Freedom Rings

Even in the bleakest of situations, there are glimpses of her.  In the children's cancer ward, a four year old boy named Joseph proclaims that he wants to be a doctor one day. She flashes past.  A little girl, Lesby, goes home with her parents.  We glance out of the corner of our eyes.  She stands there with us.  She is Freedom.  And on this great American holiday, we celebrate her in Honduras too.

There is Freedom in a women's sewing clinic where patterns are cut out of vibrant fabrics and women treat cotton and duck cloth as fine silk.  This is their new skill and they are meticulous in their work.  They listen intently to their teachers.  Their livelihood depends on it.  The sewing clinic brings freedom.  Freedom from going hungry.  Freedom from depending on a man who may or may not come home tonight with food and money.  Freedom from intense loneliness.  To see this sisterhood of women sewing together is to see a group of girlfriends laughing and helping each other.  Freedom rings in Los Bordos.

 There is Freedom in a men's rehab called Ministerio Vida.  The men come to get clean.  They detox right there on the property.  Cold turkey.  There is no grass in the yard; they walk it down as they pace and try to rid their bodies of the substances they used to dull the pain all these many years.  The emotion is raw, but so is the hope.  The men commit to being there for seven months.  A guitar workshop has been built in the back of the property.  There is freedom in cutting boards of Honduran mahogany and rosewood, shaping and sanding.  There is great pride in carving notches for the frets and watching a magnificent instrument come to life.  At the Ministerio Vida, Freedom's song is sung one clean life at a time. 

She is there in a school full of children.  Putting pencil to paper.  Freedom dwells in each new concept grasped, every lesson learned, granting children the gift of education.  Their ticket out of certain poverty.  That no longer has to be their fate.  The generational cycle can break here.  There is Freedom in offering a chance to change the future.  The children understand that better than we know.

On this day of independence, we celebrate from afar.  Our country is the greatest in all the world.  We know that and are proud.  But today and always, we make more of true freedom.  This is the purist form of the word.  And this freedom has the ability to dwell inside us no matter the circumstances of our lives.  No matter our country of origin.  Freedom did not limit herself.  She is available to all through Christ. 

"Now the Lord is the Spirit and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom." 2 Cor 3:17

"For freedom Christ has set us free." Galatians 5:1

In the poem The New Colossus, Jewish-American poet Emma Lazarus famously wrote,

Give me your tired, your poor,

your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

 the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. 

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!

The bells of freedom toll loud today.