Don’t Be A Hostage

I had a weird dream the other night, the details of which are almost unimportant, other than they led to an important rediscovery and thought. The rediscovery came, as it often does, when I was thinking about the dream later in the day and trying to make sense of it. So, as I was talking to myself I started to tell the story of the dream. I began: “I was being held hostage…” and I stopped. That was the key to the dream. The sense of being held hostage- and in the dream- being threatened with being killed- poisoned, actually.

There are many things that can hold us hostage, of course. Emotions within us toward others; emotions others have toward us; memories that don’t want to get resolved; memories we don’t want to let go of so they can be resolved; unhappy jobs or family situations; addictions; circumstances beyond our control. The result of most of these is an often slow death by being poisoned. We are poisoned by our own situations or experiences and our lives get worse and worse.

What can be done? What CAN be done?

In the dream I discovered that the key is to let one’s soul/spirit be set free. In the dream I started floating and, as someone went to hit me with a stick to bring me back down, the stick went right through me as if I wasn't there. It was clear to me that the message was that the body isn't all there is. There's more. There's the essence of who we are.

We call it the soul. Or perhaps our spirit. I also like to think of it as the "image of God" within us that God created us into. That is beyond the body, beyond the earthly life. The things that can kill the body don't have to kill the soul. The things that we think keep us in bondage can never keep the soul in bondage- unless we are unwilling to allow our spirit to be freed by His Spirit.

That was, to me, a powerful reminder. We too easily allow too many things and too many circumstances to place too many restrictions on us. We fall prey to them. The freedom of the soul in Jesus Christ is unlike the freedoms we hold so dear in this country. The freedom of the soul makes our freedoms here pale in comparison. The freedom of God is, in the end, the one that allows us to be who we are called to be- Children of the Living God.