Shipwrecks

Grief is a stormy thing. You’ll find it comes in waves. When the ship is first wrecked, you’re drowning, with wreckage all around you. Everything floating around you reminds you of the beauty and the magnificence of the ship that was, and is no more. And all you can do is float. You find some piece of the wreckage and you hang on for a while. Maybe it’s some physical thing. Maybe it’s a happy memory or a photograph. Maybe it’s a person who is also floating. For a while, all you can do is float. Stay alive.

In the beginning, the waves are 100 feet tall and crash over you without mercy. They come 10 seconds apart and don’t even give you time to catch your breath. All you can do is hang on and float. After a while, maybe weeks, maybe months, you’ll find the waves are still 100 feet tall, but they come further apart. When they come, they still crash all over you and wipe you out. But in between, you can breathe, you can function. You never know what’s going to trigger the grief. It might be a song, a picture, a street intersection, the smell of a cup of coffee. It can be just about anything…and the wave comes crashing. But in between waves, there is life.

Somewhere down the line, and it’s different for everybody, you find that the waves are only 80 feet tall. Or 50 feet tall. And while they still come, they come further apart. You can see them coming. An anniversary, a birthday, or Christmas, or landing at O’Hare. You can see it coming, for the most part, and prepare yourself. And when it washes over you, you know that somehow you will, again, come out the other side. Soaking wet, sputtering, still hanging on to some tiny piece of the wreckage, but you’ll come out.

The waves never stop coming, and somehow you don’t really want them to. But you learn that you’ll survive them. And other waves will come. And you’ll survive them too. If you’re lucky, you’ll have lots of scars from lots of loves. And lots of shipwrecks.

What you didn't notice along this wavy ride, was who was right by your side, who actually ensured your survival, Jesus. In our darkest hours, He is there and calms the waters so that we never drown.

Mark 4: 37-39 A furious squall came up, and the waves broke over the boat, so that it was nearly swamped. Jesus was in the stern, sleeping on a cushion. The disciples woke him and said to him, “Teacher, don’t you care if we drown?”

 He got up, rebuked the wind and said to the waves, “Quiet! Be still!” Then the wind died down and it was completely calm

Actual Freedom

 The Constitution offers no restraints on religious beliefs. Congress can make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.

The NC Declaration of Rights regarding religious freedom says no human authority, in any case whatever, shall violate or interfere with the freedom of conscience.

If you are told to come to court over a “crime” in which no one is harmed, you can simply say your religion doesn’t allow you to accept jurisdiction when no one is harmed, and there is no witness to claim damage.

You have freedom to live before God as you wish, yet religious leaders come forward and convince you that you must vote. In that teaching, they hijack your freedom. You become convinced that you can only be free if you can get others to believe as you.

2Peter 2:19: “They promise them freedom, but they themselves are slaves of corruption; for whatever overcomes a man, to that he is enslaved”.

The freedom you already have in the world is taken away by convincing you that you can only work through government. Walk into court and listen to the bailiff declare that the courts are under God, and let them convince you that you must obey. While promising us liberty, we are enslaved.