Advent 2016: Shackles

Readings: Psalm 80:1-7, 17-19; 2 Samuel 7: 23-29; John 3:31-36

As I mentioned yesterday, I’m thinking a lot about freedom.

Maybe because of where our country is headed. Maybe because of the terror of the days in Aleppo. Maybe because I have been thinking a lot about our prison system that is based on money not on helping people to change. Maybe because I am a person who struggles with feeling free enough not to try to control the world around her.

Either way…freedom.

It feels like so many of us are dealing in chains, shackles, and prison cells of our minds, bodies, or spirits.

Don’t we just want to be free?!?

For you are God, O Sovereign Lord. Your words are truth, and you have promised these good things to your servant. And now, may it please you to bless the house of your servant, so that it may continue forever before you. For you have spoken, and when you grant a blessing to your servant, O Sovereign Lord, it is an eternal blessing! (2 Samuel 7:28-29)

I love what David says here. He reminds God of the promises made to him for good things. He asks for the good things to start happening. And David claims the eternality of the promise that God has made him.

When I’m stuck in the prison cell of my mind, I sometimes forget the promises of God. The promise that was born under a star in the East. The promise that was for a different way of being. Emmanuel. God with us. The first Noel.

And then I remember…sometimes even just for a brief moment…the freedom that is mine because of a God who takes care of the entire universe and holds time in her palm.

Then…in that moment…I dance:

[embedyt] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7eZD3TKn_M[/embedyt]

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