Let Freedom Ring

Does anyone really know what freedom is anymore?

We say it’s the defining factor of this nation and we send our young men off to fight and die for it. We seem to think it’s our right to defile God’s creation. Freedom is our right to stretch out our wallets with more cash than we need. Freedom is our right to stretch out our bodies with all the Big Macs our stomachs can carry. Freedom is our right to keep Jesus in the grave and in the heavens; it’s much too uncomfortable to let him roam the earth. The Kingdom of Heaven is too difficult a path.

The truth is that as long as we ignore Jesus, we enslave ourselves further in the way of the world. Like Atlas of old, we carry the weight of the globe upon our shoulders.

As I watch the people of the earth commit this suicidal love affair with power and greed, my heart breaks. How did we get everything so wrong? Our entire society is completely backwards from the way it was intended. Our church fathers turn over in their graves.

When did we start making silver collection plates? And five-foot gold crosses for our altars? And Roman columns to hold up our expensive buildings? Velvet red carpets?

With every ornate luxury we add to a church, we try to smother God– in a place he’s already said is not his home! Our God is wild; he cannot be contained, not in a church building, not in a group of people. He is everywhere, in all things.

The gospel is no longer personal. It is a mustard seed planted within a human soul that grows quickly and runs rampant across the earth. It affects all parts of life: personal, spiritual, political, economic, social. It heals the sick, gives sight to the blind, feeds the hungry, clothes the naked, loves the hated and loveless. It is everything to all people.

-Amanda

The Absent-Minded Inventor

(I wrote this on October 17, 2009 in my blue book when I was struck with the absurdity of nihilism, although I see other applications for it as well (i.e.: inspirational aspects and also universalist theology). You can find other blue book entries on the Thoughts page.)

Returning to my deliberations on purpose, I begin a story: Once there was an inventor, a master of machinery and technology. He had his duties and roles to fill like everyone else, but he was most dedicated to his life’s work, his invention.

For years he worked on it. Day and night he could be found in his study drawing sketches, scribbling ideas, or in his workshop tinkering with some gear or metal plate. He loved his invention more than anything. He sacrificed everything he had so that it might be perfect.

Finally, when he was very old and very tired, he revealed his invention to his friends and family. They, of course, were stunned by its magnificence. They had never seen anything so lovely.

But the amazement stopped there when the inventor’s friend asked, “But what does it do?” The inventor had no answer.