This came up on random play today:
God said to Abraham “Kill me a son”
Abe said “Man you must be puttin’ me on”
God said “No”
Abe said “What?”
God said “You can do what you want Abe
but the next time you see me coming
you better run”
Well Abe said “Where you want this killing done?”
God said “Out on Highway 61”.
Bob Dylan either knows nothing about theology, or a great deal. I can never decide which.
I happened to read the start of Galatians chapter 5 the other night. In my bible (the Good News Version) it read as:
“Freedom is what we have – Christ has set up free! Stand, then, as free people, and do not allow yourselves to become slaves again.”
This year, there has been a lot of celebration of the end of slavery, and yet when I read this, I realised that slavery is still going strong. Yes, Christ has set us free from the slavery of sin, and also from slavery to the law. But now that we have this freedom, what do we do with it? We manage to enslave ourselves once again. It’s so easy to be enslaved by career, by money, by the tv schedules, by fashion, by our bad habits, by public opinion, by fear – the list goes on and on. We seem to have a built in tendency to make new chains for ourselves, as we slide into patterns of thought and behaviour, and then get stuck in them.
I think I need to break a few chains again. Here’s to freedom!
ping Jesus
Jesus is alive!
(This is a really corny computer pun. If it means nothing to you, don’t worry about it.)