To the extent that we see anyone in bondage, we know it could be us. Apart from the unjust enslavement of other human beings (and there are many kinds practiced today), we all voluntarily enter into bondage in some way or other.
In confronting any individual about the bondage they have entered into I know in my heart that same bondage and more are common to me and you.
This is why I call for contrite prayer to be liberated. Confession and reform are for all of us. Humility and grace is for all.
Grace and Love give us the choice whether to build these chains or become what we were created for. Grace has given us each other to help see chains which some deny and to help unbind each other, to stop wrong pursuits and turn to the higher ways. Choices continue, whether to heed the warnings of history and our fellow human beings, or stubbornly pursue self-centered ways.
Listen. Observe.
Is not God calling for a new vision, to open our eyes and hearts? Let us encourage one another to confess, repent and turn to the ways of Truth, Beauty, spiritual Life and Love.
Michael King
Wow. That’s more powerful than anything Pelosi and Company can come up with!
It just goes to show you what forgiveness and prayer can accomplish when used to season justice.
I personally have been bound by chains of fear, loathing, lust for revenge, and dwelling upon past wrongs. I have fantasized about laying low my enemy while God appealed to me to forgive him. If I practiced the liberation shown in this cartoon, he and I would both be set free (that is, my enemy and I–not God and I!).
markart
Thanks for your input, Michael – I hope we all can enter into the liberating discipline of confession, repentance, and walking upward with God.
Barry
Mark, I liked your cartoon. Very good, incisive, short, but covering lots of territory and ending on the massive monstrosity of our problems all imaged especially in one man. How could it be, we wonder? How unimaginable but maybe very good that the ongoing sins of our race, swept under the rug so long are perhaps more out in the open. Maybe we can deal with them better at this point. We have to hope for that. Using art to make the point is probably the best way to go. Your accompanying message was graceful.
markart
Thank you Barry – I have seen confirmation of the “alternative way” in many things lately. The latest has been in reading Howard Thurman’s book Jesus and the Disinherited. He proposes the counter intuitive disciplines of openness, disengaging fear, counteracting hate and transcendent Love in the model of Jesus. In the middle of troubles like our current circumstances practicing our crafts such as art, or whatever occupies us, with a consciousness of divine communion, enables these behaviors. I do require practice.