Freedom

“Free at last, free at last, thank God Almighty, we are free at last. ” Martin Luther King, Jr.

Recently I’ve been thinking about freedom.  In a previous post, we talked about how God’s will  for us is to be happy, joyous and free. But free from what?  I think it’s freedom from our selfish little ambitions and desires.  Freedom from fear and jealousy.  Freedom from not feeling good enough or from the ego convincing us that we are better than the rest.

Being human has all these foibles attached to it. Some ideologies believe it is a consequence of living in a broken world, others would attribute it to being too attached to our human desires. Whatever the reason we all deal with it.  We all are chained to something. All of us are enslaved to some kind of noun.  Maybe we are slaves to the credit card companies, working every day to send them their ‘pound of flesh’.  Maybe we are slaves to the scale, worrying over every pound we gain or lose.  Maybe we are bound to comparing ourselves to everyone else, either coming up short or congratulating ourselves on not being “that bad”.

What would it look like if we could break these chains that bind us? What if we were free?  How can we actually be free? I mean, what do you actually do?  I think that it requires some Divine intervention. I believe that we have to ask for God’s help to release us from these chains.  Then we have to cooperate with him to help keep us free.

Just for today

When I feel all bound up by fear and selfishness, I will pause and ask God for relief. I will ask God to redirect my thoughts away from poor, poor pitiful me and toward what he would have me be.

Prayer

Oh Creator of my foolish heart, please help me quit being enslaved by stuff which was never intended for me. I know that you want me to be free from selfishness and self centeredness.  Grant me this freedom, take away the thoughts that try to consume me and give me other thoughts that will guide my actions to allow me to live free.