This is indeed a revelation. One in which I did not come to on my own. In fact, I have often worried that my inability to take the "straight line" is a fault, a disadvantage, the path to my inevitable demise and destruction. In a sense I was right and yet entirely naive and ignorant to reality. My inability to follow the straight line has indeed led to a destruction, but the question to be asked is, "What has been destroyed?"
It is most certainly not me, or at least not me in my entirety or what is truly me. Being that I am a Follower of the Way, an attempting Imitator of the Lord Jesus Christ I believe that I have been born into sin and yet set free by the blood of the Lamb. The old has gone, destroyed. The new has come. No longer am I bound by the chains of death.
For years I listened to Satan's lies. He is indeed the Father of Lies. From birth I had forgotten my one true God, but God has not forgotten me. For so long did I dress in the rags of facade, clothed in the bastard garmets of sin and deceit, but even so I was not forgotten. God forever knows my name. God forever knows my face even when it is cloaked in darkness--for as the Psalmist says even the darkness is as light to God. I am a Child of the Light, a Daughter of Zion, an unworthy heir, but none the less welcomed home as a prodical son.
Being in the world and yet not of it there are times when confusion is the result. Feelings of being lost or lonely, feelings of purposelessness, feelings of fear and doubt, but those are not of God--they are of the world. While in the world we are in tension. Our spirit and flesh are at war within us. We seek to be free because we are free and yet we must be reminded of grace and remember that earth is short and life is eternal. We must hold in tension the kingdom now, freedom from fear and doubt and the kingdom to come, freedom eternal.
It has been a circuitous route to such knowledge, but even more it has been following the ideas the world labels as folly and non-linear that have led to belief for me. I have had to feel the weight of title and the wave of success to understand the beauty of simple gifts. I had to make mistakes and bleed the consequences to experience truth. A truth that heals. To heal a pussy wound one must first scrape and dig out the infection for the healing process to begin. In reality the circuitous route is not the truth, but it is a way for the hard headed of the world to be re-acquainted with the truth.
The fact of the matter is it is neither the straight-line nor the circuitous route that matters. In the end the truth is there is nothing you nor I can do to earn the Love of God. There is nothing we can do to procure forgiveness. There is nothing we can do to obtain our own freedom. It is by grace alone that we receive this gift of true life. It is by grace alone that we, who are indeed unworthy, will drink living water, and it is because of grace that we can choose to take the circuitous route, that we choose to take the straight-line, that we can even choose to stand still or even sit in the embrace of our loving God and encounter a healing truth without even moving.
I will admit I still cannot stand nor sit in the midst of such love, but at least I know that regardless of my path it is not earned nor bought by my actions but instead is freely given. The Lord will meet us where we are at no matter our route and His love remains the same enduring forever.
So it is not so much the route that matters, but the truth revealed in the midst. For the saying is not the route shall set you free, it is the TRUTH SHALL SET YOU FREE.
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