Liberation

My father was born in an occupied country. Life was lived as the enemy dictated. Hunger and anxiety were constant companions. All of that was normal, the only life he'd known. He remembers enemy soldiers taking the little food they had and soldiers sleeping in their barn. He remembers huddling with his father against a wall while bombs were being dropped all around. The only life a five-year-old had known until one day...

The best memory, the one that's poignant and stands out above all others, is of the liberation celebration and his first piece of chocolate. A whole bar of chocolate wrapped in shiny gold and blue paper--all his. A smiling Canadian soldier in a green uniform. Music playing. Girls in white blouses and orange sashes. Exuberant joy! A whole new beginning.

Things didn't change overnight. Reconstruction took years, but the atmosphere was transformed by freedom.

We too were born into "occupied territory". Restlessness, dissatisfaction and anxiety are normal. Most live according to the dictates of the enemy. They've heard that a Liberator came and signed a Freedom Proclamation, but they don't believe it. There's so much evidence to the contrary. Collaborating with the enemy seems like their best hope of satisfaction. Some believe, but they don't think they'll experience freedom until "someday" and so they huddle in darkness hoping to survive until the Liberator returns.

Others have seized the Proclamation and claimed it as their own. They are shouting and waving it around, singing songs of freedom. This Resistance band is determined use the weapons provided by the Liberator to push back the enemy, to be part of the reconstruction, and to live according to the truth of the Proclamation regardless of evidence to the contrary until the Liberator returns.

May you be like the little blond boy receiving with wide-eyed wonder the shiny morsel of gold-wrapped truth that Freedom has come. Taste its sweetness. Be revived and celebrate. Declare it to those still sitting in darkness--He has come! Your freedom has been won!

You were dead because of your sins
and because your sinful nature was not yet cut away.
Then God made you alive with Christ, for he forgave all our sins.
He canceled the record of the charges against us
and took it away by nailing it to the cross.
In this way, he disarmed the spiritual rulers and authorities.
He shamed them publicly by his victory over them on the cross.
Colossians 2:13-15