As we journey through life, we are often shackled by metaphorical chains that hold us back, tie us down, or slow our progress.
However, we find in God’s abundant love and grace the hope that can free us.
So raise your hands high, liberated to receive the many gifts God has for you.
Now there on the hillside a large herd of swine was feeding; and the demons begged Jesus to let them enter these. So he gave them permission. Then the demons came out of the man and entered the swine, and the herd rushed down the steep bank into the lake and was drowned.
Luke 8:32-33
Why did Jesus not just destroy those demons? After all, he had the power to do exactly that. This even begs another question I am sure we all ask over and over: Why doesn’t Christ just destroy all our enemies? The assumption is misleading, that the world would be a better place if all our enemies, people who wish to do us wrong, were not in it. Our obsession with getting rid of our enemies blinds us to the fact that we too just might be someone’s enemy. Should we be destroyed too?
I am sure that at some point in our lives we have consciously or subconsciously done something wrong to someone. Must we then be wiped out to make the world a better place? Just as Christ’s love for that demon-possessed man led him to drive the demons out of him, our love for one another and even our enemies should kindle in us a hope of freedom from the chains of hatred, intolerance, and vengeance.
James Blay
Dear God, help me to love as Christ loved, and to seek the best for others, no matter how they feel about me. Amen.
Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit.
2 Corinthians 3:17-18