Freedom

Freedom
“I will walk about in freedom, for I have sought out your precepts. I will speak of your statutes before kings and will not be put to shame, for I delight in your commands because I love them. 
I lift up my hands to your commands, which I love, and I meditate on your decrees.” 
                                                                                                                          Psalm 119:45-48
Today as I write this it is June 6th 2014 the 70th anniversary of Day. Here in Canada the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) is putting on an all day special, commemorating the day a hundred and fifty thousand men rush ashore in Normandy France.
These men risked their life that we might have freedom.
My Father while not at Normandy fought in the British Army in North Africa, Italy, Belgium and Germany. He spoke little of his actual time in Battle he tended to dwell on the good times he had with his friends between the fighting.
One day however when I went to visit him at home. By this time he was in his eighties and he’d been watching television someone who was denying the holocaust every happened was being sentenced for hate crimes was in the news.
He suddenly started an angry tirade aimed largely at the television. He was very upset saying that he knew the death camps were real. That he was there.
His tirade lasted a few seconds then he settled down and told me for the first time his experience at the Bergen Belsen death camp. He’d been among the liberator of the camp. He’d seen the horror and it had left wounds that he’d never spoken about for decades.
He said that’s why they had fought the war, to end tyranny. That we should always remember those who fought and died to end it.
For me I believe the fear of God was forgotten in Germany during the 1930's and 1940's. That the people in part out of ignorance and in part out of fear followed an evil man. As a result it lead to the ultimate deaths of more than fifty-six million people.
The scripture I quoted above says a lot,
“I will walk about in freedom, for I have sought out your precepts. I will speak of your statutes before kings and will not be put to shame, for I delight in your commands because I love them. 
I lift up my hands to your commands, which I love, and I meditate on your decrees.” 
                                                                                                                        Psalm 119:45-48.
If we believe in God. If we truly walk in the precepts of God. If we love God and we ensure our leadership both political and religious, loves God then the horrors of world war two will not be repeated.
Abba Hillel Silver wrote,
“Faith in God is the strongest bulwark of a free society.  Human freedom began when men became conscious that over and above society and nature there is a God who created them...who fashioned them in His likeness, and that they are, therefore, possessed of intrinsic and independent significance and are endowed, as individuals, with original and irrevocable rights and authority.”
It is only when mankind turns its back on God’s truths of Love and mercy that such a thing as world war two can happen.
The men that started world war two were far from God. Their hearts were filled with hate.
We can never let this happen again. We must stand up to hate and prejudges wherever it may be.
We must insist that our political and religious leaders exercise tolerance and show love to all irrespective of their race colour creed or their lifestyle.
Martin Luther King Jr. once prayed,
“We thank thee, O God, for the spiritual nature of man. We are in nature but we live above nature.
Help us never to let anybody or any condition pull us so low as to cause us to hate.
Give us strength to love our enemies and to do good to those who despitefully use us and persecute us.
We thank thee for thy Church, founded upon thy Word, that challenges us to do more
than sing and pray, but go out and work as though the very answer to our prayers depended on us and not upon thee.
Then, finally, help us to realize that man was created to shine like stars and live on through all eternity.
Keep us, we pray, in perfect peace; help us to walk together, pray together, sing together, and live together until that day when all God’s children, Black, White, Red, and Yellow will rejoice in one common bond of humanity in the kingdom  of our LORD and of our God, we pray. Amen.”
The writer of Ecclesiastes wrote,
“Now all has been heard; here is the conclusion of the matter: Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole  duty  of man. 
For God will bring every deed into judgment, including every hidden thing, whether it is good or evil.”
Ecclesiastes 12:13,14.
 As Christians we need to fear God and keep his commandments, Jesus saying,
"Jesus replied: “ ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’  
This is the first and greatest commandment.  
And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’  
All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” 
                                                                                         Matthew 22:37-40
If we are doing this and requiring our leaders both political and religious to do it also. Our world will be a much better place.
Remember,
“Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.  
It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.  
It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. 
Love never fails....” 
1 Corinthians 13:4-8a.
This is what it is to be Christian. These ideals are the ideals those men died for on June 6th 1944.
For us to do less than show love to our fellow man is not only to let those who died in world war two down but to fall short of what God wants us to do and to potentially sentence those we come in contact with to a Christless eternity.
Think about it.