Every morning as we awake from our sleep and begin our day we are making choices....we are exercising our free will. The free will given to us by our creator, just as he did Adam and Eve in the story of the garden. And just as with the original two, the realm we walk in has two trees from which we can choose to live. The One is full of love and relationship and freedom while the other brings about the certainty of dullness...actually death...spiritual and emotional. The One protects our uniqueness and keeps it intact while the other will certainly squeeze us into the mold of conformity based upon a predetermined code...and that code will be different depending upon where we live.
And just as in the garden, we get to choose. And let us never forget that our choices don't determine whether the Creator's presence goes with us or not on our adventure through life, but our choices will play a defining role in how we live and relate to others and to our Creator.
The tree of the knowledge of good and evil has thrust us all into the world of necessity. And that world of necessity and it's lies are constantly attempting to keep us from the place of freedom. The realm of necessity is the product of the tragic shift that happened when creation was broken. But here we are...it's where we find ourselves.
This morning I had two quotes on my mind. Two expression of the reality I am attempting to describe yet so often struggle to put into words to where it makes sense. The first quote speaks of the disasterous results of attempting to live by the rules of the world of necessity. The second quote speaks of living in this realm of necessity but being governed by something other. The Tree of Life to me is a picture of the place we belong and it provides us that which we need to thrive and live as we were created to live. It speaks to me of our home in Father Son and Spirit. The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil speaks of this realm of necessity that we wake up in every morning. We can't fully escape it but we can live in freedom. Our choices...the exercise of our free will plays a big part. If it is within the freedom found in the circle of Father Son and Spirit that we choose to abide, things will be much different than if it is from the ridged construct of the world of necessity that we find ourselves in. Control, manipulation, expectations, fear, confromity and so forth are human activities that were birthed in this other realm and they are all an act of violence, per se, against free will. Against freedom. The Spirit is in us to help us live in that freedom.
A big thank you goes out to these two brothers that have helped me think differently enough which in turn created enough of a crack for the Spirit to sneak in through and begin the process of renewing my mind. I hope this is a help to someone else out there.
"When stability (uniformity) is acheived, there is no more harmony." Jacques Ellul
"There is a Wind… that wraps itself around the edges of necessity, tugging and pulling until those boundaries become torn and begin to move to the motion of that which is not visible." Paul Young
3 comments:
Well, I thank you for sharing your heart, and for trying to describe the sometimes indescribable. You help me so much. I feel like I walk often in that place, and yet there is a part of my personality still stuck way back in that good/evil/control/fear thing and in learning to break free, or waiting to break free, or trying to work out how to break free, or trying to rest (all those things at once), you really encourage me, Kentster.
So thanks for sharing.
I too understand that feeling of back and forth.
These two quotes describe it perfectly for me. Certainly better than I can. Before I began to understand necessity and the ways it effects me and had controlled me, both of them would have left me scratching my head.
Because of the world we live in and due to the reality that we can't completely step outside necessity, leaves us needing to figure out how to live as free of it as possible. Talk about a disorienting period when I first began to wrestle with all of this. It's all so worth it though...it's another paradox. You begin to make choices that are opposite of what your brain has always told you will produce something valuable and "suprise" that which is valuable comes into view. I had never really been able to SEE and KNOW it before.....it had just been an abstract concept.
The description of what the Spirit does in Paul's quote is so beautiful. He/She/It is here to help us and can lead us out of all that is not necessary that distracts us and holds us captive and with that which we can't completely disentangle our selves from he/she/it can change us and how we live with it.
Your thoughts have really stuck a chord with me tonight. I have been wrestling with an old job/new job decision all day today. The voice inside says rest. My voice seems not so sure. The voice inside says I will supply all your needs. My voice seems to want more control than that. The journey that Father has been leading me on has really opened my head to experiencing that wind. Now then, letting go of me and following Him is sometimes a different story. It seems the "tugging and pulling" is where I get too often lost in choosing necessity instead of freedom.
Thanks for thinking out loud brother.
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