting for that one!). And on and on….

I take freedom that comes at a much greater price for granted so often.  Today’s freedom to vote is one example.  Commemorating the men and women who have sacrificed for my life here in America once a year on Memorial Day is not nearly enough.  

But there’s one freedom even more dear to me…my freedom in Christ.

Am I thankful for it? Absolutely.  

More than words can express. 

Do I honestly sit and weigh the cost of my freedom?
Not nearly often enough.

So this evening, I’m stopping to pause and reflect on my freedom in Christ.

My identity that I’m no longer enslaved to sin. I’ve been set free.

I’ve been set free.

To think that across the world still today there are men and women dying because they, just like me, are followers of Jesus.   

They just don’t have the freedom to say so.

The cost for following Jesus = their lives.

But they’ve been set free.

And I’ve been set free.

It really is Amazing Grace.

"It is for freedom that Christ has set us free..." Galatians 5:1