As America celebrates her birthday and hard-won independence today, I wanted to reflect a little on the word ‘freedom.’ The Fourth of July this year is an odd one for the history books, one without live fireworks, large picnic gatherings, or even concerts. Most of us for months now have lost the freedom to come and go as we please, to face the world without a mask covering, to grieve a dying loved one in person, or even to attend class at school, all in the name of protecting the well-being and health of others around us.
God created all of us to be free because He wanted us to be completely happy. I mean, how can we be happy if we are restricted or restrained? The gift of freedom God gave us (free will) meant we have the ability to choose what is good or not. But as we know, our choices – whether good or bad – have a consequence; it comes with responsibility. We don’t have to look far but to our first parents, Adam and Eve, and the choices they made to understand this: they chose to disobey God and they chose to eat the forbidden fruit. That single decision led to sin and death for all their descendants, tainting all of mankind.
But God, in His infinite mercy, graced us with a Redeemer in His son Jesus to set us straight. When we are tempted by the Evil One or fall short by the choices we make, let us be reminded that He paid the ultimate price for our freedom by His death and resurrection on the cross.
It’s often stated that America is “the greatest country in the world.” But greatest in what? Ask around these days and you most certainly will get a multitude of answers.
By world standards, being the “greatest” seems to be on everyone’s goal list. Power, fame, wealth, status, achievement, you name it. Our culture’s insatiable appetite for flaunting the “best of the best” is hard to ignore; the message fills our air waves, news cycles, social media, television, magazines, even in little Susie’s violin classes.
But what about by God’s standards?
Even the disciples themselves wanted to know from Jesus who would be the “greatest” in heaven. But our Good Shepherd knows all about our broken humanity and sinfulness. After all, He was fully human too. Even though He was perfect and never sinned, He understood our sorrows and struggles. But Jesus came to testify to the Truth and only the Truth, “… unless you turn and become like children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.” (Mt 18:3-4)
What is Jesus teaching us here? In His eyes, in order to achieve greatness in heaven (our ultimate destination), we must strive to live with the simple joy of a little child.
It is in the spirit of a little child’s joy for the world that I uncovered last year a long-forgotten story in my own childhood, where I experienced a taste of freedom but needed a bit of God’s grace to let go of an unexpected hurdle:
One day last July, I took a stroll down the ice cream aisle at a local grocery store. I had done it many times before, but this visit, however, was different. The sight of the containers of sweet deliciousness elicited a long-forgotten memory from my childhood. Instead of drooling over the myriad of flavors and brands to try, I found myself standing behind the refrigerated glass doors and reminiscing. What was it?
It was the memory of my ice cream escapade with my brother as little children.
Picture it: One spring day in New York City’s Chinatown in the 1970s. I was 5, my brother younger. Dad was out of town working, mom was home with us but sleeping. What do active little children do when they are stuck in a second-floor apartment with nothing to do and the parent in charge is asleep?
They seek out fun and not think about the consequences.
My little brother whispered if we could sneak out for ice cream and candy, treats we loved but were seldom allowed to have. I didn’t want to, but I couldn’t let my little brother go off by himself so I decided to tag along. I had to be responsible for us both.
We snuck out and my protective instinct kicked in as I held my little brother’s hand, crossing two city blocks to the nearest A&P grocery store on Grand Street. Inside the store, I pushed our shopping cart and we knew exactly where to head for: the ice cream aisle.
We were finally in Sweets Heaven.
We proceeded to open carton after carton of ice cream, dip our tiny little hands inside to sample a little here and there and then put them back. My little brother went off to help himself to unlimited candy and even asked a lady to help with a box of cookies that was unreachable to him, unaware we were going to sample those too. As we happily indulged away, I noticed a young woman at the cashier lane, presumably a customer herself, who smiled and watched us from a distance in stunned disbelief, perhaps wondering where our parents were. We kids didn’t have a single care in the world other than satisfying our sweet little teeth and relishing our little moment of freedom from the restraints of our home life. My last memory of our escapade was that of the two of us sitting in the back seat of a police cruiser, being given a bag of circus peanuts candy as we were driven home, and the sight of our mom in hysterics because she feared the worst for us.
Needless to say, we never pulled another one like that ever again.
But as memories of our childhood escapade flooded my mind last summer, the news headlines at the same time reported of individuals as young as teenagers across the country committing various food and product tampering crimes including this one involving ice cream.
Yikes.
More than four decades have passed, yet a wave of guilt suddenly hit me. The last thing to even enter my mind would be the C word – crime.
Could my 5-year-old self be culpable too, I wondered? When I poured out my soul before the Lord on some of those hard questions, He filled me with His peace in return. He knew this whole story all along; He was there with us. In time, I was able to discern that the guilt I was feeling was the work of the Evil One and not from God Himself.
In God’s eyes, little children are free of sinful and malicious motives, pure, innocent, and trusting of all that is good, true and beautiful in this world. God challenges us to shed our adult pride and ego and to live life with the innocence of a little child. The forces of the world may say to us to achieve more, earn more, run faster, and be the best at all costs, but at the end of our earthly lives, what will it matter? “For what shall it profit a man, if he gain the whole world and suffer the loss of his soul?” (Mk 8:36). The lesson here is that living a life of childlike simplicity and humility will make us free and happy, and it is what makes us greatest in God’s Kingdom, where it will truly matter the most.
My friends, as we fire up the grill, gather the family and friends (with social distancing), and take in the fireworks today in whatever televised or virtual format we can, may we rejoice in the love of that atmosphere and may all our choices and decisions be driven by the desire to seek and do God’s will; it is only then that we are truly free and happy.
Photo by Kamala Saraswathi on Unsplash