in chains

Continuing "God pulls"...

Everywhere we look we see people in chains. But God made us to be free.

We have given up our freedom, and the people around us despise it and trample it. But God respects the freedom we were granted. God will not pull us against our will. There is no power on earth that could hold us if God pulled us free, but God will not pull us if we do not wish it. So we remain in chains, held back from the life we long for.

We resist God's pull because we are proud and easily deceived. If we could break our own chains, we would do it. We try, again and again. We enslave others, thinking that somehow makes us more free. Yet we remain in bondage, to money, to people, to fear. Our problem is not that we are too weak, but too strong. We cling so strongly to the little control we have, the little lives we have built for ourselves, so these are easily used to threaten and coerce us. While God waits for us, lamenting as Jesus did, "How often have I desired to gather you together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!"

It would take no effort of ours to break free, for God would do it for us. We do not need to change our circumstances. We do not need to change all the people around us. We only need to change our own mind—God will do the rest. But we don't believe that. Instead we put all our effort into denying our situation, insisting it is better than it is, constantly working to convince ourselves that we are not in chains. And the people around us are very willing to help us in that effort.

While God waits.

Continued...

 

Ecce Homo (Honoré Daumier, 1850)