A Quiet Place: A Week Alone in the Woods-The Fourth Day

Day 4

I have a cold. My throat hurts and there are ulcers in my mouth. I am fighting. I take my vitamins and elderberry. I am not running fever, but I am tired and uncomfortable. I eat breakfast and read my devotional. It is difficult to concentrate. I lay on the edge of the back porch, my arm hanging off, playing with a dead pine needle. I listen to the birds singing while I watch what I thought was black salamanders search for insects. Without cell service I cannot google. I discover later it is a juvenile five lined skink, a species of lizard with yellow stripes and cobalt tails. What a wonder creation is!!

I fall asleep and awake feeling somewhat better, so take another walk. But I am distracted by the pain in my throat.

Today is a day of remembrance. We remember the day our forefathers proclaimed a Declaration of Independence, a fight for freedom. This is a risk which could cost both leaders and followers everything. Or it could be the beginning of all they dared to hope and dream. It could bring life or it could bring death. Yet they knew as Patrick Henry declared months earlier:

It is too late to retire from the contest.
There is no retreat but in submission and slavery!
…
Why stand we here idle?
…
I know not what course others may take;
but as for me,
give me liberty or give me death!”
Patrick Henry March 23, 1775

My thoughts turn to freedom. Are we really free? Or are we merely held hostage by another overlord? I begin to pray. “Lord, what things keep me bound?”

Paul encouraged “you…are children of promise. Stand fast therefore in the liberty where with Christ has made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of slavery.” (Galatians 4 and 5)

Freedom. Liberty.

It is a concept I have wrestled with for the last few years. It is an experience God gifted me as He taught me true freedom lies not in our current circumstance, but in redemption. Forgiveness. Repentance. Humility. It is found in the price He paid for us and our decision to embrace and receive that gift. Despite our sin. Despite the labels we’ve placed upon ourselves or the names others have called us.

And like the disciples I cannot retreat. Where else would I go? HE alone has the words of eternal life (John 6:68) In this moment, though I am called to “Be Still”, I am not idle. Each moment He is working in me, renewing a right spirit in me, pulling me into HIM. And I can do nothing less than to submit to the work he is doing, for to fail to do so would mean slavery and death.

I trust Him to complete the work He began in me. Yet, in truth, I struggle to embrace the freedom He grants.

Relying on God has to begin all over again every day as if nothing had yet been done.

C.S. Lewis

So, each day, I choose my course-to follow HIM. This is my Freedom. This is Liberty!