Dear Brothers and Sisters,
A couple of weeks ago, we celebrated Freedom Day—Juneteenth–in prayer and song. We are now just a couple of days away from Independence Day—July 4th . Our freedom is a precious gift from God. It is one that we should treasure and give thanks for all our days. AND it requires our participation to maintain. It’s all too easy to take it for granted and get lazy, assuming that other folks will make the decisions and put in the work to keep *us* free as individuals. It’s necessary constantly to be vigilant in ensuring that other people are free as well. As Juneteenth reminded us, that is still a work in progress for people of color, immigrants, LGBTQ+, differently abled, elderly, poor, and so many others.
We have been reading the Letter to the Romans for the past several weeks, and will be continuing to do so for the next few months (settle in!). St. Paul has a lot to say about freedom. In just this Sunday’s reading (Romans 6:12-23) there are four references to freedom.
We’ll be talking more about this as we go along, but I’d like to ask you to consider a few
questions:
- What does freedom mean to you?
- What is freedom from something?
- What is freedom to do something?
- What is freedom not to have to do something?
JOY!
Mo. Laura+