#10: Freedom

Genesis 2:15-17

The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. And the Lord God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.”

Comments

Of the many gifts that we have been given by being created in the image of God, surely none is greater than the gift of our freedom.

To be free means to be able to make choices, and that means we have a variety of options. We can choose what to eat, what to wear, where to work, who to marry and a multitude of other things.

This freedom to choose also means we have the ability to consider these many options, weighing the advantages and disadvantages of each. We can anticipate the outcome of our choices, remembering the past and imagining the future.

The alternative to such freedom would be something like the androids in the Terminator movies. They had been programmed with a single objective: kill John Connor. They had freedom to choose how and when this would be done, but they were unable to follow any path that did not bring them closer to their objective.

God created us to love and obey him, but did not program us in such a way that we would have no other choice. How sad that we so rarely choose to use our freedom to do the very thing we were created to do.

Reflections

You have had a lifetime of making choices. What are some of the best and worst ones you have made?

How well have you considered the consequences of your actions before making these choices? Who or what influenced you most as you were choosing?

Prayer

Blessed are you, O Lord our God, King of the universe, who gives us freedom to choose whether or not to love and obey you.