Untangled

“Christ has liberated us to be free. Stand firm then and don't submit again to a yoke of slavery." Galatians 5:1

I love Christmas. I hate the strings of Christmas lights. I am completely convinced that demons haunt the boxes of Christmas decorations from mid-January until sometime after Thanksgiving when families drag them down from the attic. Having made every effort to neatly store the cords with their tiny bulbs, they are invariably found tangled together like a nest of snakes.

I used to connect the first plug I found so I could follow the line of lit bulbs to ease my untangling nightmare. Unfortunately, not only do those demons scramble the neatly wound cords, they also kill half of them over the same time period. Every year I wrestle with a tangled mess and go off to buy enough to make up for what the imps have damaged.

Many times our lives feel impossibly tangled. Sometimes friendships that once flourished turn sour over time. Perhaps one is following a career with complete passion and no time is left to cultivate meaningful relationships. We wonder why something so simple and elegant as a good friendship is now tangled and uncertain.

Perhaps what once were strongly held beliefs now hold some questions we are afraid to admit. We wonder what others will think if we reveal personal doubts. It seems everyone else has it all figured out and are walking a straight line toward their destiny. We wonder we came to question principles we once consider unchanging. So many pressures from the outside keep us from admitting our doubts while our inner self wants to be honest and authentic. We trip over our own feet trying come to some decision about our personal beliefs.

We usually can understand the tangles that result from our own missteps and mistakes. We accept Sir Walter Scott’s quote; “Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive!” There is a definitive cause and effect. When I do not live an honest life I must practice constant vigilance to be sure that all my “faces” I present to the world at least look something alike.

No matter the cause of our entanglements, we long for a life of order. If life can’t be predictable, we at least want it to be explainable. Many resort to religion to help sort out life’s mess and restore some sense of understanding to their experience of the world. Prayer becomes a magic wand to rid me of life’s inconsistencies. Rituals and attendance at spiritual meetings become merit badges with which to appease whatever higher being is running the controls. If we can’t get some sort of easy cause and effect in the material world, we just add a dose of our favorite spirituality and assume all is now well.

Jesus came to set us free from the religious chores that are useless in dealing with the realities of life. By His death on the cross Jesus set us free from the penalty of our own sins and from the treadmill of trying to please God or the universe by religious practices. God never intended for us to be entangled with unforgiven sins hanging around our necks and choking the life out of us. But He also takes no pleasure in our attempts, no matter how sincere, to make Him like us better by a host of religious activities.

God has asked us for one thing only; to trust in His offer of forgiveness and freedom through His Son Jesus Christ. Having established that relationship, there is nothing we can do to make God love us less or love us more. The truth is, He loved us that way even before we come to Christ.

Knowing Jesus does not make the world completely understandable, but it eases our anxiety over who is in charge and whether or not we are somehow to blame. We are free to sing passionate hymns of praise, not because God likes us better when we do, but because we are so free we burst forth in loving expressions. We are free to pray in earnest, not hoping God will log our hours on some sort of cosmic pay clock. We share our needs with Him who has given us all we need in Christ.

We are free to honor authorities, be true to our spouses, speak honestly and love our enemies. We are not forced into a mould by authoritarian commands or doctrinal creeds. We are liberated from our old self-focused lives. We worry less often about the tangled mess and lend ourselves freely because we are now free. All the time we wasted worrying whether the universe was somehow conspiring against can be redeemed. We begin to experience joy even in the messes, peace even in the uncertainties and confidence to trust the world to its Creator.

I will still try to use the old lights from last year’s Christmas decorations, but I won’t worry that I’m on trial for a lack of neatness skills. And, if you’re a better untangler than I am, I’ll be happy to learn!