In February of 2010 Danny, Sandy, Andy and I were at Akacucu, Uganda to teach, to preach and as the saying goes to listen, listen, love, love. Five days of teaching Local Pastors and Lay Persons. Five evenings of Revivals in the town square or the local cattle pasture that doubled as the community football (soccer) field. In between lots of fellowship, feeding hundreds of people, making new friends and seeing old ones again. Hundreds of people came to the teaching sessions. They came by all manner of means. Some by buses, others by bicycles, still others by the Bota-Bota motorcycles that carry everything from passengers to unbelievable amounts of goods. Many walked, in some cases for days. All had a dignity about them. One man in particular sticks in my mind. He appeared towards the middle of the week, dressed in a white suit. He was an older gentleman in a place where achieving any age past 40 is to be counted a major accomplishment and perhaps a miracle. He sat quietly and listened to the teachers and to the praise and worship leaders. On our last day there he came forward and respectfully asked to have his photograph taken with our team leader, Danny. As I was taking the photographs, I couldn't help but notice that our new friend was wearing a silver medal commemorating "Uganda Independence -- 9th October 1962". At what price was this freedom purchased? How much had it cost this man, his family, his friends, his neighbors? What had he endured? 48 years after the fact, freedom still carried such impact on the man that he proudly wore the tattered ribbon and the medal it held. Certainly it still meant allot to him after nearly a half a century. The Apostle Paul tells us in the Letter to the Colossians that in Jesus Christ we are free! Jesus purchased our freedom with his blood and forgave our sins (1:14). We are freed from empty philosophies and our sinful nature. In our baptism we have died with Christ and have been raised in Him to be free from the bonds of legalism, man-made rules and the spiritual powers of this world (2:12, 20-23). We are free! At what price? How much the cost? What was endured? Whether we experienced the salvation of the Lord last week, last month, last year or half a century ago -- does the freedom that we enjoy because of Jesus's suffering, death and resurrection still have impact in our lives and through our lives upon the world? Do we live out our costly freedom, proudly, yet with quiet dignity? Do we proclaim it to the world?
God Bless
Mike Coleman
No comments:
Post a Comment