FIREWORKS!!!

 

Hey Gang, Today’s devotional from my Mornings With Jesus is very appropriate especially for us in the USA  today July 4 -  but includes all  who enjoy fireworks:

 (Jesus) “who purchased out freedom and forgave our sin.” Colossians 1:14 (NLT)

 The annual FIREWORKs DISPLAY was rained out.  So much for the Independence Day.  All that money  Firefighters Auxiliary paid for the planned fireworks -- wasted. Now there was nothing to see but storm clouds, and sheets of rain.

 Families packed up picnic baskets and lawn chairs and high-tailed it for their vehicles, scanning weather channels to see if the storm and winds would pass so they could resume celebrating America’s freedom.  

 It is possible that the thunder and lightning, the rain and misery, the country’s independence came at a high price.  Lives were upended. Courage was tested. Battles were won and lost. We have made Independence Day a celebration of excess with lavish displays in the sky and fun.  It’s so easy to forget the price paid when a party is on our minds.

 What about our soul’s freedom?  We say we are conscious of the price Jesus paid to set us free.  But do we celebrate only with flashy experiences and flashy stories about how Jesus freed a parking space for us just when we needed it? Or do we give the honor and reverence He deserves for what it cost Jesus emotionally, physically, and spiritually to win our freedom?  Do we pause to imagine the moment when midday turn into the blackest night, when the air chilled as if all warmth had been sucked from earth’s atmosphere, when tremors unlike any a human has known coursed Christ’s dying form? Do we ponder the torment of both body and soul that the King of glory endured so we could live free?

 Fireworks? Or sober silence? Jesus our hearts explode with gratitude!                         -Cynthia Ruchti

Blessings,

Gma J