Let My People Go

God wants His people free. He sent ten plagues against Pharaoh commanding him to set His people free from Egyptian slavery (Exodus 8-12). Jesus, quoting from Isaiah, made it clear that He had come to "set at liberty those who are oppressed" (Lk 4:18).  Freedom from slavery is one thing.  Freedom from oppression is something else--something deeper and more holistic. Oppression can keep a free person from feeling free; and what good is freedom if one does not feel  free?  It's one thing to know  that you are free, and another to feel free.  What is it that causes us to feel oppressed rather than free?  Shame, guilt, inordinate desires, unfulfilled needs, feelings of inadequacy, fear, worry, chronic anger or frustration, self judgments of unworthiness, feeling victimized, etc.  A more pointed question might be: What makes you feel oppressed? What covers your soul like a cloud of darkness, blocking out the sunshine of freedom? Whatever it is, Jesus claims the power to deliver you from it. Unlike our salvation, which comes immediately and completely with faith in Jesus as the Christ/Messiah, this deliverance as well as other aspects of our sanctification (our spiritual growth) is a process. It is a process to learn to feel free.  It is a process of becoming mindful, on purpose, of what is oppressing us and then bringing it into the Light of Christ--His Love and Power.  Most of us have been oppressed by some of the dark aspects of this world for so long that we don't even know that we are oppressed. We have "learned helplessness" (which I encourage you to google). We have settled [without knowing it] for less than is available to us. But we can awaken into a keener awareness of our oppression if we simply pay attention on purpose to our soul--the inner core of our being; our deepest emotions; our "heart of hearts".  This is like bringing the light of awareness into the darkness of obscurity. It can be a painful process because it brings some subtle, suppressed pain into openness and clarity. We need Christ with us in this process. We need to trust Him deeply and explicitly.  "I am with you always" He said, "even to the end of the world." And He also said "I have overcome the world." And "All authority in heaven and on earth is given to me." {Matthew 28:18-20; John 16:33, 1John 5:4}. Jesus wants us to be sure that He has the power to deliver us from oppression. This power is His Love--the same power that created the universe {John 1:1-3; 1John 4:8}.  In God's unspeakable Love there is no oppression. This is the Love and Truth and Power that must penetrate, permeate and transform the inner core of our being. From this core, which is God/Christ in us, emanates life and light, driving away all the darkness of oppression. We still live in this fallen world and, like Jesus Himself, experience frustrations, anger and grief. But now, like Him also, we have a foundational core of love, peace and joy. We know beyond doubt that God is working all things together for our good, and that this universe is unfolding in the hands of a Creator who IS Love! The love that we feel for our children multiplied by the number of stars in the galaxies! We are safe in this Love. And we are free. And we can allow ourselves to feel free! Praise God!

Meditation/Apologetics

I sat down to write this blog fifteen minutes ago, then realized that my e-mail box had nearly 3000 messages and needed to be cleared. When I began the tedious process, I saw some attachments that I wanted to keep--some photographs--and got involved in trying to download them. Five minutes into that, I remembered what I had sat down to do. It reminded me of the difficulty of maintaining priorities and how easy it is to get caught up in our flood of media and other technologies. If you're paying attention, you realize how much your soul needs quietness. And if you're not paying attention, you may feel somewhat frazzled and anxious. Life is moving fast these days; perhaps faster than is good for our souls. If we don't attend to our souls, none of the rest of it will matter.

I invite you to let this reading be an opportunity to tune in to your soul--your heart of hearts; the core of your being. Pay attention on purpose to your inner being. Pause now and take some time to do this.
What do you detect? What is in your heart? Maybe write or journal about what you discover. You may find yourself feeling compelled to break way from this and go do something. I'm inviting you to just BE rather than DO.  Be wherever and whatever you are in this moment. Breathe deep. Settle in to this moment. Feel your life pulsing in your body. Be amazed at your amazing body. (What comes up when you think of your body? Pay attention to that, then let it go, and come back to being amazed and thankful for your body. Let go of making judgments about your body. Whatever condition it is in, it is a miracle!)

Take some time to meditate on your death. If this evokes anxiety, that is good! Face that anxiety. It will not protect you from death. Move through that anxiety until you come out on the other side of it where death becomes your friend. Death is your friend, not because you are morbidly desirous or callous about it, but because it is such a great teacher. The Bible reminds us that our lives are like a mist that arises briefly and then is seen no more; like grass that flourishes briefly then wilts away. This, of course, is alluding to our physical bodies, not our souls. The Bible teaches that our souls are eternal; and that Christ has opened the doorway to this eternal life of the soul in the most wonderful way--in the way of divine Love; the Love that brings forth and sustains the universe--that moves the sun and moon and stars. The Love from which this exquisite earth has blossomed like a flower in an otherwise, as far as we can see, barren universe. And we are at the apex of life on this planet! We may be the only creatures within a billion light years that are contemplating the meaning of life! That have the capacity to experience beauty, love, and humor.  We should be dancing!

And that is what happens when we go deeply and courageously into our selves--our souls. We realize that we did not create ourselves. And the more deeply we look into the amazing complexity of life, and it's interdependent inter-wovenness, the more difficult it is to hold to a theory of random chance--that we are here because of an accident occurring in inorganic dust and gasses that have somehow always been here, and that accidentally brought forth living creatures with something as miraculously awesome as consciousness!  That consciousness evolved from unconsciousness!? We can begin to credibly believe that the Power by which we are here must be conscious and beneficent. It/He/She gave us our precious lives! We begin to see what Jesus was and is talking about. A God who is Love.
We begin to see that this universe (including us, of course) is a manifestation of Divine Love! And nothing can be lost from the universe. If we are here because of Love, then we have nothing to fear and nothing to dread. Not even death.
But we see the reality of evil. Some may say that since there is no conscious core of the universe--no God--that there is really no standard by which we can say that anything is evil or good. We only have our own projections, coming from our own consciousness. But we realize that we did not create our consciousness, as we did not create our physical bodies. And the proposition that there is no evil or good goes against something in us that feels universal and true. We sense that we did not create the reality that murder, rape and theft are evil. We sense that the evilness of these deeds was true before we ascribed them as "evil".  And by what innate intuition do we sense this "evil" and "good"? Is that intuition also a randomly evolved phenomenon? Something that is issuing independently out of DNA? ( I suppose there will always be some who believe so. The Bible says "The fool has said in his heart 'there is no God.'" [Psm 14:1]  But I don't want to come across as arrogant. I'm simply quoting the Bible, which, I believe, can still be rightly considered the most influential book on the planet. )
Does it not seem valid to suppose that that intuition of evil and good issues out of the same power by which we are here? And is it possible that inorganic material can have a sense of evil and good? Or a sense of anything for that matter? It seems that we keep coming back to the Conscious Core; some Consciousness from which we emanated; something that imparted such things as love, beauty, humor and truth into us--God.
If  we cross the continental divide from atheism to theism, we must begin to wonder if the Conscious Core of the universe has communicated to us, and if so, what?  Someone [like me] may come to you and say that One has come to this earth claiming not only to know the Truth, but to actually BE the Truth. How can one be a person of intellectual integrity and choose to ignore the one who claims to be universal Truth? A truth-seeker must come to his/her own independent conclusion regarding this, and that can only be done by sincere and careful investigation. This can lead into an honest and deep investigation into the life and teachings of Jesus-- something that could be of immense value! In fact I think it's fair to say that anyone who has not done this investigation is either too busy, a coward or a fool. Every time we write the date we testify to His historical existence and to His eminence.  This is 2017 AD (in the year of our Lord).
So here are some statements from the Bible that you may find helpful to meditate upon:
Be still....and know....that He is God. Psm 46:10
I have calmed and quieted my soul. Even as a baby at its mother's breast is my soul. Psm 131:2
Peace I give to you. My peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. (Jesus)
Don't be afraid, and don't let your heart be troubled. (Jesus)
As I have loved you, love each other. They will know that you are my disciples by the love that you have for each other. (Jesus)