Spring Freedom

It's spring! I have graduated from the master degree program. I feel free! Free to be outside, free to not work 12 hour days, free to exist, free to walk, run, enjoy ice cream, and mystery novels. Praise God! I've been doing a lot more reading, thinking, and "tree hugging" since school finished. For example...

...It's fitting that I would finish the last chapter - "The Wind Blows Where It Pleases" - of Thomas Merton's No Man Is an Island the day after Pentecost. When Merton is on, he is on! Amazing what he can do with language. What I appreciate is his precision of word selection. In this book, for him, every word counts. A writer, a philosopher, writing prose like a poet - but not writing prose poetry. All glorifying God. I love it. This quote is from that last chapter:

His love cannot be at peace in a soul that is content with a little. For to be content with a little is to will to continue in need.

This is from the chapter on "Vocation." A friend gave this text to me five years ago, and it changed my life. Today, it's still bringing clarity and challenge to my life: 

In planning the course of our lives, we must remember the importance and the dignity of our own freedom. A man who fears to settle his future by a good act of his own free choice does not understand the love of God. For our freedom is a gift God has given us in order that He may be able to love us more perfectly, and be loved by us more perfectly in return.

Love is perfect in proportion to its freedom. It is free in proportion to its purity. We act most freely when we act purely in response to the love of God. But the purest love of God is not servile, not blind, not limited by fear. Pure charity is fully aware of the power of its own freedom. Perfectly confident of being loved by God, the soul that loves Him dares to make a choice of its own, knowing that its own choice will be acceptable to love.

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Have you hopped on the Josh Garrels fan train? I think of "Farther Along" when I think about freedom these days!

I hope these words of Merton also challenge and encourage others to seek more freedom in Jesus Christ!