Their souls run free

What is it about a sunrise that captures our imagination?  It’s difficult to tell the exact moment of dawn.  It happens and we get caught up in the moment—there’s no pause button in life.  This is an important principle to think about because we tend to live in the past or place all of our hopes on the future.  Meanwhile a new day is always presenting itself, whether we know it or not.  Life never comes to a standstill and it’s much more than mere existence.  It’s an experience that we have the choice to take part in or to ignore.

With this we are reminded of times and seasons.  We can’t live in a perpetual season of Christmas or Lent.   There’s movement all around us; life is coming through in all its glorious expressions and we need to participate in it.  There’s a major difference between aging and growth.  Aging is the unstoppable process of existence; growth is the freedom to experience life all around you and within you.  You can actually see it in people’s eyes.

A child that runs after a butterfly or a lizard or jumps off a bed believing that they’re flying, is the picture of growth.  When a child smiles there’s no anxiety hidden behind it.  But find somebody who’s just aging and you won’t find a pure smile, because of fear and anxiety about the future, held by pain it remembered from the past.  What’s really heartbreaking is that, everyone who’s just aging was once a child and knew what is was like to believe that fairy tales can come true.  There’s a reason that children believe in super heroes.  Those who are just aging don’t believe in anything but their own chaotic world that can’t be saved by a guy in tights and a cape.

Jesus likened the kingdom of heaven to the simple faith of a child, their hearts are free, their minds wide awake and their souls run free.  We only have two options: to grow or to be one who is aging, and that’s really the heart of the matter.  A child grows but too many adults begin aging far too early and don’t stop until they pass away.  Someone or something has destroyed the child-like spirit that believes, that hopes and dreams and never doubts in a miracle.

Yesterday and tomorrow are labels to help us know where we’ve been and where we want to go, but it’s this moment in time that we’ve been given to learn what eternity is all about.  It isn’t the turning pages of a calendar, but the eyes that see who holds time and dispenses it for our good.  Our Heavenly Father gives time to us as a gift, but we tend to live in days gone by or worry about the days to come, and we miss the moment given to us.  Have you noticed that when you’re with friends that time moves very quickly, you can’t figure out how an entire evening can go by so fast?  This is how our heavenly Father counts time, in the grand moment of relationship!  He isn’t focusing on when it will end, or how long ago it began.  He’s living in the beauty of relationship with His Son at each moment, placing value in the unbreakable fellowship and communion they share.  There’s no clock-watching or staring at the calendar, there’s just pure unbridled joy in relationship.  That’s the gift of time, to know joy by experience, by encounter, by union to the Father and the Son through the Holy Spirit.  The wonder of the Gospel is that the Son of God joins us to the Father so we can share and grow in the knowledge and fellowship of God.  We aren’t left out, but we often shut ourselves out when we age instead of grow.

It is foolish to wander through life, totally unaware of who we are and what we’re made for, settling for simple existence when there is life to live as the gift and purpose of God the Father, His Son, and the Holy Spirit.  To capture the moment and live, means that we must understand the giver of Life; the Maker of Life’s seasons.  We must set aside our own calendar and adopt a new cycle of time, a cycle grounded in the One in whom we live and move and have our being.