Present

I have been home for three days and I already feel the strong pull toward complacency. My mind justifies it by the fact that I am tired, that this year has been incredibly difficult in many respects, and I just need rest. But my heart knows the truth. True rest is not found in sleeping for hours on end, tirelessly watching gilmore girls, or scrolling through instagram. These things, although harmless at times, seem a habitual response to the term "summer break." In reality, what is summer break but a new and temporary season, a change of environment for a few months- an opportunity. Although my days may look different than my routine of the school year, the freedom is still there. The freedom to choose. The freedom to find purpose is not defined by a season or circumstances, rather by moments and days. Tomorrow is not promised- so why do I worry myself sick about a million tomorrows? Why do I put the purpose of today off until the tomorrow that may never come? What is this idea of rest that I have created, but an excuse from f true rest found in the freedom of each moment? 

Some days it is difficult. Today it is difficult- when I cannot hear the voice of freedom. I think His voice often comes as a whisper in the mundane moments of life, rather than the firework display my mind anticipates. Maybe I cannot hear the freedom because I am too busy trying to figure out how to be free. 

In the end, it all returns to one thing: grace. 

We have all been raised on the knowledge that freedom comes with a price. The destruction, sacrifice, and suffering that we have all known, heard, or seen, to be called a citizen of the place where we reside cannot be given the respect that it deserves in mere words. Freedom results from pain that we deserved, yet we are offered it without the personal experience of what it cost. Freedom is a gift. A gift that offers life. 

Is it not the same concerning our eternal citizenship? Heaven did not come without a price. The destruction, sacrifice, and suffering that I deserved was already taken upon the shoulders of the One to whom I owe it all. This freedom is a free gift of life. A life that I don't deserve, yet live my days as if I do. I live my life with expectation - like I deserve a million tomorrows. I validate my worries about those tomorrows by the fact that "I deserve better." As If I am the one who makes tomorrow happen- who makes it what it is meant to be. I live in a culture that demands freedom. I can see it everywhere- government, families, friends, strangers. I see it on billboards, the internet, and shouted across my college campus. We think that we deserve and so we demand. Yet why is it if this society is living into this fabulous freedom, that all I can see around me is emptiness, lostness, suffering, and pain? Because this man-made freedom is nothing more than bondage to ourselves- slaves to an unattainable ideal. 

What would it look like to live in true freedom? The freedom that I received on that day when I chose grace. The freedom that is grace. It is a free offer to live in an eternal state of rest- of contentment, peace and joy. What does it look like to live each moment pouring praise back to the One who offers the only promised moment in this life - the current breath that is escaping my lungs in this moment. 

What does it look like to live into each moment of freedom? It means steadiness: being firmly fixed on the One who offers this grace in which I stand free. 

In this season, I challenge myself to be present in the steadiness of His presence. Knowing that in this freedom, my soul finds true rest. 

"For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace." ~Romans 8:6