Dispossessed

"The singular truth (of Christianity) is that history does not have an intrinsic meaning in itself, nor from an outside factor that is incommensurable and unknown. Gods presence in human events is alone what gives it meaning as it unfolds".
Jacques Ellul.

So there I was, walking along, when it was just... there.
I can only describe it as the most luxurious cat carrier I'd ever seen. Its ultra-plush interior was equally matched by its streamlined 360 degree clear plastic exterior... clearly designed to bring your furry friend the very best in comfort, style and view as it's transported wherever.

I'd never seen anything like it, but as I walked passed, somewhat stunned, I couldn't help thinking that, in spite of all its ergonomically tasteful features, so pleasing to the eye of the owner, that to any cat housed inside, it still must still be defined as a locked box, required to get the poor creature to where it doesn't really want to go.

Does our 'terrestrialism' present the same kind of comfortable cell to us? It should, because if we consider life is devoid of a celestial dimension and definition,  we are truly in a box and on our own.

Just think about it.
Recall all those great times as a kid when your 'heart was free and your soul ran wild' (Larry Norman) because your imagination sought roads that were new and unexpected.

So what happened?

Ours is very much a time of 'human' values and actions - of believing we carve out our own destinies by seeking to rope and tame the natural, because the material is all we are prepared to entertain.

The world has become one dimensional, and woefully mundane.

It's well nigh impossible to find anything deeply sacred within such fences (or cages), but that doesn't mean the hunger inside actually goes away.  Beyond our utilization of 'things', beyond the distraction of the immediate, there is a troubling whisper in the back of our souls that there's something vital we're now neglecting. Like a cat in a hot-styled cell, we're prowling, stirring for more.

So how do we become unchained?

By facing some hard truths.

The box, we may be told, may be hustled as a place where we're 'as free as we can get', but the longing inside tells us it ain't so, no matter how hard we apply the cosmetics or the latest trappings, we feel the trauma of the lie inside. Because we can, perhaps, "feel" fabulous, doesn't change the fact that we're not really any different, and that's because there's a darkness in us we rightly hate.

The distractions may spin and dazzle around us, so easy to get lost in when we're hyping with others, but when we're alone, when we're quiet, what do we do to quell the presence of the voice that's quizzing us then?

Beneath the tacky sparkle of the "new" thing, there's the gaping bottomless void of Nihilism addicting our culture to the fatality of a world without value.

Jesus Christ is the only one who stands in diametric opposition to that evil.

Above and beyond the inversion of ourselves in our breaking of every taboo, there remains a real freedom that calls us to live with eternal purpose enveloped in the drama that God is unfolding - to become people who find value beyond our slavish, selfish existing.
Beyond the lie of liberty being the self-will to do anything we can contrive as novel (already done hundreds of thousands of times by others), lies a call, an imperative, to find ourselves by loosing such banality to reviving the wonder we used to know - that life was indeed so much bigger.

Sometimes, cages can seem so secure, but they are actually just cages. Christ, by giving us Himself, invites us to a far bigger realm, where the burden and the reward are true freedom to be what we were intended.

Time to look beyond the prison once again.