Freedom isn’t free. A phrase I’ve probably heard for most of my life.
This weekend that phrase has been rolling around in my head as I think about Memorial Day. It started when a fellow Beautycounter consultant posted that as a servicemember’s wife, it Memorial Day sales always bother her. Then I started thinking about the people that I know who have lost a family member in the service. And just the idea of the military in general. Why does it have to be this way? Do people really have to die to protect my freedom?
And then I thought of Christ.
4 Surely he has borne our griefs
and carried our sorrows;
yet we esteemed him stricken,
smitten by God, and afflicted.
5 But he was pierced for our transgressions;
he was crushed for our iniquities;
upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace,
and with his wounds we are healed.
6 All we like sheep have gone astray;
we have turned—every one—to his own way;
and the Lord has laid on him
the iniquity of us all.
7 He was oppressed, and he was afflicted,
yet he opened not his mouth;
like a lamb that is led to the slaughter,
and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent,
so he opened not his mouth.
8 By oppression and judgment he was taken away;
and as for his generation, who considered
that he was cut off out of the land of the living,
stricken for the transgression of my people?
9 And they made his grave with the wicked
and with a rich man in his death,
although he had done no violence,
and there was no deceit in his mouth.
– Isaiah 53:4-9 (ESV)
Without fault, without just cause, he was lead like a lamb to the slaughter for our salvation. Our freedom from sin and death and the snares of the devil. This is our Christ. Unarmed, unprotected, willingly laying down his life for ours.
Sin & death. They’re a package deal. Sin is choosing evil over good. And that’s the tricky thing about evil. It may not seem like it initially, but it always leads to death. Always. Goodness, love, mercy and life – they live with God, not the devil. I can’t give a graduate level explanation in my naptime blogging but I can share about my own experience. Even when I’m mad at God or the way things happen in this world just don’t make sense and I want to blame him for doing it or allowing it or just not being there – running away from God never helps. It never helps. It may easier to not deal with the anguish of my soul for a time, but it never leads to fulfillment. Never. Only God has perfect peace.
I know this is a topic I will probably think about for the rest of my life.
It is true. In this world, freedom isn’t free. It can’t be.
But here’s the good news friends, heaven is already paid for.
Adventures of Our Own 
Amen