Free

May 6

We tend to take the most important things in life for granted. Chiefest among them perhaps is our freedom. We in the West have been so free from the burden of political oppression that we have lost sight of the fact that being free is not the natural state of life on this planet where men have sought from the time of Cain and Able to impose dominance over one another. As it has been said, "Freedom is not free."

Men have fought in great wars to supply that precious commodity to themselves and their progeny. We who are the children of mighty warriors for freedom bask in the comfort of what they have bequeathed to us and we have become somnolent in our false perception that we are forever secure in it.

We have lost sight of the reality that it will be stolen away from us by insidious forces if we are not ever vigilant and if we are not ever ready to defend it ourselves. Freedom is certainly an entity worth fighting for. It is worth dying for in order to preserve it for not only ourselves but for our children and grandchildren and all who will follow after us. We who value it must be ever prepared to speak in its behalf, to fight for its preservation, to relinquish our lives for its perpetuation.

Freedom is precious in an eternal sense as well, because Jesus Christ has died to set us free from the clutches of the evil one who goes about to "steal, kill and destroy," John 10:10. God's ancient foe is brutal toward those who endeavor to escape his fiendish grasp. If he could, he would keep minds and hearts enshrouded in darkness--so he fights the Light of Christ whenever it encroaches into the face of the deep.

As we endeavor to shine Christ's light to the lost, we are mindful that the task is His, for we have no light of our own; and yet we are not undone in the performance of our monumental task, for "greater is HE who is within us than he who is in the world," I John 4:4. Though the evil one rail against the light, his darkness shall be undone! Ultimately, Jesus shall prevail and all who trust in Him shall be free!