I have been involved in some conversations about the idea of Freedom From lately and in saying it that way its probably mostly a conversation in my own head.

Of course we all want to be Free, an obvious example of that is Richie Havens performing the song ‘Freedom’ at Woodstock.  I could disert… (Make a dissertation) on the topic of the built in desire for Freedom but that is another Blog but I bring Havens into this story just as a short pointer to this point that the search for Freedom is ubiquitous across humanity

This post is part of a longer internal discussion I have been having for 6 years on what is Freedom.  I have tried on for size sooo many definitions but I keep coming back to this one:

Freedom is you being who God called you to be in the midst of your circumstances.

So if that definition has any reality to it, and I believe it does, it seems to me you would have to conclude ok, then human Freedom has a component that “Freedom From” things is not the main goal.  There are countless discussions one could have that are interesting rabbit trails from that point but the real purpose of this post is to relay a story I heard this week.

John is a Pastor who is a great great friend of mine and has this very interesting back story of Heidi Baker type mission field experiences.  As we just chill together we always end up in long discussions about the things of God and he ends up telling me more and more of these stories.  They are way beyond anything I have seen in my 60 trips around the sun and I get to hear them from a man whom I have immense trust in his approach to this Jesus Seeking life.  did I mention he was also a friend ??  Maybe one of my best and that happened in a very short period of time, its mysterious and divine… mountains of trust.

So John ended up in Indonesia in one of the main communities that were destroyed by that large Tsunami and earthquake.  Remember that ???  The village had 70,000 souls in it… The wave hit, the earth quaked and 1400 people survived.  He was there right after that happened and the sites and scenes of how that looked post wave were just shocking to him.  There were a lot of obstacles in just being a caring Christian person in all of that devastation in the midst of a Muslim country that wants zero part of Christianity within its culture…

So he did what he could and moved on from that into other places God was leading him into.  Sometime later in life back in the states he was at a restaurant and the waiter had a name tag that said his name but also told him where he was from and it said Indonesia.  Of course being a normal human John reached out for a connection and told the waiter “I’ve been there !” John told a part of the tsunami story and mentioned the Village. The waiter then told John a story about that Village he was never told in the midst of the chaos.

You see there was a singular Christian Church in this village of 70 thousand people.  A day or two before the wave hit the Muslim leadership decided they had enough of this church and they needed to step up the pressure to force the church to something different, either convert or leave so they burned the Church down.  The muslim towns people were acting out on their own version of what Freedom and Freedom From meant to them, we all do that!!!

The church looked inside of themselves for a response to the same question and that ended up being to just pray, either the pastor of the Church or some member said lets go up on the hill to pray, they did and the wave hit.  They were part of the 1400 of 70, 000 who survived…

I am going to end the story there to let you cogitate and conclude for yourself what you feel is the various meanings behind this story in regards to ‘Freedom From’…  Obviously God Cares about his people, it does prove out or validate certain versus but what does this have to do with Freedom and Freedom From ????   I can’t shake what I think about it so I wrote this,  Peace !!!! 🙂